Despite facing increased competition in the space, not least from the Epic Games Store, Valve’s platform is synonymous with PC gaming. The service is estimated to have made $10.8 billion in revenue during 2024, a new record for the Half-Life giant. Since it entered the PC distribution space back in 2018, the rival Epic Games Store has been making headway – and $1.09 billion last year – but Steam is still undeniably dominant within the space.
Valve earns a large part of its money from taking a 20-30% cut of sales revenue from developers and publishers. Despite other storefronts opening with lower overheads, Steam has stuck with taking this slice of sales revenue, and in doing so, it has been argued that Valve is unfairly taking a decent chunk of the profits of developers and publishers.
This might change, depending on how an ongoing class-action lawsuit initiated by Wolfire Games goes, but for the time being, Valve is making money hand over fist selling games on Steam. The platform boasts over 132 million users, so it’s perfectly reasonable that developers and publishers feel they have to use Steam – and give away a slice of their revenue – in order to reach the largest audience possible.
Nah mate, Steam is just the best game platform on PC. A game has access to so many features like cloud saves, community, workshop, matchmaking when it comes out on Steam, while the users have access to user reviews, curators, guides, sales, bundles etc etc. Epic doesn’t have most of those features. And yes, a game dev can go out of their way to create those features for their game, on Steam they don’t have to. Epic had all the time in the world to implement even half of them, but they still haven’t. GOG is an alternative because it offers something Steam won’t, and it’s been going great for them. Epic is just a bootleg version of Steam. Their only claim to fame is their free game giveaways, but even then you’re stuck playing the game without the features Steam users have.
I dunno about those lame features, I use Steam because AAA mostly gets exclusively released there on PC. It kinda sucks.
That’s most likely just cause they enjoy the auto downloader, patch tools and anticheat software that they can bundle in.
GOG has installers for AAA games like Witcher and Baldurs Gate 3 because the developers were better about giving the option. Heck lots of AAA games on epic. We don’t complain about PlayStation and Nintendo exclusives. Blame the developers for liking the easy features to only be on Steam. Ask them to change not Valve.
Epic pays handsome sums for exclusives, can’t blame the devs for taking it. They go to Valve to not miss out on the gigantic market share cause it’s a monopoly. And I do complain about Nintendo and PlayStation exclusives ;)
But they could release their own installer like CD project Red and other studios do. They don’t want to miss out on the ease of the installer that enables a larger market share. That’s not a monopoly. Literally.
No. The vast majority of potential customer will only buy if it’s on Steam. This is not about features, it’s about market access.
Right but that’s an ease of purchase thing. They could buy elsewhere. The option exists, there is no lack of viable options and people still take it. Not by definition a monopoly.
So you are angry that people are lazy and don’t shop around too much. Your issue is with the consumer so you want someone to step in and force them different because you don’t like their actions?
If a monopoly exists because the competition is incompetent it is still a monopoly. If someone offers a teleport service and it is the only one on the market because no one else can figure out how to do it, it is still a monopoly. I don’t want anyone to step in, I want customers/users to not defend the monopoly like it’s their favourite football club, to think about what can happen if they rely on the services of a monopoly too much and yes, to „shop around more“.
You are insistent on not changing your perspective on it being a monopoly because you want it to be one.
It’s not like your scenario. Other people have figured it out. Epic game store is right there and so is GOG and others. People do buy from them and some prefer them.
The problem is that you want it to be a monopoly as an excuse for why people are using the service more than others. That is simply not the case. You ignore that people do shop around sometimes and others don’t cause it’s easy and not everyone is how you think of them.
You are Don Quixote yelling at the windmills thinking it’s gonna save the country. Have an actual alternative you want instead of just being upset how things are.
It’s easy to do that when you employ couple of hundred people while taking 30% cut of 90% of PC game sales.
Steam should be broken up as a monopoly that it is. Decouple infrastructure from the store, allow others to pay fair price for access to it and game prices would go down in an instant. That’s how telecom monopolies were broken up where I live with wonderful results. Console makers should allow alternative stores too now that they don’t subsidise hardware.
Question from the back?
How would Valve be broken up?
Would it be game developer and store front separated?
How would that aid or assist in the purchasers?
Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling
Valve gets split into Valve backend (most rudimentary but common stuff so that owned games across storefronts in that backend carry over) and Valve store/developer/publisher. Other stores get access to backend, regulator stays at Valve backend to check if they don’t give preferential treatment to Valve store. Same rules for everyone. Then stores can decide how they utilise that infra, what features they provide and consumers make a decision on cost and benefits of those stores. You can make some transfer fee if needed because downloads are a variable cost.
Oh so like how I can buy my steam keys on fanatical but still download and play them via the steam backend while using a different frontend like LaunchBox?
And Steam could take a 30% fee on transactions while using their service?
Something like that?
No. GOG, EGS, Humble and anyone else who wants to join in and offer a store that connects to Valve backend. That store calls backend to check who owns what, pays them for downloads (base/updates/dlc) and that’s it. It would make Steam monopoly crumble in an instant, prices go down because stores compete on things that matter to consumers. Stores need to compete for developers too. Win win win.
Wait but you can link Humble to steam and it checks what games you already own.
GOG wants you to just have the local game files and an installer so they don’t need this and don’t need Valve’s backend. Why pay valve for each download when you can host it yourself and not worry about the fee? Itch seems to agree with that.
And then wouldn’t everyone still be using Valve as a backend and they would have a monopoly on the infrastructure of all game downloads then? And could charge high rates to download?
Humble still has to charge you entire Valve’s cut this way. 30% is way more than the real infra cost.
Valve backend is effectively a public utility in this scenario. This thing has been proven to work and bring prices down fast. Actual free market.
It wouldn’t be a public utility they would be a company that needs to make a profit still and would find a way to do so with fees on downloads.
And humble does not pay the 30% if you buy in their storefront currently.
So your complaint is that prices are high and getting rid of Steam would alter that?
Sorry, they didn’t gobble up existing infrastructure. Comparing them to telcos is just a bad argument.
Why? They lucked their way to owning the infrastructure and got paid handsomely for that already. What are the negative aspects of breaking up Steam that way? I can’t think of any. I provided plenty of benefits both to consumers and developers.
No valve means no steam controller, no proton compatibility layer (don’t tell me to use wine I was there already) no steam deck, no freedom to game on any PC OS I want.
You know nothing, Jon Snow.
You know that Proton is just streamlined and better funded Wine, a project with decades of history by now? If you’re looking for someone to thank for funding it, it’s CodeWeavers.
How’s your freedom to resell your games? Console gamers still have boxes and second hand market. Valve killed that on PC. Gamers ate Microsoft for attempting that, Valve somehow got away with it. At the time people said „but the prices are better” but how good are discounts these days?
Next thing you’ll tell me Android is good for Linux. How’s that working out for everyone?
Ok be honest you’re trolling right?
Oh come on, comparing Steam to telecoms is a bit of a leap. Nobody needs access to video games on a day-to-day basis. Video games are a luxury item at the end of the day.
Their breaking up also assumes that hosting video games for downloads is a thing only Steam can do. Steam hosting the game files and Steam as a service for the customer have little to no relation to each other. Steam, or anyone else for that matter, could just as easily use AWS. Breaking up Steam into many, smaller Steams might lead to lower prices, or devs will choose one, that one will become the dominant one, and we’re back to square one.
The best way to drive prices down is competition. It’s economics 101. Do not blame Steam for being successful, blame their competition (Epic in this case) for being inept. Epic was the VC baby everybody was banking on going toe-to-toe with Steam, but they couldn’t even get basic shit like a cart or a wishlist working for far too long.
Steam’s 30% cut is a different problem altogether. Yeah, it’s probably excessive, and would ideally be tiered by sales. However, all the games (that I have seen) that released on Epic first, with their paid exclusivity, eventually came out on Steam. So what does that tell us about how impactful that 30% cut is. Steam’s pre-existing userbase is a factor. Userbase they have, and maintain, due to their wide array of features. And, all those features Steam provides aren’t free to maintain. They host the game on their own servers, they host all the user generated content on their servers, Steamworks matchmaking is ran by Steam. Game devs aren’t just getting their game sold through Steam, Steam does much much more than that.
And this is how people will explain why upcoming technofeudalism is a good thing. Our new masters have earned it :)
Lots of new EU regulations specifically target scenarios like this because that’s in the interest of consumers. Governments should work for the people, not winners with the most money.
[edit] You’d think you’d get more people against big tech on Lemmy lol.
Maybe it’s just a bad take. Just a hurdurr big tech bad sticker on an argument doesn’t win it for you if your argument is crap.
A monopoly isn‘t good if the product is good. It‘s still bad.
Now we’re just making things up to justify a bad take?
What‘s made up?
Calling it a monopoly. They didn’t lobby to have the market share. They have competitors who can’t make a product as good. Just calling it a monopoly because you think it’s an easy win in an argument doesn’t just make it a monopoly.