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this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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Yeah, they've got a monopoly and it sucks, but they don't seem to have a desire to push it to the point of drawing attention. I know why Epic does what it does, because they have to compete with the near complete market dominance of Valve. However, it's not like Valve has used their position to increase prices or anything like that. They also invest in doing things that improve the experience rather than just trying to harm the competition.
I don't like the monopoly, but I do appreciate Valve as a company.
I keep seeing "Monopoly" repeated, but I'm having a hard time understanding the logic.
They haven't bought competitors. They don't do anything to hinder others progress in this market, sometime to the detriment of their customers (see: Steam launches another launcher, to launch the game). They haven't openly shown anything anti-competitive, in fact they have stuck to their guns (30% cut) when others have attempted to compete.
What they have done is cultivate the best platform that continues to evolve, add features, and maintain stability. Consumers continue to choose to use Steam overwhelmingly, but outside of Valve's own games, there is no threat of exclusivity or punishment.
It's the opposite of monopolistic behavior. Any company is free to compete, build their own platform, and offer software. It's expensive, and tricky to get right, but nothing is stopping them, Valve included.
A monopoly doesn't care about actions. There's only one place people think about when they think to purchase a game on PC. That means it's a monopoly. Sure, it's not a horrible situation, and they don't seem to be significantly exploiting their position, but that doesn't change that they have no real competition.
If we're going deep into the literal meaning of monopoly, the "mono" prefix means "one" but they have several legitimate competitors so that's simply untrue.
For launchers there's Epic, GoG, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft Gamepass, R*. If we're talking game sales there's a litany of other websites to purchase games from Humble Bundle, Fanatical, Itch.io, Green Man Gaming.
Players can buy directly from the publisher in most cases. For outside those, there are options of DRM free or whatever Epic supposedly has to offer.
Steam may have a dominant position, but I'm not entirely sure that's a monopoly. If we had no other options? Sure. We have multiple other options. Steam Keys are the most common for a number of the sites, but I'd also consider that none of these launchers have the set of features that Valve offers with theirs.
Does people choosing a better service make it a monopoly? I think if Steam didn't have even 1/3rd of what it offers then the other options would be more widely used. Rather, if the other options put as much effort into the quality of life of their launchers, they'd be more popular.
But personally I also think the Epic-backed Wolffire lawsuit claiming Valve has a monopoly is kind of BS, unless it comes out to be true that Steams market power forced developers to keep games off other stores and keep it on their own. If Valve were forcing its competitors to be shit, then sure it's a monopoly.
Up to this point, it seems to me that Steam has dominated the market because of reliability. The consistent sales, refunds are consistent, the program has a number of uses from communities to guides to per-game control schemes, to little things like the soundtracks of games being in one spot.
Is it a monopoly? Or is it the people's choice?
Sure, and the only time most people use these are launching through another platform that forces the launcher to run anyway.
Humble Bundle, GMG, and I assume Fanatical all sell mostly Steam keys. They aren't an alternative. Itch.io also does some, but they absolutely aren't competition.
Still buying a Steam key 99.99% of the time, so Valve gets their cut.
Epic and GoG exist, but it hardly effects Valve.
No, people choosing to use it doesn't make it a monopoly. There being no real equal does. Also, yes, they have the best service. That's true for most monopolies. It isn't even necessarily out of malice. They just have the most money so can invest the most into creating the best service. The competition can't keep up. Valve doesn't need to harm the competition. They just need to be better than them, and they easily can always keep up with their investments.
A monopoly doesn't require any actions to be taken to be a monopoly. It only requires that there isn't an equal competitor. People can choose a monopoly. Their choice doesn't matter for the definition.
I suppose lack of competition is the key here, my understanding has been that there is no competition because the reigning business buys out the competitors or uses their market power to keep others out. Not because other competitors exist and just happen to be worse (be it from youth or poor management).
With Epic's attempt at making strides and with Gamepass being cross platform, I think it's fair to say there is competition that exists but it's being resisted by consumers because they are setting terrible precedents. Still, plenty of people use those services, and for the most part key selling sites do have other options available. If it's a Humble pack, generally there is a Steam Key and the publisher key, or more recently an Epic Key.
Steam just has both its age and its value as a service that keeps it popular, but I guess I just don't think that market dominance is a monopoly. You do raise valid points. I'm definitely not trying to be a Valve defender by any means either, they're a big corp that is capable of pulling some bullshit, just that the definition of monopoly I learned has the distinction of leading market dominance with no competition due to anticompetitive practices - purchasing smaller competitors, larger corporate mergers. Not when a business is a market leader because other companies aren't as good. But things change and it's been a few years since I've been in the business side of things.
Valve doesn't set prices on the store in the first place. They are giving more margin for big sellers now too.
More margin to big sellers seems sort of backwards to me, but I guess it makes it easier to convince large publishers to put games on steam? Personally I’m more interested in bigger margins for indies, but maybe I’m ignorant.
It's just a shame the competition kinda sucks. Epic is pulling some good moves with all the free games and some really competitive prices but their launcher sucks and GoG have an abysmal launcher while rarely having newer titles because of so many companies holding tight to DRM
They mainly have a monopoly because everyone else's attempt to compete sucks. I haven't seen any launcher that has half the features or conveniences steam has. Most of them are slower too.
Steam offers actual value. Other launchers just feel like a lazy way to add drm.
Well, yeah. Steam has been around for a very long time and is the only real option. They have a ton of extra money to spend that a new competitor hard never expect to match. That's what makes it bad. Yeah, it's a great product, but what would we have if there was an actual competitor pushing them to be better? Would they take less of a cut or would they make Steam even better? Maybe they'd reduce prices of games for consumers even.
The fact of the matter is no one else really competes, so it's a monopoly.
The hardest part is getting games on the platform, and epic and gog have already done that. Giving it features that steam has is just a matter of money and time, which other game companies definitely have.
I agree it's a monopoly and I'd love to see a good competitor. But it's different from something like at&t, where to even be a cell service provider you need a huge investment, time to build infrastructure, and government approval. All you need to make a good game launcher is a dev team, which is what these companies do all the time.
Ah yes, the monopoly, a business with competitors such as ea origin, Ubisoft dunno what they called it, epic store, gog. The word monopoly must break down like monopol-y as in like a monopole, a magnet with only one polarity that is separate from the other polarity.
The fact you can't even name the Ubisoft service shows it's isn't really competition. It exists, but it doesn't compete. Sure, you can choose to go somewhere else to purchase some games, but none of then threaten Steam.
The Ubisoft one is just particularly shitty. The only reason steam remains unthreatened is because the rest of them have mentally crippled shareholders at the helm. If steam ever went that way or undermined customer ownership they would surely be fucked and everyone with a functioning brain would go GOG or sail the seas. It's also not like they chose to or actively pursue being the only game store. The only limiting factor in using other game sources on the steam deck for example is the lack of interest from any other sale platform to support any degree of Linux. Open source devs have already replaced most if not all of their functionality with easily installable frontends. If one was really so deranged, even windows can be installed on the damn thing. I've at least never heard of any valve enforced steam exclusive titles, but vaguely recall some developer advertising something as only on steam.
The only way I feel one could justify calling steam a monopoly is to totally shit on the utter ineptitude of the competition so far as to dismiss their very existence, using it more as an insult to the competition than a descriptor for valve/steam, which is valid in a way but I don't think it makes the terminology usage objectively true.
Even ignoring all that or if steam actually was a monopoly by my or anyone's standards, I'm more concerned about the things that technically are not monopolies yet collude (even unintentionally which is unlikely) to fuck everyone over. Such as food industry globally, Canadian telecom, the current state of tv/movie streaming, etc.
Well they kind of have used their position to indirectly increase prices... If they take a 30% cut then the games need to sell for more to make the same profit (and there's the geolock and anti price-competition thing too)
Yet they also allow developers to sell generated keys with 0% cut either directly or to key sites if they desire.
The only reason being that they loosely apply the agreement people sign with them, they still reserve the right to remove games from their store of they're sold at a lower price elsewhere. They're getting sued for that at the moment.