There's a study that says 72% of developers view steam has a monopoly.

[PhantomTohsaka]

This catched my attention earlier, thoughts about this?
study indicates that 72% of developers view Steam as having a monopoly in the PC gaming sector

 

[moonbits]

it is a monopoly and you have to play by its rules, by it's algorithm and by... less than welcoming community of review bombing manchildren. It is what it is, competitors get ridiculed or hated, GOG isn't exactly popular for modern games and Microsoft Store is equally a joke as Epic Games.

The only option for your game to be somewhat successful is Steam and that's a gamble either way.

 

[otogirisou]

a monopoly

a lot, actually

 

[TruxtonTatsujin TruxtonTatsujin]

At least you have options on PC. Any console you get you're stuck with whatever first party store they have and that's it. For some reason no one ever seems to have a problem with that though.

 

[moonbits]

Any console you get you're stuck with whatever first party store they have and that's it.

Not really dawg, I can buy physical copies at different places. Check and mated pc man.

Spoiler

That's not even the point of all of this

 

[TruxtonTatsujin TruxtonTatsujin]

Not really dawg, I can buy physical copies at different places. Check and mated pc man.

Spoiler

That's not even the point of all of this

lol I don't get the point then. Are devs just pissy they have to use Steam or what? Doesn't seem any worse then having to deal with the ps Store or especially eshop.
Also there's a lot of stuff you can only get digitally, plus it's pretty clear they want to phase out physical slowly.

 

[moonbits]

lol I don't get the point then. Are devs just pissy they have to use Steam or what?

Nope, but here's the thing. If you don't launch your game on Steam, it's doomed. That's basically the monopoly, even if other platforms present better incentives and benefits for the developers; at the end, this monopoly is enforced by the consumers. Which for us is great, for the developers is a bit of a gray zone.

so you say there's options and I mentioned them, but you would refuse any game that isn't on Steam. It's a monopoly, but a good one I'd say lol

The End.

 

[PhaseJump]

Nope, but here's the thing. If you don't launch your game on Steam, it's doomed. That's basically the monopoly, even if other platforms present better incentives and benefits for the developers; at the end, this monopoly is enforced by the consumers. Which for us is great, for the developers is a bit of a gray zone.

so you say there's options and I mentioned them, but you would refuse any game that isn't on Steam. It's a monopoly, but a good one I'd say lol

The End.

It's the best platform, but not a monopoly.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

Steam isn't a monopoly, it in no way impedes competition, it has no exclusivity requirements when publishing content and above all else it isn't dependent on corporate publishers to sponsor developers.
Anyone can, and tens of thousands have published games on Steam as an independent developer.

It's not a mandatory store front bound to hardware, it has no subscription model, it's a store front with no ties to the developers who use it. Like a good store should be it's not bound to a single supplier.

This article reeks of corrupt corporatism using a bias data pool to try & silence a third party platform who's existence is ironically preventing an actual monopoly.
Steam has no share holders and as such Gaben has kept the platform shockingly neutral by every measurable definition.
This angers the likes of EA, Epic, Sony, Nintendo etc.

 

[PhaseJump]

Some of the biggest and most successful games on PC aren't even on Steam.

 

[dropsmegamega]

As far as the practical reality of modern releases goes, its a monopoly.

 

[Boo Man]

yeah video game developers must hate steam because they take like 30% cut
i think its funny that companies like Blizzard created their own platform to avoid this
but failed miserably and then go crawling back to steam like "can you sell our game "

 

[trickybus]

It is a monopoly and on top of that, Steam is very much on the side of "customers don't own their games". What Steam is selling is a license to access the game, not a digital copy of the game for you to keep and do with as you please.

 

[Questless Knight]

I got several question 72% of how many ?? 100 dev´s or 1000 ??
Also are these dev´s from companies that failed with their own shitty launcher EA, Ubisoft, Amazon ??

Steam may have monopoly but that´s because nothing else good exist except gog but I use gog as it was original ment to be for Good old games.

Steam has great sales, Steam is saving out asses from shitty companies like EA, Amazon and so on. Steam saving us from AD´s in games because steam does not allow games on steam that has AD`s which is a good thing because EA and such know with out steam their games will LOSE big.

People that say steam is trash and evil and does people are people we should be afraid of they are the people that wan´t gaming to die they are the people that wan´t to put unstoppable ads in your 70-90 dollar games.

Steam is big and powerful because they don´t hate their consumers they don´t suck ass. With out steam gaming would be riddled with ads and concored to hell and back and honestly modern gaming would be dead.


People shitting on steam are people that knows jack shit and sniff glue for a living.

 

[RageBurner]

Steam is a business, first and foremost. This means bottom line, investor and public opinion appeasement first, the customer a distant second and developers perhaps a distant third.

Yes, it is a virtual monopoly, there's no denying it, and their cuts are often borderline predatory, but it is also true that they facilitate access and distribution of games that would have had zero chance of seeing the light of day if we still operated by the old brick and mortar model of sales.

And as others have said, there are much worse companies that have their hats in the same ring.

 

[vulonkaaz's iconvulonkaaz]

every time i check games on itchio half of the comments are full of idiots practically begging for a Steam release, which annoys me a little, if i was the dev of those games it would annoy me a lot

 

[ShinnAsukaYESTaylorSwiftNO]

If anything, it's actually PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard and other payment processors like them who practically have a monopoly over what we can and cannot buy as they recently cracked down on Steam and other sites thanks to an organization of Australian karens by the name of Collective Whine "Shout". And that's a problem caused by the state and it's obsession with bloated bureaucracies, not a unfettered free market. John Maynard Keynes and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and their consequences have been a disaster to the human race.

 

[mistymermaid]

The roots of Steam's "monopoly" stem from a dark, horrifying place. For that many people to bash the games, while refusing to turn elsewhere to seek out games they might enjoy, it's a matter more for a phyciatrist.