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

[PhaseJump]

I had a longer post written but considering Steam basically gets 100% immunity from the "corporations aren't your friend" argument in all cases, I'll just say this: Once Gabe croaks from his lifelong obesity induced high blood pressure and Steam is hoisted off (possibly by even his own son) to the private equity firm(s) that have had offers ready to go off even before the body is cold...

Then this statement will genuinely be the funniest fucking thing in gaming ever.

 

[Tetronomicon]

Fair. I just don't like (overwhelmingly) relying on a single source for something and hate how powerful network effects can be. It is what it is.

I also don't really want to get into a debate about this topic because I've already seen all the arguments and counter-arguments to know how it will go.

 

[iamthemilkman]

There are alternatives but no one wants to use them. Not even free weekly games can motivate people to leave Steam. It's #1 because it's the best at what it does.

Post automatically merged: Friday at 3:27 PM

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.

Review bombing exists regardless of the platform. Happens on Steam, Xbox, Metacritic, etc. That's not a Steam thing, that's a human thing. I'm not bothered by it, though. Review bomb away. Who cares? That's what happens when you release something to the public. Criticism is fair game, whether you agree with the criticism or not. That's just how it goes.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

Once Gabe croaks from his lifelong obesity induced high blood pressure and Steam is hoisted off (possibly by even his own son) to the private equity firm(s) that have had offers ready to go off even before the body is cold...

It's lowkey sad that Steam is one of the rare remaining example of why private business can be a force for good (The CEO can just brute force policies that benefit his employees & consumer base) and we're all bracing for when Steam goes public and shareholders ruin the service.

Going public is an exorcism for the morality & soul of any company.

The hundreds of competing share holders won't care about you, public businesses always collapse into bureaucratic malice. Hi Amazon & its subsidiaries. We're a long way from the bookstore aren't we.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I mean they're literally owning the best digital storefront. GoG has the DRM-free aspect but that's still below them.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

That may be true, but think of all the small developers that would have no other way to get their game to a wide audience. What, are they going to use itch? I have no problem with Steam, they are a whloe lot less douchy than Nintendo, Playstation, Microsoft and leave Epic for the little kids playing Fortnite

 

[qw90700]

There are alternatives but no one wants to use them. Not even free weekly games can motivate people to leave Steam. It's #1 because it's the best at what it does.

The thing it is not realistic to expect people to use only one of them, but considering how lazy humankind is they populated Steam because it was the first of its kind and never left. People built their library, gamer friends and their customized profiles and shit so of course they won't leave Steam. At most they will use Steam with other alternatives but I don't ask other alternatives keep pushing double DRM and stupid exclusivity shit like Epic Games Store did. But then Steam is only the best just because it is the only useful one for the overall gamer experience. But from price point in outside of America and Europe building your PC game library from non-Steam platforms makes sense more like on Microsoft Store and Epic Games Store because for a long time Steam has enforced $ anymore for tons of countries instead of keep using their local currencies and these platforms still care to use local currency and they are aware of your local economy that Valve ignores. So Steam was best for them but not anymore, fatty Gabby can suck their dick instead lolol.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

One more hot take:

less than welcoming community of review bombing manchildren..

Review bombing doesn't exist, it's an anti-consumer term designed to gaslight the public into not trusting nor leaving negative reviews.
When overwatch 2 launched on steam it overwhelming received negative reviews by hundreds of thousands of users with proportionally low player time... Because they all played it on Battlenet for years where feedback wasn't allowed.
That "review bomb" was years of pent up frustration finally given a release.

Stop giving corporations an excuse to silence criticism.

If thousand of people hold a negative opinion on a product, it's for a reason.
You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback. Stop feeding into anti-consumer practices.

 

[qw90700]

One more hot take:

Review bombing doesn't exist, it's an anti-consumer term designed to gaslight the public into not trusting nor leaving negative reviews.
When overwatch 2 launched on steam it overwhelming received negative reviews by hundreds of thousands of users with proportionally low player time... Because they all played it on Battlenet for years where feedback wasn't allowed.
That "review bomb" was years of pent up frustration finally given a release.

Stop giving corporations an excuse to silence criticism.

If thousand of people hold a negative opinion on a product, it's for a reason.
You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback. Stop feeding into anti-consumer practices.

I actually hear around that AAA companies and indie developers are very against negative reviews because they believe negative reviews reduce their potential profit. Years ago one of the indie video game developer team actually announced their new games won't be on Steam because people leave stupid negative reviews like they believe the game lacks a feature but it actually exists in the game. However IDK why they believe people have no negative thoughts about their game as long as they cannot read negative reviews lol. It is just unrealistic to expect everyone mostly will drop heartwarming positive reviews about your game. IDK why they started to believe people necessarily wanna troll, just nitpick to shit on you, they are haters so they hate and overall whatever negative review means "null stupid opinion" anymore even when negative review is truthful and actually mentions about big problem of the game many agrees yet the developers ignores. Naturally you cannot satisfy anyone but it's Business 101 to realize any negative review has a use for you to use it to your advantage by realizing how you can make a better business.

Sometimes negative reviews are overall drama that companies bought up that actually makes their next game a trivial mess. For example they made fun of GTA San Andreas for having cartoon graphics, as a result they focus on stupid realistic graphics that lacks meaningful content anymore. Perhaps they also made fun of how stories in Rockstar games sucked hard and they decided to make Red Dead Redemption 2 a stupid Korean drama outside of what you would want from a cowboy game. They complained Witcher 3's story mode is too long and it made CDPR made story mode of CyberJunk 2077 stupidly too short and meaningless. They turned the game into "just be done with side content and ignore story mode" shit. Perhaps they complained how Witcher 3 was a good RPG that have fun gameplay and that's why CP2077 released as pseudo-RPG and real FPS with RPG elements. But I know how virgins cried for dating sim shit and that's why the game has shit focus on dating sim elements instead of actually providing a meaningful adventure to provide lol.

In the end you gotta listen to negative reviews only to figure out if you did something you never realized and thus you may learn how you can improve yourself. For example if you had developed a game like Metal Gear Rising that's whole purpose is enjoying its real-time realistic cutting gameplay and when people complain it doesn't have enough sexy girls, dating sim features and epic 200 hours story you can just say "dude it wasn't the point of the game" and most people would ignore such comments for spamming clown emoji on Steam reviews. It doesn't hurt your sell. Also many people have a brain so when they read a hater comment they ignore such comments despite how true it may be. When a person mention the bugs they experience it is just a possibility you gotta risk while you playing the game. For example when people complain tons of bugs and performance issues on many new games I actually rarely have a problem, and most people is aware of it too because some people cannot use a PC properly and they expect their quantum PC to run a game ok when 60+ tabs are open on Chrome, it runs multiple movies in the background, they download around 100+ porns and then "why the game stutture" my ass lolol.

And then sometimes negative reviews can be the reason for me to buy a game for many reasons I won't name each. For example in a forum someone complained in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet they created a character and entered a game, and then during the story suddenly another character creation screen popped up. They thought it was a bug so they created the same character again but it turned out it was character creation screen of your companion NPC the game failed to make it clear so they had to replay the game again to create the companion NPC properly. So the user cursed at the game for how stupid the shit was but it was like a positive review for me and why I bought the game and actually loved the game for decent fashion statement choices and cool stylish gameplay lol.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I actually hear around that AAA companies and indie developers are very against negative reviews because they believe negative reviews reduce their potential profit.

AAA devs are being paranoid and would say to their team that if the game gets a good metacritic they'd give them a salary bonus so it makes them work harder.

Indie devs don't do that but I heard that one popular youtuber giving a negative review could almost kill a game.

On the other hand Epic Game Store exclusivity has almost killed their profit compared to Steam/GoG/Humble Store.

 

[moonbits]

One more hot take:

Review bombing doesn't exist

it does, your example is a reasonsble instance of criticism but other games get bombed for extraordinary mediocre reasons, most that have nothing to do with the game.

 

[DjQuick2008]

If consoles wouldnt remove games from their store after a couple of years then they would be in business. I love the fact i can find games from 2011 onwards on steam. I only played ps3 from 2010-2019

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

If consoles wouldnt remove games from their store after a couple of years then they would be in business. I love the fact i can find games from 2011 onwards on steam. I only played ps3 from 2010-2019

Even Steam games can get delisted.

 

[trickybus]

No different from any other store front, if your PSN, Nintendo, Epic, Xbox account is banned you lose all access your games.

Oh, I'm aware. I've just had the misfortune of running into Steam users who don't realize this. A certain section of video game enthusiasts like to assume best company practices even when there's no evidence supporting it.

Hot take:
We will never "own" raw data, only the physical storage of data.

Legally, no. Illegally? Sure, if you're willing to take the steps to separate the game data from the software that locks games to specific platforms. This is already possible with Steam games.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 7:31 PM

I had a longer post written but considering Steam basically gets 100% immunity from the "corporations aren't your friend" argument in all cases, I'll just say this: Once Gabe croaks from his lifelong obesity induced high blood pressure and Steam is hoisted off (possibly by even his own son) to the private equity firm(s) that have had offers ready to go off even before the body is cold...

Then this statement will genuinely be the funniest fucking thing in gaming ever.

Quest-posting is on-brand, as usual

Hard agree on the immunity double-standard; folks forget that Steam is just a company and like every company, isn't immune to greed and corporate malfeasance. Once funny, meme fat man dies, Steam is going straight into the shitter

 

[Mitochondria]

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.

I honestly wish I started using GOG earlier, but back when I first encountered it, it was still relatively new so I didn't trust it that much. Now, years later, I got 400 games on Steam. I'll still be mainly using Steam, but I'll also be building up my GOG collection (mainly older games that aren't on Steam).

 

[PhaseJump]

Nothing is guaranteed other than death and taxes. Steam is still the best gaming platform.

When Lord Gaben ascends to the next dimension and Valve's money printing regime is run by somebody else, they too will become meme'd.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

other games get bombed for extraordinary mediocre reasons, most that have nothing to do with the game.

*Ahem*

Stop giving corporations an excuse to silence criticism.

If thousand of people hold a negative opinion on a product, it's for a reason.
You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback. Stop feeding into anti-consumer practices.