Debunking the grey market beyond Steam
Debunking the grey market beyond Steam
The CEO of Rokky offers advice on how to distribute game keys outside Steam
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.
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The wolfire games lawsuit is so damn cringe.
No company is your friend, but there's a reason Steam is number 1. The reinvestment in the platform and breadth of features steam has is unrivaled.
Epic has been trying for nearly a decade now and their store doesn't even have 1/4 the features of steam.
I love GoG though. For me they offer something steam can't, installers for my games.
there's a reason Steam is number 1
Monopoly, and Stockholmed G*mers
The other competitors are kinda shit.
GoG is dope for giving install files and being DRM free.
But acting like steam isn't legitimately the best platform by a country mile is crazy.
My view is if you don't like a distribution platform taking 20-30% of the sale then don't use that distribution platform. It's a free market and a free internet. Use Epic, GOG, or host it yourself
If I don't like what Comcast charges I don't do a class action lawsuit.
If I don’t like what Comcast charges I don’t do a class action lawsuit.
That's a poor example, because in many markets, Comcast (or another cable provider) is the only option, or there's only one other option with much lower top-end speeds (e.g. DSL). So a class-action against Comcast may be a reasonable idea, since they're an actual monopoly in many markets.
The games industry is different. Steam does have a commanding share of the market, but there's no real lock-in there, a developer can choose to not publish there and succeed. Minecraft, famously, never released on Steam, and it has been wildly successful. Likewise for Blizzard games, like Starcraft and World of Warcraft.
Maybe a better comparison is grocery store chains? Walmart has something like 60% market share in the US, yet I have successfully been able to completely avoid shopping there.
It’s maybe a poor example, but it is what the plaintiff is alleging, so I think it is a good analogy
if you don't like a distribution platform taking 20-30% of the sale then don't use that distribution platform
Excuse my frank speech but that's absolute bollocks and lacks any understanding at all of how a monopoly works.
E: It's so hilarious to watch the Lemmy idiots be like "lEaVe ThE mUlTiBiLlIoN dOlLaR cOmPaNy AlOnE!" when it comes to Nintentdo but when it's Valve, then it's totally cool for some reason.
Is there a monopoly though?
Other store fronts exist. They are usable and often sell the same games. It's not Nestle owning half the food options in every food store, this is whole foods, vs all the other grocery stores.You can get game pass and stream your games and never own them past your subscription lasts.
Or the Microsoft game store which isn't great but exists. GOG gives you installers and has big games on it.
Fanatical, GMG, Humble Bundle, are all store fronts. You could even consider Nintendo and PlayStation to have their own game storefronts while needing their hardware.Is Steam a monopoly?
Is there a monopoly though? Other store fronts exist.
Monopoly does not mean no other businesses exist.
Sure but it means there is no other competition though. That could be price collusion but epic takes a completely different cut amount and other stores have different prices for games.
Just because other definitions exist doesn't answer the question, it avoids it by saying something else entirely.
Is Steam a monopoly?
Sure but it means there is no other competition though
Not correct either. Do you think Google has no competition?
This is a whataboutism.
Is steam a monopoly and how?
I don't think you understand what a whataboutism is.
I don't know why you keep asking me this question when I already answered it in my first comment. Yes, Steam is a monopoly, because they hold the overwhelming marketshare of PC gaming.
Your first comment in this chain that I am responding to is
Excuse my frank speech but that's absolute bollocks and lacks any understanding at all of how a monopoly works.
Which is not a definition and thus why I am asking. You have not yet defined it yet seem insistent that it is.
And a whataboutism is when you bring up a parallel or comparable topic in an attempt to shift it. You brought up google in a discussion about Steam/Valve. That very much is.
Having a large user base is not a monopoly. Hershey doesn't have a monopoly on chocolate for being the popular choice. People can and will at any time use competing products.
Your first comment in this chain that I am responding to is
I remember, thanks.
You have not yet defined it yet seem insistent that it is.
You didn't ask me for a definition.
And a whataboutism is
I know what a whataboutism is. You dont. This is called an "example". An example of a company that was legally ruled a monopoly but also has competition.
You brought up google in a discussion about Steam/Valve.
You're missing the larger discussion around monopolies, and you're mad because I disproved your position. You also didn't answer my question while simultaneously repeatedly demanding that I answer yours.
Having a large user base is not a monopoly.
You're obviously just misrepresenting the statement I just made in the comment you just replied to.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that you have no intention of a good faith discussion so I'm not going to entertain this any further.
The PC is an open platform. Even more so with Linux. Steam doesn't force exclusivity, you're free to host your game on Steam for discoverability while also self-distributing or using other storefronts. Valve's 30% is a price that a studio chooses to pay, because they know that a ton of PC gamers like buying games on Steam.
If all you want out of a storefront is a payment processor, CDN, and possibly DRM, you can release on Steam, Epic, Itch, GOG, or all at once. You pick Steam (or Steam+others) instead of others because you know that enough PC gamers are willing to pay for your game on Steam, because they like Steam. Epic can tout its small cuts or exclusivity bonuses or "zero percent cuts on the first $x" deals, but game devs know that 100% of revenue on an Epic launch week is going to be a lower absolute number than 70% of revenue on a Steam one.
Hell, if Steam did lower their cut to undercut Epic (which they absolutely could do, especially since they don't have any shareholders and thus just need to be profitable instead of demonstrating YoY growth), that would be a more "monopolistic" move in the PC gaming space. Remember, the alleged monopoly is over devs, not users. As a dev, the only reason you'd ever consider Epic instead of Steam for your game is that generous profit-share ratio. Steam could remove that only advantage overnight if it wanted to "compete", and doesn't. Valve will settle for winning exclusively on the merit of "being a platform that doesn't suck, and hasn't sucked for 20 years, and doesn't have financial motivation to start sucking now". Because Valve isn't beholden to shareholder value, if they lowered their cuts to 10%, that ten billion in revenue would be closer to three billion... Which absolutely covers every employee's salary, the hosting and bandwidth costs of their CDN, and material costs for their hardware. Instead, they consistently reinvest in not just sitting there doing nothing and also not ever sacrificing user experience for number go up. Steam Machines and the Steam Controller could fail without bringing down Valve. The Index and Deck could be produced at scale and aimed at niche audiences because hey, they could afford a failure.
Valve's 30% is a price that a studio chooses to pay
No its not. Its a fee they have to pay because they have no other option, because Steam is a monopoly. Even CDPR, who literally owns their own game store, lists their games on Steam, because there's no way they could ever be successful without it.
CDPR judges that selling on Steam is enough of a boost that it's worth the cost. Riot (for example) doesn't. If you think every game company or indie studio feels mandated to use Steam, that's a hugely consolebrained take. Nintendo has a monopoly. Want your game on Switch? Follow Nintendo's terms and list on Nintendo's store. Apple has a monopoly, challenged recently. Want your app on iPhone? Follow Apple's terms and list on Apple's store. Want your game on Windows PC? Upload an EXE somewhere. Sell a disc. Run your own launcher. Or license out to Steam/Epic/whoever.
The only reason you get more sales on Steam is because the PC gaming userbase overwhelmingly prefers Steam. Hell, I play Guild Wars 2, a 12 year old MMO that "launched" on Steam a couple years ago. You can still buy and play that game without any third parties getting involved at all, and always could. It doesn't have any Steam achievements, doesn't benefit from any Steam features, and has a decade old community in spaces other than Steam ones. ArenaNet decided that exposure via Steam recommendations was worth losing $x/player to list on Steam.
If Steam had an exclusivity clause, that'd be another matter entirely. As it stands, listing on Steam doesn't prevent you from also listing your game elsewhere or bypassing the entire storefront middleman scheme.
CDPR judges that selling on Steam is enough of a boost that it's worth the cost.
I literally just explained this in the comment you just replied to.
Want your game on Windows PC? Upload an EXE somewhere. Sell a disc. Run your own launcher. Or license out to Steam/Epic/whoever.
You can upload it wherever you want and create whatever launcher you want, you will be unsuccessful. Fucking EA did this for 8 years, failed, and went back to Steam. As did Ubisoft. You simply won't be successful without Steam. That's what a monopoly is.
Ah yes. Massively unsuccessful games like... checks notes League of Legends. World of Warcraft. Fortnite: Battle Royale.
The magic part of the PC is that if your independently distributed game does fail, you can still, after the fact, decide to slap it on someone's storefront in a desperate attempt for eyeballs - see Overwatch 2. Why not double dip? It only costs you hypothetical money you haven't made yet. Am I supposed to be sad that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer?
Massively unsuccessful games like... checks notes League of Legends. World of Warcraft.
These games are both about as old as Steam itself. Their playerbase was created in a different market.
Am I supposed to be sad that E fucking A failed to install their shareholder value store on my computer?
No, you're just supposed to recognize why it failed.
For me, it failed because I wasn't willing to install some shareholder-driven company's storefront app on my computer just to play Mass Effect 3, so I pirated Mass Effect 3. Then I got to watch it fail because it turns out I wasn't the only one willing to skip/pirate games because they came with Origin attached to them.
Epic's exclusives are the exact same.
I get my PC games from five sources. Steam, GOG's website, Itch's website, standalone launchers (I'd probably be okay with a "store" of games as small as the Riot launcher, but I don't use that because I don't install rootkit anticheat), and piracy. Launcherless Itch and GOG have convenience parity with piracy with the added benefit of the devs getting paid (and the ease of acquiring updates), and I'll usually use them over Steam if available. Itch could easily get bought by a corp like Humble did and CDPR is already a shareholder value company, but they sell DRM-free products that I can use even after the stores die / sell out.
A recent launch I paid for and didn't use Steam for is "The Bazaar" - it has a standalone launcher. The game went pay to win so I uninstalled it, but its lack of presence on Steam didn't keep me from playing it.
I'll use stuff other than Steam no problem. But I'll always cheer when a platform owned and operated by a shareholder backed company dies in favor of one that isn't. My experience in the hobby space of PC gaming is better when there aren't exclusives locked on EA Origin or UPlay or Microsoft UWP store or Epic, because I might want to play those games without installing a stock-ticker company's adware on my computer. Having the space "capitalism free" is unrealistic, unless we're talking "pirate everything". I'll settle for "profit driven" over "YOY growth driven" leaders in the space any day of the week.
Now, if Steam's position as the best distributor/launcher platform is a de facto "monopoly", what's the solution to that? Anecdotally I know plenty of people that play non-Steam games while not playing any Epic games. Epic tries to fight Steam by directly paying developers to not publish on Steam, and also effectively guaranteeing studios a financial success by cutting a deal to put their game up for "free" on the Epic storefront. Plenty of games have been "Free" on Epic while full price on Steam. Valve tries to fight Epic by... Acting like Epic doesn't exist. They don't chase exclusives or get into a price war with Epic.
Steam is the most popular platform for PC game releases. A subset of users will not consider ever using other platforms. If we accept this as the definition of "monopoly" the way we'd say Windows has a monopoly on x64 PCs, how would changing the revenue split for devs (which appears to be the issue this company's suing Valve over) alleviate this "monopoly"? Sounds to me like forcing Steam to explicitly allow "the game is more expensive on Steam" tactics would just make Steam even more of a no-brainer for devs over stuff like Epic or their own platform.
You could say that paying the devs/studios a better cut is the point, and I'd see the validity in the argument. But it's completely unrelated to whether or not Valve operates as a monopoly.
If you lose access to a vast majority of the market if you don‘t use a service, it’s a monopoly. Don’t defend monopolists.
Steam does nothing to prevent running non-steam games on any platform. Charge 20-30% extra on Steam and call it done.
Charge 20-30% extra on Steam and call it done.
Steam doesn't let you do that. This is literally what the lawsuit is about.
Sure. Not being able to sell literal Steam keys on other platforms for less on other platforms for less according to the terms is the same as being prevented from selling on other platforms for less at all, nevermind that Valve gets a 0% cut on Steam Key Sales made like so.
Also, there is no mention of said policy in either the OP article, nor the separate article about the lawsuit it links to.
Nobody said anything about Steam keys. They don't let you sell games at lower prices, period.
Also, there is no mention of said policy in either the OP article, nor the separate article about the lawsuit it links to.
Are you being serious, right now? The source isn't 2 clicks away so therefore it doesn't exist? Lawsuits are literally public knowledge. You should inform yourself about a topic before you get into a conversation about it.
Here. Perhaps you can stop defending the billion dollar company now.
As far as I can tell, the lawsuit alleges that steam threatened pulling their (wolfire games) steam sales if they sold elsewhere for cheaper. Which would be bad if true. However, this does not appear to be anywhere in steam's actual seller agreement. The only clause in that agreement is about steam keys being sold for cheaper, which is why the other poster was focusing on that.
That allegation seems to be that steam in practice is threatening things that are outside of the contract itself.
Edit: I read the emails from the lawsuit discovery (page 160–) and it seems like most of them are about steam keys and their policy on that, which seems more reasonable. But there are definitely a few emails that explicitly go beyond that
"You can definitely participate in sales off- steam, and we don’t want to discourage or prevent that. But in terms of promo visibility, regardless of Steam keys, we do try to think really hard about customers and put ourselves in their shoes. If the game is discounted down to $15 on Steam, and then it goes into a bundle or subscription with ten other games for $6 a few days or weeks later.., that really sucks for the people who bought at the way higher price! Why did you market me a $15 price if the game is actually selling for more like $1 somewhere else? For instance, we’d probably want to avoid running a 50% discount on a game if it was going to be a free giveaway on another store a week later, even if the giveaway had nothing to do with Steam Keys."
Which seems pretty straightforward. Some of the other emails also imply that they might choose not to sell the game at all on steam if you do that.
The allegations of the plaintiff are not necessarilly the written or enforced policies of the defendant. Please consider linking something of substance when accusing others of being un-serious/insincere.
You made a claim without linking to it in the first place. Its not my job to substantiate your arguments.
Ah, the classic spoon-feed me the answer or it doesn't count as a source. Learn to use the internet, you're not a child.
You honestly think I didn't do a google search before reading the two relavent articles reachable from the OP? Nothing I found, nor the fact that I regularly buy games/steam!keys cheaper than via steam, meshes with the plaintiff's claims.
Telling others to act like grown-ups while accepting un-founded claims that happen to reflect your argument at face-value, how very mature of you.
I know you didn't google anything or you would have said "nothing I found substantiates your point" instead of "these specific two articles don't say what you said".
But let's assume you're not lying and you did look up the situation. What's your claim then? That Steam has no price veto policy or that they don't abuse it? Because one is wrong and the other is incredibly naive. Talk about taking unfounded claims at face value.
Also, why do you keep bringing up Steam Keys? That has nothing to do with anything. Focus.
It‘s not about platform compatibility or difference in fees. It‘s about the necessity to go through Steam (at competitive prices) and bow to whatever they may come up with in the future. The generic danger of a monopoly.
People talk about the "features" epic is missing but honestly the vast majority of those features are kinda pointless?
I don't like epic's store because the layout is annoying and it likes to send me ads in the bottom right corner. It's not that complicated.
I mean there's still no user review system lol.
That is storefront 101 and they still don't have it.
Congratulations for not using the other systems they have I guess?
Many of steams users engage at least a little with a lot of what steam offers.
Hell steam has integrated VR support, steam link for remote play, and fantastic 2FA account protection.
Epic is way behind
Storefront 101 supposedly yet it took steam almost a decade to implement and is largely useless due to being filled with jokes and sourced from people who don't actually understand how to review something.
The reason Steam is #1 is because they were first to the market and everyone’s so invested into it.
That’s why today’s business model is „dump VC money until you’re ubiquitous, once monopolised drive the prices up”. We see that with things like Just Eat / Glovo, Steam or YouTube.
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?
Steam has so many more features than any other platform.
First to market or not, that's why steam is number one.
None of its competitors offer the community, market, discussion boards, rating system, friend system functionality and overall reliability that steam does.
It has competition, just not on PC.
Epic is atrociously bad. From hampering system performance to a total lack of any of the above features, using epic sucks.
The Xbox app is somehow seemongly always broken despite literally being developed by the platform holders and with a shit load of cash behind it.
I don't love the idea of a steam monopoly but you gotta also give them their flowers, it's a fantastic storefront, arguably the best when considering all gaming platforms that exist even outside of PC.
It is where it is because it was the first.
If tomorrow someone made a better Steam you’d still buy everything there because that’s where all your games are. Be honest with yourself.
If tomorrow someone made a better Steam, how many years would you have to wait to be reasonably secure that it's not fueled by venture capital and serving as a loss leader foot-in-the-door scheme? It's not impossible that Steam itself would enshittify and open an IPO, but the fact that the option's been on the table for decades and Valve hasn't taken it is better evidence than any other platform could muster. Valve has proven that it's profitable and that it doesn't need to care about YoY growth. Let's overestimate their operations costs (CDN, R&D, employee salaries, hardware production, licensing, etc etc) at 5 billion a year. If they made ten billion in revenue last year and only make seven billion this year, Valve is fine. Think about that. Think about what a sixty percent drop in profits would do to literally any shareholder-backed company. It'd be apocalyptic.
That's the main reason I'll use Steam happily but never install another storefront on my PC. I'll buy games on GOG or Itch as DRM-free installers, and store the installers locally, and I'll buy and play games that distribute without a storefront launcher, but the only "storefront platform" anyone's gonna get me to install in the next decade is Steam. If "better Steam" happens, it needs to demonstrate immunity to being bought out by Microsoft/Elon Musk for eighty morbillion dollars. And that can't be demonstrated in a day.
That's without any mention of actual "features" like reviews or remote play or proton or steam input or anything that actually makes Steam as a program good/bad. It's all about the company's refusal to go shareholder-driven. If Gabe sells Valve or his successors do, I'm off the ship and scraping the DRM off of my library. What I won't do if that happens is go to someone else's shareholder-value-generating storefront.
Gabe Newell is a man who, for the past decade at least, has had a big red button on his desk. This button, if pressed, will deposit eleven or twelve figures directly into his wallet to distribute however he likes, at the cost of letting some company gain control of how Valve operates. Make all his employees multimillionaires! Race Musk and Bezos for biggest number! Buy a small country! Whatever! Gabe Newell has not pressed this button, and has signaled that after his retirement or death that no successor to the company is going to be allowed to press it either. If Newell's managed not to press it for this long, I'll "trust" him as far as it goes. His successor hasn't earned that trust yet, so is only coasting on "trusting Newell to pick the right guy" which isn't guaranteed - a lot of guys would sacrifice a lot to press that button.
Valve will never IPO, why would they? They own a money printing machine that doesn’t need any more capital. They will print money until the heat death of the universe if we let it. Moreover, since they’re not a public company they don’t have to share their financials and if they did that people would be likely to sing a different tune.
I’ve never seen a conceivable scenario where anything else can happen unless Valve does something mental on purpose.
Some people here raised they concern that they don’t value Valve input to merit 30% cut and would take lower price if it meant it didn’t have features they don’t use. What’s happening now means there’s no real free market or competition.
Valve will never IPO, yes! I don't care why. That automatically makes it better than any other launcher/storefront platform that'll exist in my lifetime, barring one that commits to staying private, succeeds as a private company, and is content with "staying profitable" for x years. Platforms that IPO universally get worse and worse as they wring every drop of shareholder value from their users to feed the infinite growth machine. We're having this conversation on Lemmy instead of on Reddit for presumably this reason. Platforms that have shareholders (which includes Epic and CDPR's GOG) have a primary motive of "being more profitable than last year". If, let's say, Epic made ten billion dollars in profit last year but also made ten billion dollars in profit in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, it'd be a failed company.
I'll happily take the only company in the PC gaming space that's content with one money printer over every other option that's always thinking about how to make a second one, or reduce the ink costs, or blah blah blah. It's just a happy coincidence that in the PC gaming space (unlike pretty much every other space), the shareholder-free thing is also the most popular, and best thing. I'd use the worse less-popular thing if that thing were the only thing free from growth capitalism.
If a game dev doesn't value their presence on the Steam store higher than the cost of Steam's service, they don't list on Steam. Simple as. It's just that a lot of dev studios consider "visible on the Steam store" to be very valuable indeed. That's what they're paying for, not the stuff about Steam that benefits the user (client features like Input, Workshop, Cloud, Community, etc).
Valve will never IPO, yes! I don't care *why*.
Wow.
In 2025, a company that is just looking to make a shitload of money is enough to automatically "win".
Valve: "What are you selling?" Video games, video game hardware without vendor lock-in, and in-app purchases. "Who are you selling it to?" PC gamers.
Literally everyone else in the space except for Itch, which is decidedly focused on too-indie-for-indie games and is small enough to be acquired if it ever gets popular: "What are you selling?" The promise that we'll make more profit next year than this year. "Who are you selling it to?" Shareholders or a corp that'll buy the whole company.
It's an absolute no-brainer. Until anyone else can answer these questions in the same way Valve does, Valve is automatically the best player in the space. Even if another store sells games for cheaper, or has exclusives, or bans DRM, or manages to make a better storefront program, or pays developers a bigger cut. I'm not on some "good guy Gabe" circlejerk shit. There's no morals to ascribe here. Valve makes enough money and is okay with making enough money, forever. MS, Epic, EA, Ubisoft, Nintendo, Sony, CDPR, Apple, Amazon, ActiBlizz, and every other storefront operator will be considered a failure if they don't make "more more money than last year" every year forever. I know which platform I want to maintain a library on. I'll happily use GOG and Itch to buy DRM-free installers though, those will outlast any enshittification the platform does in the future.
I would take a shitty store with 10% cut if it had all the games Steam does and if I could take my games with me. I don’t care for what Steam provides but I have no choice.
No, it is where it is because Valve decided it wanted to invest in it outside of it being a launcher/updater for Valve games.
And it's not really the first. The first was probably Battle.net by Blizzard, which initially was a way to connect players (chat and join games) back in the mid-90s. It wasn't a game sales/distribution service for many years, but it got there w/ the release of the dedicated desktop app in 2013 and had some of the core features that makes Steam special (chat and match making). In fact, I had the desktop app before I had a Steam account, which I created in ~2013 when Steam came to Linux (I switched to Linux in ~2009, and had played games on Windows for years before that). Blizzard was never interested in becoming a game distribution network, so Battle.net remained largely exclusive to Blizzard titles.
I wouldn't have bothered w/ Steam if it didn't provide value. I was fine managing games individually, and I bought many games from Humble Bundle and directly from devs for years before Steam became a thing. I only started preferring Steam when it provided features I couldn't get elsewhere. These days, it provides so much value since I'm a Linux user, that I honestly don't consider alternatives, because everything else is painful. Heroic launcher closes that gap substantially, so I'm actually considering buying more from GOG (outside of a handful of old games I can't find elsewhere).
If another launcher provided better value vs Steam, I'd switch in a heartbeat. I use both Steam and Heroic, and I still prefer Steam because it has great features like controller mapping. But if, say, GOG supported the features I care about on the platform I use, I'd probably switch to GOG because I also care about DRM-free games. But they don't, so I largely stick to Steam.
So Battle.net started selling third party games when? Man, think your argument through before committing to paragraphs.
Valve supports Linux just to safeguard their monopoly. They killed native ports because they pushed Proton so hard. Alyx supported Linux natively even but check now.
All of this is pointless for most of the consumers. You’re making an argument that because they care for this niche it’s worth paying 30% cut. Most people would be fine with something to download and update their games with.
It was proposed, but Blizzard rejected it:
Schreier reports in the book that a few years before Steam launched, a group of employees pitched the company on a plan "to turn Battle.net into a digital store for a variety of PC games."
Battle.net basically approached the same problem as Steam but from the multiplayer side, whereas Steam approached from the distribution side.
Valve supports Linux just to safeguard their monopoly.
I wouldn't put it like that. They support Linux to safeguard against Microsoft pushing their monopoly, and they did seem to be gearing up to do just that. Epic had similar concerns, hence the lawsuits against Google and Apple.
All of this is pointless for most of the
How is Linux support pointless? Having more options to play your games is a good thing! I don't think Heroic would've had as much of an impact w/o Valve's investment into Proton/WINE, and that gives customers a choice on which platform to buy and play their games on. It also allowed for the Steam OS market, and competitors are absolutely welcome to create their own spin with their own store, they just don't for whatever reason.
Downloading and updating games, for me, is actually the least important part of what Steam offers. I care far more about Linux support (I was a Linux user before I was a Steam user), Steam Input (Steam Deck, and I prefer controller on PC), and consolidating sales to one store. Whether I need to launch it separately or whatever isn't a big deal.
So because Battle.net failed to predict market correctly 100% of PC gamers are stuck with Steam until the end of the world. That doesn’t change the fact that Valve lucked into the position they are in and was paid billions for this already.
PC gamers aren't "stuck with Steam," they very much have options. And Steam is likely way better than whatever Battle.net would've become, so I'm quite happy with how things turned out.
And yeah, Valve was quite lucky in nailing the timing, however, that was also a very conscious choice since they filled a need they saw. Valve is perhaps the best company you could ask for to have such a dominant position, pretty much any other company would've resulted in a way worse situation for gamers.
PC gamers are stuck because Steam is a self-perpetuating monopoly. If your entire library is on Steam, and Steam has almost all of the games you’ll just keep on buying there for convenience (and that’s what happens, analysts estimate 90% market share). Alan Wake 2 wasn’t profitable until EGS exclusivity expired because gamers opted to wait rather than buy this gem of a game on a different platform (that gives away games like candy).
Even if you think that Valve are just the best, aren’t you worried that having one good option is being one good option away from having no good options?
Alan Wake 2 wasn’t profitable until EGS exclusivity expired
Well yeah, because EGS sucks.
If you look at Steam's competitors, none of them are really developing their feature set. So even if customers were dissatisfied w/ Steam, who is actively trying to earn their business?
aren’t you worried that having one good option is being one good option away from having no good options?
Sure, I'd love it if another platform stepped up to actually compete w/ Steam.
My expectations are fairly low: it needs to work well on Linux. Heroic largely resolves that for EGS and GOG, but I'm not particularly interested in supporting a platform that only works because some community project has done the work for them. So if GOG supported Galaxy on Linux as a first class citizen, I'd probably still use Heroic, but I'd buy a lot more games from them. But as it stands, GOG is one update away from blocking access to my games through a launcher, and dealing w/ WINE/Proton directly is a pain. EGS is so far away from what I care about that I don't think they could ever earn my business, but who knows, maybe they'll surprise me.
But the fact that we're even having this discussion is a testament to Steam's success. Heroic probably wouldn't be a thing w/o Valve's investment into Proton/WINE, so GOG/EGS wouldn't even be a consideration for me at all. But since that work was done, I now have more options. I've played some GOG and EGS games through Heroic, so it's not even theoretical, they are realistic alternatives.
It's important to note that at every turn, Valve has earned my trust. When games are pulled from their store, owners of those games still have access (e.g. I bought Rocket League on Steam, and when they went EGS exclusive, I still had the old version of the game). They have a solid refund policy, and they have gone out of their way to make things more pleasant for their customers. Even if they didn't have a dominant market position, I'd probably still choose them just based on the user experience. So yeah, not having a realistic alternative isn't great, but I don't think it's because of anything nefarious Valve has done, but instead lack of interest by their competitors.
Translation: agree with me or you are wrong.
Earth is round.
Off topic
Valve good, belong to tribe now, gib upvotes.
And you think others can't argue when you lower yourself to the floor in order be angry without purpose. Smearing yourself in mud to show us just makes you a mess.
I started to use user tags to make communication more efficient, I can adjust communication to members of the Valve tribe.
Me tag you in computer. Me know you Valve simp. Me pretend me Valve tribe. You know.
Brother I already buy things on GoG lol.
Steam is great and all but ownership is far more important to me personally
Great! Not everything’s available there unfortunately. Some games release on Steam only even. So you probably are affected either way.
90% of people buy on Steam. And they do that because their entire libraries are on Steam.