Should Steam be broken up?

[Archform]

Considering they are almost a monopoly when it comes to the online game market?
According to Valve they control up to 70% of the PC game market?

Seems very anti-competitive to leave them be.

[*| Lion Heart |*]

Epic is just junk....or rather tencent's little slave...since the time they sold out...that's why they "give" away free games, to bait unsuspecting people to them...

[Ganger]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Lion Heart:

Epic is just junk....or rather tencent's little slave...since the time they sold out...that's why they "give" away free games, to bait unsuspecting people to them...

Like I say in other posts, we all support tencent financially in some way or another, even you m8. If you did research into tencent, you would realise or be surprised on how many gaming companies out there tencent has fingers in.

[Tito Shivan]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Crazy Tiger:

Depends from what perspective you look. All games in the GoG store still have the mandatory DRM free requirement.

I mean they still have this in their FAQ.
https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212806085-Do-I-get-a-Steam-key-when-buying-a-game-from-GOG-?product=gog

Do I get a Steam key when buying a game from GOG?

We are an independent platform, and none of our games can be redeemed elsewhere. We also do not distribute any physical content - everything you purchased from us, or got from the redeemed gift code, can be instantly downloaded from GOG. For that, you can either use our convenient GOG GALAXY client, or, if you wish, just the website, through your browser.

Which also raises me the question... Do Epic keys bought from GOG download from GOG Galaxy or have to be downloaded from the Epic Client?

Opprinnelig skrevet av Palim Palim:

Well, steam is not the answer for that.

Never said it was. I was merely describing how the pendulum keeps swinging.

Opprinnelig skrevet av Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

how their DRM stand is holding them back as a store on a lot of games that do uses DRM, so at some point they may drop their policy, but who knows what will happen in the future.

As long as they keep a hard 'No DRM' instance they'll still be a niche store.

They've tried to bring relevance by going down the old Xfire route (Being the place where people bundle up their games, which also happens to have a store) But Discord already tried to go down that route (with the added bonus of already having a huge userbase by the time they tried) And didn't really blow out of the water.

If you want to be one of the Big Boys, you have to play by the Big Boys League rules.

[Start_Running]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Opprinnelig skrevet av KillahInstinct:

You are still promoting exclusives and DRM for a price.. and essentially sold your soul.

I really dislike how some games like Rocket League and GTAV showed their true colors and where ruined, from a business perspective I get it - but it's very anti consumer and greedy/shortsighted. You can now add GoG to that list.

Rocket league were bought out so only make sense how things went for them. Rockstar we all know their true colours same with Take-Two that also runs 2K games.

The thing with Epic working with GoG is that it's only selective games that will be sold far as I know, but you still need to use Epic client if it does need it to launch, which is odd enough how GoG want to stand agasint DRM, but I'm not shock how GoG is changing little, by little how their DRM stand is holding them back as a store on a lot of games that do uses DRM, so at some point they may drop their policy, but who knows what will happen in the future.

They will likely just redefine what they mean by DRM.

[Archform]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Palim Palim:

For example
https://store.steampowered.com/app/578650/The_Outer_Worlds/
i buy now on GOG

If more people would be consequent stuff like forced updates would be gone.

But enough said. No need to force steam from above to stuff like that. If you dont like it, dont support it

I bought that ages ago on microsoft store.
Microsoft stores does automatic updates.
Yet still no one wants to buy. Hmmmm.... I wonder why since they provide the same services as steam apparently.
Oh right I think I stated by in an earlier post about early mover advantages and natural monopolies.

[Crazy Tiger]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Archform:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Palim Palim:

For example
https://store.steampowered.com/app/578650/The_Outer_Worlds/
i buy now on GOG

If more people would be consequent stuff like forced updates would be gone.

But enough said. No need to force steam from above to stuff like that. If you dont like it, dont support it

I bought that ages ago on microsoft store.
Microsoft stores does automatic updates.
Yet still no one wants to buy. Hmmmm.... I wonder why since they provide the same services as steam apparently.
Oh right I think I stated by in an earlier post about early mover advantages and natural monopolies.

You say "yet still no one wants to buy". Where exactly does nobody want to buy that game?

[Brian9824]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Archform:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Palim Palim:

For example
https://store.steampowered.com/app/578650/The_Outer_Worlds/
i buy now on GOG

If more people would be consequent stuff like forced updates would be gone.

But enough said. No need to force steam from above to stuff like that. If you dont like it, dont support it

I bought that ages ago on microsoft store.
Microsoft stores does automatic updates.
Yet still no one wants to buy. Hmmmm.... I wonder why since they provide the same services as steam apparently.
Oh right I think I stated by in an earlier post about early mover advantages and natural monopolies.

No, the store just sucks compared to steam, and I'd rather not use their launcher or their platform with barely any features.

[Pendy]

I don't see how people consider Steam a monopoly. You want a real monopoly, look at Internet Service Providers in America. They own all the landlines, they can freely sue anyone who tries to encroach on their service (reminder that not even google could break into the scene with all of their influence and money), and because of a lack of competition they can openly charge as much as they want for shoddy garbage.

If steam was a monopoly, GOG wouldn't exist, neither would Epic. While I couldn't give two forks about Epic, GOG is great for DRM-free games, so I'm glad they exist.

[Brian9824]

Yeah it isn't, just some people with no clue what a monopoly is and think just because a store is the biggest then it has to be a monopoly

[Start_Running]

Opprinnelig skrevet av brian9824:

Yeah it isn't, just some people with no clue what a monopoly is and think just because a store is the biggest then it has to be a monopoly

Eeeyup.
People buy games where they see the greatest value. C Value isn't just in the price of the game. Convenience is a big value factor.

[Black Blade]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Archform:

I bought that ages ago on microsoft store.
Microsoft stores does automatic updates.
Yet still no one wants to buy. Hmmmm.... I wonder why since they provide the same services as steam apparently.
Oh right I think I stated by in an earlier post about early mover advantages and natural monopolies.

Same services as Steam?
Not really, not hardly

Their social part honestly is pretty bad, you cant mod there games, and the games need to have its own library and stuff to be in that system, I personally hate there store overall, its a pain to use, and has very little to navigate and filter with
Also, I know of Microsoft past "experiments" like that and how that roll out (like Games for Windows Live)
No forums/community area

I mean they have the "download and install" they may have achievements yet to try that on there, but overall very very little amount of stuff, and you can see from the store its not really its focus, its spread out and the filtering it dose have shown it as you can only filter "what" and to what system and nothing else besides search

In other words there more reasons than just one why people don't use the Microsoft one, besides the early market and so on

[Dr.Shadowds 🐉]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Archform:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Palim Palim:

For example
https://store.steampowered.com/app/578650/The_Outer_Worlds/
i buy now on GOG

If more people would be consequent stuff like forced updates would be gone.

But enough said. No need to force steam from above to stuff like that. If you dont like it, dont support it

I bought that ages ago on microsoft store.
Microsoft stores does automatic updates.
Yet still no one wants to buy. Hmmmm.... I wonder why since they provide the same services as steam apparently.
Oh right I think I stated by in an earlier post about early mover advantages and natural monopolies.

Far as I remember a lot of people opt to Xbox ultimate game pass which first time sub was $1 for one month or $2 for two months. People did it to play Metro and outer world.

Also Windows store not the same as Steam either.

[Brian9824]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Dr.Shadowds 🐉:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Archform:

I bought that ages ago on microsoft store.
Microsoft stores does automatic updates.
Yet still no one wants to buy. Hmmmm.... I wonder why since they provide the same services as steam apparently.
Oh right I think I stated by in an earlier post about early mover advantages and natural monopolies.

Far as I remember a lot of people opt to Xbox ultimate game pass which first time sub was $1 for one month or $2 for two months. People did it to play Metro and outer world.

Yep thats what I did and was so glad. Game isn't even worth $5 IMO. The story was all DERP Corporations are big and bad, your just their property OVER and OVER and OVER

[Tonton Mori]

[About the auto-updates] That's the kind of stuff I was talking about.

And when I say some people are leaving Steam, I mean as their primary platform. Not talking about third party resellers of course.

At some point, every people I knew, if given the choice between Steam and whatever other platform, would have chosen Steam, no question asked, because it was just nicer, more practical, more reliable, often cheaper... Better in every aspects. Nowadays this is less common to see people so dedicated to Steam. People will consider EGS not only as a decent choice, but sometimes as their main choice. Same thing for GOG. That is the change I was talking about.

I also know people so disgusted by Valve practices that they have purely and definitively left Steam, including people who where much more invested in Steam than I ever was. Some might still use Steam to play their games, but they are not buying Steam games anymore. And there are some I haven't seen in a while...

Sure you can call them a bunch of whiners or whatever, but it won't make the situation any better.

PS: MS Store is nowhere near Steam in term of features, no platform is. The main issue with MS Store is that... Well, it's MS, they keep begging for you to use their services, all their services, only their services... It's annoying as hell, and people are running away from them because of that.

[Brian9824]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Tonton Mori:

[About the auto-updates] That's the kind of stuff I was talking about.

And when I say some people are leaving Steam, I mean as their primary platform. Not talking about third party resellers of course.

At some point, every people I knew, if given the choice between Steam and whatever other platform, would have chosen Steam, no question asked, because it was just nicer, more practical, more reliable, often cheaper... Better in every aspects. Nowadays this is less common to see people so dedicated to Steam. People will consider EGS not only as a decent choice, but sometimes as their main choice. Same thing for GOG. That is the change I was talking about.

I also know people so disgusted by Valve practices that they have purely and definitively left Steam, including people who where much more invested in Steam than I ever was. Some might still use Steam to play their games, but they are not buying Steam games anymore. And there are some I haven't seen in a while...

Sure you can call them a bunch of whiners or whatever, but it won't make the situation any better.

That's pretty normal for any business, you will always lose some customers. Attrition is a normal part of the cycle. I mean if people are unhappy about steams features and leaving for Epic with less features and more restrictions that makes you question their logic.

Steam has been hitting record numbers of income, concurrent users, etc in the last year so its pretty safe to say they are doing something right that the majority of people are fine with.