this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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There are other game marketplaces out there, but they're bad.
This isn't like the Apple App store where it's the only option on the platform. In fact, they've competed with Microsoft's store on some things. It's not even like Amazon where they strong-arm people selling things on the platform. Amazon does things like forbid anybody who sells on Amazon from selling the item at a lower price anywhere, including on their own site. I don't think Steam has any requirements like that. Steam's store has a huge market share because people like using Steam. AFAIK, Steam doesn't even do exclusivity deals, which suck for the consumer but are pretty standard for games, except with their own (Valve) games, and those are rare.
Not only does Steam have a user-friendly library and a user-friendly store, if you launch a game you bought on steam but that is published by a company with a shitty launcher / store / library (EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar), Steam goes a long way to neuter the shittiness of that launcher / store / library.
Maybe a 30% cut is too big. I don't know. It would be great if someone tried to compete with Steam while keeping the consumer-friendly approach Steam has. Maybe competition would reduce that 30% to something lower. But, most of the other game stores I know of have much less consumer-friendly approaches. The only one that's at all similar that I know of is GOG, and I do occasionally use them, especially for old games.
Personally I don't have any issue with 1st parties keeping their stuff 1st party.
It's just that I won't participate if I deem it useless (see Ubisoft launcher) :)
EG can keep Fortnite etc. exclusive on EGS that is their damn right.
I agree. It's a bit annoying for me personally but I don't really mind unless they have a shit launcher.
Also developers can generate a unlimited number of Steam keys for their games that they can sell on other platforms and steam doesn't take any money for. So you can make MyCoolGame throw it on Steam then sell copies of your game on MyCoolGame.com give your customers Steam keys and keep the whole price while still benefiting from Valve's infrastructure to support downloads, friend lists, updates ect.
Not to mention Valve has a history of offering interest-free loans to developers to help them get their games out- and there's not even a requirement that you have the game on steam after.
Not to mention you can generate steam keys to sell on other game stores, in which case steam gives themselves a 0% cut, despite you still using and benefiting from all their services.
That and the steam community and forums are pretty cool too. Alot of tech support for game problems, community mods, discussions, etc.
I believe that valve does require that you don't sell the game for less on other platforms. It's one of the complaints in the lawsuit currently against them by wolfire.
Ah, too bad.