1. Steam isn't bundled with the OS, it must be installed.
2. Steam isn't a gatekeeper to installing software (as the app store is and in a somewhat different way as google has proposed doing with their plans to require app signing).
At least the US, and I assume most legal schemes, require an attempt to monopolize, simply being the best player in town isn't enough. Perhaps if the steam deck, etc. achieved a high level of market dominance you could argue that bundling steam was anticompetitive, but I don't see it yet.
If tomorrow Steam decided to charge 30% extra to developers with the stipulation that sticker price must equal that of outside Steam, developers wouldn't have much of a choice but to eat the cost, because PC gamers are extremely reluctant to leave their Steam library and features.
A good example of market power is Apple vs Spotify. When Apple launched Apple Music, they changed Music.app into Apple Music on every iDevice in the world, with a handy subscription pop-up the first time you launched it.
This was massively anti-competitive overreach despite Apple not technically being a monopolist. You can easily install Spotify, and Spotify was much bigger. Without making this move, Apple Music would have crashed and burned, but Apple basically forced themselves into the market, using their marketshare and user migration reluctance as a crowbar.
The fair competition thing to would have been to show a pop-up on first Apple Music app launch, asking "hey, would you like to try one of these streaming services?", and show Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal and Deezer in a random order. Just like Microsoft and their browser pop-up.
Then again, aside from a decade of stagnation (2010-2020 Steam saw very few updates, until Valve started working on the Deck), Valve hasn't really abused their position. Gabe Newell famously said that piracy isn't a pricing problem, it's a service problem, and Valve is a private company, so as long as he is at the helm I assume Valve is going to continue delivering good service. After that.. who knows.
To have the same profit, Spotify has to charge $13/mo when apple music charges $10/mo with all else being the same.
That's very obviously the App Store monopoly being used to give Apple Music a massive unfair advantage that is practically impossible to break through.
Steam does not have anything like that, if someone else decides to make "Epic Game Launcher" tomorrow for PC, that new company doesn't need to distribute it on the "Steam App Store" and pay valve 30% of all sales.
Steam doesn't abuse being successful to lock out competitors. You can sell products sold through Steam via other platforms too. You can sell outside of Steam and give your customers Steam keys for the game. You can install Steam on different platforms alongside other stores and programs.
Nothing Steam does makes it harder for consumers to buy games from Valve's competitors. That's what matters, not whether Steam is very successful.
THIS. Valve I trust to be a good entity for as long as Gabe leads it. As soon as he's gone, Valve will be taken over by some accountant CEO and will abuse their market position (functional monopoly).
I kinda hope Gabe pulls a Patagonia and leaves Steam to some impenetrable legal entity that runs it for the good of the users.
Monopoly just comes down to marketshare, but it’s perfectly legal in the US to be a monopoly instead it limits what you’re allowed to do. For example a regular company can give a discount if you agree to only sell their goods, obviously that becomes problematic if the company has monopoly power so they are no longer allowed to have such agreements. The boundaries around what is a market trip people up, but it’s around what customers view as substitutes goods. If you don’t have a car then an EV can be a viable substitute, however if you have a gas car then you have some wiggle room on octane ratings etc but an electric car chargers isn’t viable substitute.
“In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.[2] Although monopolies may be big businesses, size is not a characteristic of a monopoly. A small business may still have the power to raise prices in a small industry (or market).[2]” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
Reading it I learned about the term "monopsony" which is "a market in which goods or services are offered by several sellers but there is only one buyer" which is usually conflated with monopoly.
[1] https://www.versobooks.com/products/3341-enshittification
Other developers can just make their own platform or distribute games themselves individually. Nobody wants to do that for obvious reasons.
There's clearly a network effect similar to Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and the likes. But apart from regulating for service interoperability, there's nothing you can do.
It's like claiming that Skype had a monopoly between 2008 and 2014. Just... Install something else then?
Valve is not buying other store makers nor actively sabotaging efforts to do so.
This is really key, when you see Epic bribing devs to get exclusivity, giving away games for free, they do this and still not succeed because they are actively hostile to their users.
Where is my Big Picture mode?
Where is my support of Linux?
They've been at it for years and yet still don't actually want to provide a service that is desirable to use.
>Where is my Big Picture mode?
>Where is my support of Linux?
Calling the lack of linux and TV support "hostile" is bit of a stretch. The two combined probably makes up 5% of the user base at most, and there are probably workarounds (eg. using wine or the regular interface)
How many people would even bite, given the huge premium?
Where "nobody" is specifically "no users". Lots of publishers tried doing exactly that, and most eventually gave up because users don't want to deal with extra launchers or platforms. Offering games on your own distribution channel is fine, but not being on Steam is going to hurt your sales a lot. Epic is really the only still-running attempt (except for GOG)
It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors.
Valve isn't putting any pressure on anyone in this sector. There is still competition, but Valve has simply been more successful than everyone else. Mainly because the alternatives are so, so much worse like EA and co who are actively malicious and predatory.
Valve hasn't done anything to pass an antitrust sniff test.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_23_...
"Companies providing at least one of the ten core platform services enumerated in the DMA are presumed to be gatekeepers if they meet the criteria listed below. These core platform services are: online intermediation services such as app stores, online search engines, social networking services, certain messaging services, video sharing platform services, virtual assistants, web browsers, cloud computing services, operating systems, online marketplaces, and advertising services. One company can be designated as gatekeeper for several core platform services."
"There are three main quantitative criteria that create the presumption that a company is a gatekeeper as defined in the DMA: (i) when the company achieves a certain annual turnover in the European Economic Area and it provides a core platform service in at least three EU Member States;(ii) when the company provides a core platform service to more than 45 million monthly active end users established or located in the EU and to more than 10,000 yearly active business users established in the EU; and (iii) when the company met the second criterion during the last three years.
The DMA defines a series of specific obligations that gatekeepers will need to respect, including prohibiting them from engaging in certain behaviours in a list of do's and don'ts."
The arguments there match the Steam platform in my opinion, but it is likely Steam already fulfills the existing obligations of the act. Seems a fairly good approach to things, if you are a dominant player you get burdened with extra rules and scrutiny.
Reminds me of Edge & Chrome.
By that logic are Amazon and Whatsapp also not "monopolies"? Are they simply just the best e-commerce company and chat app respectively? What competitive behaviors are they employing against their competitors?
Much to my surprise (and granted, I have the means to do so) I will favor steam whenever possible, it’s just significantly better.
Steam just sometimes feels really slow when launching for the first time or when switching tabs/pages (I do also have it just sometimes be just a black windows, but I haven't figured out the cause yet but it is the only window that does it, so...). In comparison B.net just feels decently snappy.
They are both effectively using CEF for their launcher, but since Steam starts so slow for me I always keep it in the background and its WebHelper taking up 414MB (rn, but its always in that ballpark) is not helping its case.
For games, I favor Good Old Games rather than Steam as much as possible and go out of my way to wait for releases on their platform. Whatever becomes of them, at least I'll have my downloaded DRM-free version of my purchases.
Gambling / trading aside, they're doing a pretty fine so far.
Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.
Steam is the most dominant because of their extremely customer friendly policies, their insane price crashes and the ease of publishing and installing games from the platform. If other platforms are able to provide all of that, with a commission below 30%, I'm sure they could easily take over.
But turns out, neither Epic nor EA are interested in serving the customer.
Would people feel better with a lower fee, but no distribution network, for example?
You are free to install an alternative store, that probably has all the games that you are buying from Steam.
I can't do that with my iPhone.
They charge it because people use it voluntarily for the better customer and user experience. If Apple didn't provide their store installed by default, allowed alternative stores without manipulating their content and yet people still used it, it would be a closer analogy.
(1) my games are installable AND playable on _every_ device I use.
(2) I don't have to fight with wine/crossover/etc to get things to work.
(3) It's not hostile to the end user (yet).
I have bought more games since the Steamdeck came out then in the 40'some years before that.
Yes I know that I don't have to use steam, but they make it EASIER.
I am looking forward to Deckard for all of the above reasons and their history with the Index.
Steam makes installing software EASIER then the alternative (regardless of the OS). Auto-patching/updates of installed games.
If I was more social I'd probably use those features more. If they ever charge a monthly fee, I'll stop using it.
yeah no shit their clients are concerned that Steam is the only storefront that people trust
