Technology

I've seen some law nerds explain it recently as:

De-jure monopoly=the one we all think of (the bad one). This comes about through dirty tactics, anti-consumer practices, and backstabbing.

De-facto monopoly=the one Valve is (and not illegal). This comes about naturally as customers independently choose one company over all others for nothing other than they like them better.

Forced price matching could be considered a abuse of their position. If a dev cannot sell on another store for less (even if that platform takes a smaller cut) then that makes reduces the need for others to use a different platform to get a cheaper deal. Devs cannot use pricing to save you some money while drawing you to a platform that gives them a larger margin. All of which means that there is less incentive for valve to reduce their cut of the sale to be more competitive. This is what some lawsuits against valve are arguing ATM I believe.

There are some games tbat are sold on both steam and other platforms. Many of these games have external modding communities. Steam provides slick integration for "workshop" mods, which helps drive sales.

A few years back steam used to allow fairly open API access if you acquired the game elsewhere and just wanted the mods. And then they turned it off, but still allow direct anonymous downloads. A decision that only makes sense if they wanted to lock in any steam-adopted community to make going elsewhere difficult.

Turning off something people were using to avoid potential competitors is kinda exactly what would count as "monopolistic behavior" if Steam were to be ruled a monopoly by a court

No other company has invested more in trying to free our PC games from Microsoft either. On top of that, Valve’s investment still benefits the entire FOSS ecosystem.

I worry about what the company will look like when Gabe isn’t there anymore, but for now, I keep buying on Steam because I want to vote with my wallet, and I vote for Linux and FOSS.

That said,

Asked about this rule, Newell repeatedly denied it exists, even when shown internal communications seemingly showing Valve employees enforcing it: "Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms." When asked how Valve would react if it ever happened, Newell initially said he was confused by the question and then added, "Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we're providing."

This isn’t the first time I’ve read this, and if Valve is using their position to keep prices higher, then that is bad behavior that needs correction.

Ideologically, gog is the winner for me.... EXCEPT they refuse to have a native linux client, so i stick with steam

Yeah, Steam may be effectively a monopoly, but it's because nobody else really wants to compete with them at their level.

Steam has two types of customers. Us the gamers where we can decide which platform to use. They have an effective monopoly on us because they provide a good service. But with a large game library we are locked into steam as well and cannot just switch to a different platform. If valve ever did decide to be evil then we are screwed.

But developers are also customers of valve. And this is arguably where valve makes their money. They take a cut from the developers sales. Devs cannot just use a different platform without cutting out a huge userbase. This gives valve a real monopolistic control over developers.

I trust him more than Jeff or Zuck.

I'm not Gabe #1 fan but neither his hater, but I think that this is a little different. Amazon and specially Facebook markets depends on your information, while Valve's depends on what gamers buy (between other things that I don't know) but I don't really thing that Valve care that much about stealing or sharing your info, they really care about how many money they can suck from you.

I can't remember the last time I bought a game on Steam.

That's Epic. The RC Cola of gaming

brutal.

(pretty accurate, but brutal)

Why not mention WHY he's successful (not because they act like a toxic monopoly).

The Steam libraries provide cloud backups, live streaming, remote play, transparent linux support, controller support, licencing. All this stuff is a few lines of developer code. Even multiplayer support over the internet they facilitate and is apparently a few lines of code. And, that excludes steam's awesome handling of dependencies, so you don't get weird DLL errors 10 years after buying a game. It's because he gives people what he wants.

https://partner.steamgames.com/?ref=stebet.net

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features

This is the stuff nobody talks about.. But, it provides the tools so small developers CAN compete with bigger ones.

Many of us with games we purchased 10 years ago, are finding they still work in Windows, and often also work in Linux now too (without any effort on their part), because Steam assists with dependencies, portability, linux-compatibility and libraries. Whereas, even Wii U stuff you need to re-buy for switch.

For me, Linux support was a huge draw card actually (GOG still don't have an official one), and they're one of the huge reasons why Linux is still competitive in the desktop market (whilst Wine has existed for a long time, Linux Steam made it seamless via Proton, and you can't even tell which ones are running proton, and which are native anymore in most cases). Steam aren't really competing against other game developers either (other than with Half life), and they're not blocking any of their customers from using multiple platforms. They're certainly not forcing exclusives