I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “let’s crack down on steam like other monopolies” as what do you crack down on?
They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).
All these other monopolies do lots of shady stuff to get and maintain their monopoly, so you generally want to stop them doing those things. Steam doesn’t do anything shady to maintain it’s monopoly it just carries on improving it’s platform and ironically improving the users experience and other platforms outside of their own.
Like what do you do to stop steam being so popular outside of just arbitrarily making them shitter to make the other store fronts seem ok by comparison?
The 30% cut is often something cited and maybe that could be dropped slightly, but I’m happy for them to keep taking that cut if they continue to invest some of it back into the eco system.
Look at other platforms like Sony, MS who take 30% to sell on their stores, THEN charge you like £5 a month if you want multiplayer and cloud saves etc. Steam just gives you all this as part of the same 30%.
Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.
Steam has improved how I play games, it has cloud saves, virtual controllers, streaming, game sharing, remote play together, VR support, Mod support and this is all part of their 30%, the other platforms take same and do less, or take less but barely function as a platform.
Anti monopoly is great when a company is abusing it’s position, but I don’t feel Valve is, they are just genuinely good for pc gaming and have single handily made PC gaming a mainstream platform.
I don’t think it’s quite as simple as “let’s crack down on steam like other monopolies” as what do you crack down on?
They do little to no anti competitive behaviour, clutching at straws would be that they require you to keep price parity on steam keys (except on sales).
All these other monopolies do lots of shady stuff to get and maintain their monopoly, so you generally want to stop them doing those things. Steam doesn’t do anything shady to maintain it’s monopoly it just carries on improving it’s platform and ironically improving the users experience and other platforms outside of their own.
Like what do you do to stop steam being so popular outside of just arbitrarily making them shitter to make the other store fronts seem ok by comparison?
The 30% cut is often something cited and maybe that could be dropped slightly, but I’m happy for them to keep taking that cut if they continue to invest some of it back into the eco system.
Look at other platforms like Sony, MS who take 30% to sell on their stores, THEN charge you like £5 a month if you want multiplayer and cloud saves etc. Steam just gives you all this as part of the same 30%.
Epic literally does anti competitive things like exclusivity and taking games they have some stake in off other store fronts or crippling their functionality.
Steam has improved how I play games, it has cloud saves, virtual controllers, streaming, game sharing, remote play together, VR support, Mod support and this is all part of their 30%, the other platforms take same and do less, or take less but barely function as a platform.
Anti monopoly is great when a company is abusing it’s position, but I don’t feel Valve is, they are just genuinely good for pc gaming and have single handily made PC gaming a mainstream platform.