To make it so they don't sell their game too low on their own platform? That' forces a monopoly on digital games when they aren't the only digital games platform?
Do you listen to yourself?
That only applies to steam keys sold on third party sites, which by the way, valve gets no money from sales of despite allowing access to full steam services. Does that sound like something a monopoly would do?
>steam keys sold on third party sites, which by the way, valve gets no money from sales of despite allowing access to full steam services
If you genuinely see that as some form of generosity you are a certified drone, goddamn
I've seen this argument for several years, but never seen proof except for selling Steam keys on 3rd party stores, which is pretty fricking obvious. Why should Valve let people undercut them on their own fricking store?
Steam isn't the one paying for exclusivity to its store.
Gog and Exist. There is no monopoly, but you're a giant gorilla Black person and knew this and just made this thread for bait, you stupid south american homosexual.
Technically they can be, yes. If a monopoly exists simply because one company provides a service that's so good that people flock to it naturally, without using any anticompetitive strategies (such as buying exclusive rights to sell content), then it's good. The competition isn't blocked from competing, they just don't want to provide a good service and that's why they're failing.
Steam is good but now its a monopoly mostly because its the place people have most of their games.
If you could own a game license but use it within a number of third party clients and community ecosystems, I think other services would emerge to blow Steam (client and community) out of the water.
Steam's current client is laggy bloatware thst hardly works, slow as frick despite being some chromium shit. I think there would be an open source client with more features, works on win7, etc. Then we'd see Valve's monopoly is really just that people want to have all their games in one place and on one community.
You're right, I do have somewhat mixed feelings about all that.
If only the competition was interested in providing a better service instead of "we'll frick you up even more but the games you want will be exclusive to our platform so you can only take it or leave it".
Ideally, sure. There's no reason that's not viable, it's just that there's absolutely no business incentive for the stores to implement a system like that.
needs to be a legal one, like an EU mandate or something. If you can buy media on Funimation and then they just take that away from you, imo that shouldn't be legal, you bought a license to watch that anime.
We need that to be legally acknowledges and for thst to apply to games. Buying is owning. Owning is independent of platform.
3 months ago
Anonymous
No, there really doesn't need to be a government-mandated game store monopoly. Just let them compete naturally like they have been doing for years and it'll be best for everyone. >Then how has Steam managed to dominate the market for two decades?
Because everyone else wants to frick over the customer instead of bringing in actual value. It's a natural monopoly resulting from the fact that everyone else is worse.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Steam managed to dominate because they won publishers over and had every big pc release using their fricking DRM by the 2010s
If you were on PC back then it was either use steam or turn pirategay
Actual value my ass
3 months ago
Anonymous
what? Im not saying steam didnt earn its monopoly. Im not talking about government mandates. Just law that says if you buy a game license on Steam or otherwise, you own a license of that game irregardless of its platform. Then we solve the problem of decentralized CDN with is probably the easiest one to solve.
3 months ago
Anonymous
My bad, I misread your post. You're right, I agree that a common database of games that every platform would respect would be good.
Steam managed to dominate because they won publishers over and had every big pc release using their fricking DRM by the 2010s
If you were on PC back then it was either use steam or turn pirategay
Actual value my ass
It's not just that, it really was a matter of convenience too. The DRM schemes on physical copies were becoming so fricked up that buying on Steam became a convenience in addition to the games being cheaper as well.
my PC is from 2021, if you don't think Steam is laggy as frick and takes a ridiculous amount of time to open and close games then you simply dont use steam or maybe you own like 20 games and thats why you never lag
>he thinks the number of games affects Steam launch times in any way
You're illiterate zoomer who likely has a bloated, unoptimized OS.
My Steam launches instantly with my system from HDD on a rig from 2010. And since you're moronic, I have over 500 games on it
I have over 18000 games and my account has the 20 year badge.
My comp is new, expensive as frick, and literally everyone I game with complains about how long it takes to close out of a game and launch a new one since the new update. Stop sucking valve dick to defending laggy bloatware. New steam UI is garbage. Steam is the only software I know that has consistently gotten more slow with each major UI update.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>I have over 18000
I have over 26000 games and have no issues loading steam with a rig from 2001, sorry your pc is garbage
3 months ago
Anonymous
funnily if you were, youd be in the top 30 steam accounts and make you likely someone Id know
3 months ago
Anonymous
>I have over 18000
I have over 26000 games and have no issues loading steam with a rig from 2001, sorry your pc is garbage
you guys are fricking crazy. like, do you have every single game on the store, or something?
3 months ago
Anonymous
for context, steam released 14000 games last year alone. So 20 years + review codes + buying most bundles + regional pricing + not owning a console or buying weed I guess and I ended up autistically with 18k games.
Most games dont even count for your game count. My count is actually 30k+ but its mostly garbage. Literalt game-shaped junk data. >666559467 is bullshitting but Im serious
Im being as unbiased as I can be in saying I think Steam client is utter shit recently. Or atleast Im not being self serving when I criticize Valve. I am being self serving when I say digital ownership of games needs more consumer rights though
this was kind of the argument during the oldendays of steam vs gog threads and they usually went something like >Gog is better than steam >gog doesnt have most games released within the last 5 years >so what? you dont need anything other than aoe2 and rct2 IT ALSO HAS WIZARDRY!
Epic doesn't make any sense to me. >Valve's Monopoly is Bad! You need to buy games from EGS!
But then when it is pointed out to them that Valve supports platforms they don't, they change their tune. >Windows Monopoly is good! You nerds all need to buy Windows!
If nobody else supports my Freedom to use the Platform of my Choice, they aren't going to get my business.
Simple as that.
Speaking of platforms, I think GOG is missing out by not having any Linux support outside offline installers. They could've made things easy for Steam Deck users, the relatively weak hardware would be ideal for older games. Hell, fricking itch.io has managed to make a Linux client that integrates with Wine and lets you play games marked as Windows-only. I know it's easy to install Lutris or Heroic on the Deck, but the average user won't know how to look for 3rd party launchers so they think you can only play Steam games on the Deck despite it being an open platform.
every single thing Tim says is fake and for money, itd be nice if he could pretend thats not the case but hes so lazy and incompetent that he'll make some moronic statement like you mentioned where >WE HATE MONOPOLIES ROUND HERE >"we believe our fight is here on windows" >WE MUST TAKE A STAND FOR FAIR COMPENSATION OF ALL DEVELOPERS >"yes we would take a deal if it was special and exclusive to epic" >APPLE HAS GONE TOO FAR!!!! >"well, we had that animation done and ready months ago in preparation for knowingly breaking their agreement after we had extensive backdoor talks wherein they said "if you do this, we will remove your game from our store""
I need fortnite to stop making so much money so we can see the real ride
Yep, this shows he's full of shit when Timmy EGS talks about monopolies. He doesn't care about monopolies, only the profits from his online storefront and that's where Steam is.
If competition not run by a room-temp moron showed up, they wouldn't be obliterated out of existence because valve says so. It'd be the consumers who choose
Steam is only a monopoly because every other competitor is one step above being a bipedal vegetable you unbelievable moron
They also let you generate Steam keys that you can sell without Valve taking a cut. Most developers don't bother though as the hassle of running their own storefront isn't worth it. Even a game as big as Stardew Valley just links to Steam on the website.
>everyone stops selling lemonade >open lemonade stand with a review function and mod support >people buy my lemonade >WTF THATS A MONOPOLY KILL THIS FRICKING KID!!!
Show a monopoly first. I take it you are Epic shill because people who primarily play on consoles or GoG don't shit their britches over steam being successful.
be the change you want to see.
Im not gonna say Open/libreoffice are as good as microwiener office
or that Gimp/krita are better than photoshop
but if you hate microsoft enough, youll do whats right
Frick you talking about? If you want to buy games on pc 90% of the time steam is your only option. If you don't buy through steam you still need steam drm to access your games.
Valve screwed over the Artifact fanbase by cancelling the Artifact 2.0 beta without even allowing users to invite friends like they said they would in January 2021 and does not deserve your financial support for these gross consumer-unfriendly practices.
That clip is out of context. Prior to the reveal, Day9 said the following:
#t=8h33m
>"This is not an extra game mode. This is not even a game like CSGO, that's based on Counter-Strike, or Dota 2, that's based on Dota 1, this is a game that's an entirely new beast unto its own."
To be fair, these remarks, while misleading, aren't really wrong. Despite its shared setting, Artifact's core gameplay is nothing at all like Dota 2's, and deserves to be seen as its own IP.
But still, what Day9 said set the expectation of a completely new game with no ties to any previous Valve titles. The reaction isn't because of the reveal itself, but the false expectations set by Day9's remarks.
Additionally, at the next TI the crowd CHEERED at being told they were in the Artifact beta.
#t=1m8s
Even if it was true, you know what else was poorly-received when first announced?
No one wanted a DOTA card game from Valve. We all wanted news of a REAL game, or Half Life news, or literally anything else.
Dota card game, or any digital card game, was probably seen as just riding the wave that the MTG and Hearthstone success, and promotion of microtransaction pay to win bullshit, not actual gaming.
The reaction was the true reaction of all gamers across the world.
Apathy is death. I will stand on the rooftops and condemn Valve’s misdeeds. Let justice be done, though the world perish.
In March 2018, Gabe Newell held a presentation on Artifact claiming there would be regular expansions, an eventual mobile release, and a $1 million tournament, all of which ultimately failed to materialize.
In August of that year, Gabe Newell repeated the claim of an Artifact tournament during the opening of The International: https://youtube.com/watch?v=X4xYOmUwad0
On March 30, 2020, Valve announced Artifact Beta 2.0, stating they planned for a closed beta (which happened), transitioning to an open beta and later full release (which didn’t).
On March 4, 2021, Valve formally abandoned Artifact. No expansions, no mobile version, no million-dollar tournament, not even something as basic as allowing users to invite friends to the beta like they said they would.
>private corporation that has competition >"it's a monopoly" >"we hate monopolies but government should nationalize health care so nobody else can provide health care except bureaucrats"
Valve is the closest thing to a benevolent dictatorship. I might not agree with all their decisions but overall they run a good ecosystem and I'll take them over any of the competition that are just corporate souless companies.
What sucks is that what we have with steam is not forever. Once Gabe dies and his company is sold it'll go to the shitter.
Gabe dies of an obesity heart attack, and the idiot left in control sells the company for greed. Which of these contenders are worst? Which is best? >Microsoft >Disney >Tencent >Blackrock >Apple >Facebook
Valve is privately held, but not solely owned. Privately held companies often have rules about how much any one person can own, what happens when shares become available, and who can buy them.
My guess is one of the Linux guys will wind up in the CEO spot, and somebody like Shuttleworth (Ubuntu) or maybe Redhat/IBM will wind up buying shares if they become available.
From worst to best:
1. Apple- Low effort games now cost $400. Not a problem for people that use other launchers, but this is pretty much the death of Steam. Apple is notorious for charging out the ass for underwhelming products.
2. Disney. Expect most of the games on Steam to disappear for 2 decades and you can no longer launch your current games unless you install an update that "fixes" any problematic content.
3. Tencent. Gacha trash floods the main page and works its way into many of the AAA games from other studios (if it wasn't there already).
4. Facebook. Cuckerberg starts trying to add moronic features nobody wants and taking away the features people enjoyed. All quality indie games are given no spotlight and made obtuse to find while slop you don't give a frick about manages to find its way into every search.
5. Blackrock. I don't know much about this company but at worst I imagine it would be on par with the above.
6. Microsoft. Greedy devs can no longer expect people to pay their insane prices because all of the games on Steam are added to Gamepass.
I fricking wish steam was a monopoly. The state of pc gaming would be in a much better space. But instead we have to let losers like EpicStore and Uplay stay around.
The key thing steam has over most other companies is that it's not publicly traded, but is owned by a handful of people who actually have some passing interest in games. This allows it to focus on providing a game service, rather than being 100% "We need to make more money for the shareholders".
bonus too that if anybody tries to change the company's structure after gabe leaves or dies they are going to be widely regarded as the stupidest hunchbacked gorilla Black person to ever walk the jungle because valve and steam in their current form are free money, zero effort, forever, no strings attached
>literally dozens of shitty launchers >monopoly
Nope, it's just nothing can compare to Steam's functionality, interface, stability and prices.
GOG is ran by eastern european morons, and instead of being the Steam alternative for GOOD old games, it has become just another shitty store for porn games and indies.
EGS is chinese owned which is enough said.
EA App is laughable.
VKPlay is interesting, but it will take them a decade to catch up with Steam.
>instead of being the Steam alternative for GOOD old games
moron take, this isn't a viable plan for a store since the number of "good old games" is limited and the number of people who want to buy them again to scratch some nostalgia itch is limited as well. They obviously needed to branch into current games or their entire business model would eventually dry up.
They haven't released a fraction of good old games, that people would like to play. Look at their whislist section on the forums. You also don't consider that with each passing year there are more games that can be considered old.
Filling unique niche is a way better business plan, than becoming yet another shitty store nobody uses, because Steam exists. moron.
We are so incredibly lucky that Gaben/Valve created the PC Gaming monopoly and not pretty much anybody else. He will die soon of old age and his bumblefrick braindead children will piss away his legacy.
I know you think Steam is shit now, but everything could be so much worse, enjoy it while it lasts because this is as good as it will ever get.
>A de facto monopoly is only able to be achieved by providing a far demanded product at all times compared to the competition, and even then there would not be a 100% market share.
Interesting, so a de facto monopoly will instantly fall apart when anyone decides to start actually competing with it instead of focusing solely on fricking over the customers?
You do realize that MS has been caught in several scandals over the years and the main reason they maintain dominancy is that they have more power than the legal system, right?
microsoft does not have a monopoly on operating systems, they do however very frequently engage in anticompetetive practices like Google, but the american justice system doesnt care if youve got the money for the israeliteiest israelite lawyers
windows shouldnt be allowed to reenable automatic updates or turn on fricking secureboot/csm in my goddamn bios. Itd be like my washing machine being allowed to unlock all the doors in my house.
Valve is good today but nothing lasts forever. Trusting in them too much is kind of like building your castle on sand. There's no true good corporate fiefdom, you have to realize the consequences of it eventually
One advantage in the way Valve is doing things today, is everything important they've done is in the open.
If Microsoft does shit you don't like, you're fricked because Windows is closed source, and they have total control.
If Valve pisses off the Linux community, it is Valve that is fricked. They'll lose a lot of their developers, and those developers will have control over their projects, or can fork them and continue work from there.
This isn't a hypothetical, there have been more than a few projects or distributions or companies that seemed on top of the Linux world, that collapsed in a relatively short amount of time because they got full of themselves and thought they owned Linux.
yeah I know. With Valve you atleast feel like you have recourse for what they do. When paid mods came out, most other corporation would have pushed it through. Valve canceled it within a week or something.
They generally listen but as an individual you will get squashed eventually like an insect. We may laughnat Win7 devotees feelimg burned, but they will eventually do something to burn you and if the majority doesn't care, youve got no voice. Corporate fiefdoms are not the way.
Owning all your games on Steam is like building your home on another lord's land. Eventually it will have consequences. We just try to ignore that reality for now.
Only about the same as getting games from any other source. Eventually it just comes down to keeping backups, and trusting that the community can sort things out.
One advantage to the way Valve has done things, is once you have games running on an open source base, long-term support becomes possible for those titles even if the source code for the game itself is unavailable.
>open your own game store >devs & publishers only deal in steam keys >your customers are still lead back to valve
Ah yes very good, not a monopoly at all
everything cool about steam inventory system was ruined by russians, brazilians, and the german government. Its not that the sales were so great, it was that there was a period where you could buy and sell steam gift copies. You still can today but its so heavily gimped it isnt worth the effort
They only have a monopoly on modern games, and even then it’s only because they managed to make a consistently useful and good marketplace with a not dogshit launcher. Somehow every other company fails this.
disks still exist the fact that moronic suits refuse to use them to get around storefronts demanding censorship or refusing to sell your game is there fault.
Yes Black person. Complaining about Steam being a "monopoly" and trying to compete with it led to every frickinh company having its own fricking launcher they want you to install and manage an account for, even when you buy games from steam.
Dumbass. User complaints didnt lead to launcher hell. It was other companies covetously wanting what valve had. you think online comments got ubi, ea, etc to make their own stores, lol
>every frickinh company having its own fricking launcher they want you to install and manage an account for, even when you buy games from steam
steamgays made this bed, they can lay in it
>man im so sick of the steam monopoly im going to [competitor] >welcome to [competitor], were here to support you! >ahh yes finally a breath of fresh air >now if youll just bend over >why? >why, for the kernel level anticheat of course silly! >wha-what are those guys back there doing? >dont mind them, just selling your data >and why do you keep jabbing me with a spear >how else am I going to mine bitcoin?? >o....k....well, can I play my games now? >sorry, our servers have been down for 4 days, you cannot, also your credit card info that you opted not to save in our system was accidentally saved and then promptly stolen
WTF WHY IS STEAM SO POPULAR I DONT GET IT
>for the past 3 months Ganker was complete inaccessible in china because of vpns being blocked >absolutely nobody complaining about steam >workaround has been shared around wechat for accessing blocked sites >suddenly anti-steam threads start again
Monopolies are legal though? You can't be penalized simply for being fricking better than all of the competition. That is on them to stop being so shit.
The only time a monopoly becomes a problem is when they start using anticompetitive practices to maintain their dominant position. Which to my knowledge Valve has never done.
steam's only monopolistic practice is not being a soulless corporate machine optimized to squeeze out into the outer edge of maximum profit from the situation
i mean, i'm sure it's more or less a soulless corporate machine, but if EA or epic would suddenly take over steam, i can promise you you'd notice it immediately
I will give Tim the following credit >be old white gay boomer trying to hoard all of your money >see fortnite making trillions of dollars >IM INVESTING IN EPIC >timmy pisses away every spare cent egs makes on lolsuits with apple and google >surely itl pay out one day >it never does
I thought all they won was the ability to partner with google partners to have the app preinstalled on their phones and google got in trouble for implying that youd get in trouble for doing that. I dont support google but thats far from an outright win
being able to return a played PC game was not standard practice in the US. I remember best buy and eb games let you return all games EXCEPT pc games because the CD keys were still redeemed to the original purchaser.
>EXCEPT pc games because the CD keys were still redeemed to the original purchaser
You must be talking about the ""physical"" Steam copy era of pc games because before that the average CD key was resuseable, outside maybe MMOs or other online only games
Nothing to redeem, just punch the key in at install and you're good
t. used to burn copies off for friends with a copy of the keys attached
no im talking about the early 2000s before steam was commonplace. lots of games had cd keys that once redeemed were spent and best buy/ebgames was not willing to return them, granted their return policies for console games were pretty shitty too. I remembee my sister got the zoo tycoon expansion for sea world and dinosaurs and she didnt have the base game, my mom attempted to return it and they wouldnt take it back
To be fair that wasn't normal in digital spaces at the time with origin being the exception, now if everyone but Valve did it then yeah I'd throw that complaint at them.
Yes.
If no one gets monopolies, then the game will go on forever because nobody will run out of money, unless they get extremely unlucky rolls and lose their Go money to Income Tax every time, and even then it would still take an unfathomably long time.
monopoly requires force
there are no governing bodies forcing you to use steam
Valve actually does force devs who sign the contract to prevent them from charging a lower price lol
no shit numbnuts
..so thats one of the ways they enforce their monopoly
To make it so they don't sell their game too low on their own platform? That' forces a monopoly on digital games when they aren't the only digital games platform?
Do you listen to yourself?
Only applies to steam keys.
That only applies to steam keys sold on third party sites, which by the way, valve gets no money from sales of despite allowing access to full steam services. Does that sound like something a monopoly would do?
>steam keys sold on third party sites, which by the way, valve gets no money from sales of despite allowing access to full steam services
If you genuinely see that as some form of generosity you are a certified drone, goddamn
>who sign the contract
stopped reading because you're moronic
I've seen this argument for several years, but never seen proof except for selling Steam keys on 3rd party stores, which is pretty fricking obvious. Why should Valve let people undercut them on their own fricking store?
You need to be 18 to post here.
>forces devs
Don't care. I'm a consumer, not a developer
Steam is not only a store, but also a marketing tool. That's what you are buying when selling on Steam.
No, moron
I just know you parroted some israelite because no one is stupid enough to come up with that by themself
https://voca.ro/1fCrrcIuHcQX
great thread
Yes if its run by a decent human
this
gaben is a benevolent dictator, or like a tolkienien king
Steam isn't the one paying for exclusivity to its store.
Gog and Exist. There is no monopoly, but you're a giant gorilla Black person and knew this and just made this thread for bait, you stupid south american homosexual.
Technically they can be, yes. If a monopoly exists simply because one company provides a service that's so good that people flock to it naturally, without using any anticompetitive strategies (such as buying exclusive rights to sell content), then it's good. The competition isn't blocked from competing, they just don't want to provide a good service and that's why they're failing.
Steam is good but now its a monopoly mostly because its the place people have most of their games.
If you could own a game license but use it within a number of third party clients and community ecosystems, I think other services would emerge to blow Steam (client and community) out of the water.
Steam's current client is laggy bloatware thst hardly works, slow as frick despite being some chromium shit. I think there would be an open source client with more features, works on win7, etc. Then we'd see Valve's monopoly is really just that people want to have all their games in one place and on one community.
You're right, I do have somewhat mixed feelings about all that.
If only the competition was interested in providing a better service instead of "we'll frick you up even more but the games you want will be exclusive to our platform so you can only take it or leave it".
IMO game licenses should be independent from the launcher/community. I think we've been gaslit into believing its not possible to have that
Ideally, sure. There's no reason that's not viable, it's just that there's absolutely no business incentive for the stores to implement a system like that.
needs to be a legal one, like an EU mandate or something. If you can buy media on Funimation and then they just take that away from you, imo that shouldn't be legal, you bought a license to watch that anime.
We need that to be legally acknowledges and for thst to apply to games. Buying is owning. Owning is independent of platform.
No, there really doesn't need to be a government-mandated game store monopoly. Just let them compete naturally like they have been doing for years and it'll be best for everyone.
>Then how has Steam managed to dominate the market for two decades?
Because everyone else wants to frick over the customer instead of bringing in actual value. It's a natural monopoly resulting from the fact that everyone else is worse.
Steam managed to dominate because they won publishers over and had every big pc release using their fricking DRM by the 2010s
If you were on PC back then it was either use steam or turn pirategay
Actual value my ass
what? Im not saying steam didnt earn its monopoly. Im not talking about government mandates. Just law that says if you buy a game license on Steam or otherwise, you own a license of that game irregardless of its platform. Then we solve the problem of decentralized CDN with is probably the easiest one to solve.
My bad, I misread your post. You're right, I agree that a common database of games that every platform would respect would be good.
It's not just that, it really was a matter of convenience too. The DRM schemes on physical copies were becoming so fricked up that buying on Steam became a convenience in addition to the games being cheaper as well.
>steam is le bad because the gui is slow on my shitbox from 2005
my PC is from 2021, if you don't think Steam is laggy as frick and takes a ridiculous amount of time to open and close games then you simply dont use steam or maybe you own like 20 games and thats why you never lag
>he thinks the number of games affects Steam launch times in any way
You're illiterate zoomer who likely has a bloated, unoptimized OS.
My Steam launches instantly with my system from HDD on a rig from 2010. And since you're moronic, I have over 500 games on it
I have over 18000 games and my account has the 20 year badge.
My comp is new, expensive as frick, and literally everyone I game with complains about how long it takes to close out of a game and launch a new one since the new update. Stop sucking valve dick to defending laggy bloatware. New steam UI is garbage. Steam is the only software I know that has consistently gotten more slow with each major UI update.
>I have over 18000
I have over 26000 games and have no issues loading steam with a rig from 2001, sorry your pc is garbage
funnily if you were, youd be in the top 30 steam accounts and make you likely someone Id know
you guys are fricking crazy. like, do you have every single game on the store, or something?
for context, steam released 14000 games last year alone. So 20 years + review codes + buying most bundles + regional pricing + not owning a console or buying weed I guess and I ended up autistically with 18k games.
Most games dont even count for your game count. My count is actually 30k+ but its mostly garbage. Literalt game-shaped junk data. >666559467 is bullshitting but Im serious
Im being as unbiased as I can be in saying I think Steam client is utter shit recently. Or atleast Im not being self serving when I criticize Valve. I am being self serving when I say digital ownership of games needs more consumer rights though
Works on my machine
>Stop sucking valve dick
>I have over 18000 games
Steam competes with piratery
>monopoly on linux support
Nope. Gog.
>monopoly as a store.
Nope. Gog, Unity... Every other store lmao so dumb
I guess it's the only place you can play Valve games.
Omg monopoly lmao.
The number of actually good games GOG is lacking from Steam is ridiculous. Ganker pretends to like GOG because its so effortless to pirate from
this was kind of the argument during the oldendays of steam vs gog threads and they usually went something like
>Gog is better than steam
>gog doesnt have most games released within the last 5 years
>so what? you dont need anything other than aoe2 and rct2 IT ALSO HAS WIZARDRY!
the name is literally good old games. it doesn't really make sense for them to have the newest games, if you think about it.
I see nothing wrong with that argument.
zased but I use openrct2. I aint payin for shit
>It's tuesday
Agreed. Nintendo should be forced to sell all their games on the PS5, Steam and EGS. Nintendo monopoly is a cancer.
THIS THIS AND THIS. Nintendo needs to stop having the monopoly for mario and pokemon!!!!
Epic doesn't have DRM and Epic online services is so broken that it allows you to play online with steamies with a pirate copy
Steam has a 'monopoly' because they provide the best service in their market.
So you acknowledge it’s a monopoly?
Dungeon Travelers 2 and 2-2 are still banned
Epic doesn't make any sense to me.
>Valve's Monopoly is Bad! You need to buy games from EGS!
But then when it is pointed out to them that Valve supports platforms they don't, they change their tune.
>Windows Monopoly is good! You nerds all need to buy Windows!
If nobody else supports my Freedom to use the Platform of my Choice, they aren't going to get my business.
Simple as that.
Speaking of platforms, I think GOG is missing out by not having any Linux support outside offline installers. They could've made things easy for Steam Deck users, the relatively weak hardware would be ideal for older games. Hell, fricking itch.io has managed to make a Linux client that integrates with Wine and lets you play games marked as Windows-only. I know it's easy to install Lutris or Heroic on the Deck, but the average user won't know how to look for 3rd party launchers so they think you can only play Steam games on the Deck despite it being an open platform.
every single thing Tim says is fake and for money, itd be nice if he could pretend thats not the case but hes so lazy and incompetent that he'll make some moronic statement like you mentioned where
>WE HATE MONOPOLIES ROUND HERE
>"we believe our fight is here on windows"
>WE MUST TAKE A STAND FOR FAIR COMPENSATION OF ALL DEVELOPERS
>"yes we would take a deal if it was special and exclusive to epic"
>APPLE HAS GONE TOO FAR!!!!
>"well, we had that animation done and ready months ago in preparation for knowingly breaking their agreement after we had extensive backdoor talks wherein they said "if you do this, we will remove your game from our store""
I need fortnite to stop making so much money so we can see the real ride
Yep, this shows he's full of shit when Timmy EGS talks about monopolies. He doesn't care about monopolies, only the profits from his online storefront and that's where Steam is.
Redditor-kun trying to use the new words he learned on school is so cute!
If competition not run by a room-temp moron showed up, they wouldn't be obliterated out of existence because valve says so. It'd be the consumers who choose
Steam is only a monopoly because every other competitor is one step above being a bipedal vegetable you unbelievable moron
How is it a monopoly? Last I checked devs can not only sell their games elsewhere, they can even sell them there and on other stores at the same time.
They also let you generate Steam keys that you can sell without Valve taking a cut. Most developers don't bother though as the hassle of running their own storefront isn't worth it. Even a game as big as Stardew Valley just links to Steam on the website.
If Gabe doesn't have a good heir who can rein in the shitlibs, then Steam won't be a "monopoly" anymore.
Gabe Newell is a shitlib.
Huh, that must be why he seems like a decent human being.
>everyone stops selling lemonade
>open lemonade stand with a review function and mod support
>people buy my lemonade
>WTF THATS A MONOPOLY KILL THIS FRICKING KID!!!
Show a monopoly first. I take it you are Epic shill because people who primarily play on consoles or GoG don't shit their britches over steam being successful.
What is a monopoly?
.
No one is forced to use steam. You can still play games without it.
Unlike Microsoft, which most people are forced (for now) to use to run most applications for day to day use.
be the change you want to see.
Im not gonna say Open/libreoffice are as good as microwiener office
or that Gimp/krita are better than photoshop
but if you hate microsoft enough, youll do whats right
Frick you talking about? If you want to buy games on pc 90% of the time steam is your only option. If you don't buy through steam you still need steam drm to access your games.
No, they’re not.
Valve screwed over the Artifact fanbase by cancelling the Artifact 2.0 beta without even allowing users to invite friends like they said they would in January 2021 and does not deserve your financial support for these gross consumer-unfriendly practices.
>Valve screwed over the Artifact fanbase
Reminder, there is no such thing as an Artifact fan. Quit spreading disinfo
That clip is out of context. Prior to the reveal, Day9 said the following:
#t=8h33m
>"This is not an extra game mode. This is not even a game like CSGO, that's based on Counter-Strike, or Dota 2, that's based on Dota 1, this is a game that's an entirely new beast unto its own."
To be fair, these remarks, while misleading, aren't really wrong. Despite its shared setting, Artifact's core gameplay is nothing at all like Dota 2's, and deserves to be seen as its own IP.
But still, what Day9 said set the expectation of a completely new game with no ties to any previous Valve titles. The reaction isn't because of the reveal itself, but the false expectations set by Day9's remarks.
Additionally, at the next TI the crowd CHEERED at being told they were in the Artifact beta.
#t=1m8s
Even if it was true, you know what else was poorly-received when first announced?
No one wanted a DOTA card game from Valve. We all wanted news of a REAL game, or Half Life news, or literally anything else.
Dota card game, or any digital card game, was probably seen as just riding the wave that the MTG and Hearthstone success, and promotion of microtransaction pay to win bullshit, not actual gaming.
The reaction was the true reaction of all gamers across the world.
Artifact is a real game.
Apathy is death. I will stand on the rooftops and condemn Valve’s misdeeds. Let justice be done, though the world perish.
In March 2018, Gabe Newell held a presentation on Artifact claiming there would be regular expansions, an eventual mobile release, and a $1 million tournament, all of which ultimately failed to materialize.
In August of that year, Gabe Newell repeated the claim of an Artifact tournament during the opening of The International: https://youtube.com/watch?v=X4xYOmUwad0
On March 30, 2020, Valve announced Artifact Beta 2.0, stating they planned for a closed beta (which happened), transitioning to an open beta and later full release (which didn’t).
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/583950/view/2102558993190369210
On December 17, 2020, Valve stated they would allow users to invite friends to the Artifact 2.0 beta in January.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1269260/view/2951510987408670526
On March 4, 2021, Valve formally abandoned Artifact. No expansions, no mobile version, no million-dollar tournament, not even something as basic as allowing users to invite friends to the beta like they said they would.
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/583950/view/3047218819080842820
you're doing God's work, son. never let them tell you otherwise.
nobody gives a frick
Would friend invites have kept it from being canceled as it was pure garbage? Do you even have friends to invite?
We have never sought to become a monopoly. Our products are simply so good that no one feels the need to compete with us
>private corporation that has competition
>"it's a monopoly"
>"we hate monopolies but government should nationalize health care so nobody else can provide health care except bureaucrats"
Steam is nowhere near a monopoly. It has many powerful competitors. They just suck.
Valve is the closest thing to a benevolent dictatorship. I might not agree with all their decisions but overall they run a good ecosystem and I'll take them over any of the competition that are just corporate souless companies.
What sucks is that what we have with steam is not forever. Once Gabe dies and his company is sold it'll go to the shitter.
They're the best.
Gabe dies of an obesity heart attack, and the idiot left in control sells the company for greed. Which of these contenders are worst? Which is best?
>Microsoft
>Disney
>Tencent
>Blackrock
>Apple
>Facebook
Valve is privately held, but not solely owned. Privately held companies often have rules about how much any one person can own, what happens when shares become available, and who can buy them.
My guess is one of the Linux guys will wind up in the CEO spot, and somebody like Shuttleworth (Ubuntu) or maybe Redhat/IBM will wind up buying shares if they become available.
From worst to best:
1. Apple- Low effort games now cost $400. Not a problem for people that use other launchers, but this is pretty much the death of Steam. Apple is notorious for charging out the ass for underwhelming products.
2. Disney. Expect most of the games on Steam to disappear for 2 decades and you can no longer launch your current games unless you install an update that "fixes" any problematic content.
3. Tencent. Gacha trash floods the main page and works its way into many of the AAA games from other studios (if it wasn't there already).
4. Facebook. Cuckerberg starts trying to add moronic features nobody wants and taking away the features people enjoyed. All quality indie games are given no spotlight and made obtuse to find while slop you don't give a frick about manages to find its way into every search.
5. Blackrock. I don't know much about this company but at worst I imagine it would be on par with the above.
6. Microsoft. Greedy devs can no longer expect people to pay their insane prices because all of the games on Steam are added to Gamepass.
I support steam because they support Linux and the deck oled is a fantastic gaming machine
They are if the company looks after the costumer and not just profits. Doesn't mean it'll do that forever though.
i don't know anons, i never played any monopoly games on steam.
and i doubt poker monopoly counts
What monopoly you moron?
I fricking wish steam was a monopoly. The state of pc gaming would be in a much better space. But instead we have to let losers like EpicStore and Uplay stay around.
The key thing steam has over most other companies is that it's not publicly traded, but is owned by a handful of people who actually have some passing interest in games. This allows it to focus on providing a game service, rather than being 100% "We need to make more money for the shareholders".
bonus too that if anybody tries to change the company's structure after gabe leaves or dies they are going to be widely regarded as the stupidest hunchbacked gorilla Black person to ever walk the jungle because valve and steam in their current form are free money, zero effort, forever, no strings attached
its gonna be a dark fricking day for gaming when gabe leaves or dies
we have to assume everyone in valve is a brain dead ape and gabe won't be choosing a successor himself for a bad valve timeline
>literally dozens of shitty launchers
>monopoly
Nope, it's just nothing can compare to Steam's functionality, interface, stability and prices.
GOG is ran by eastern european morons, and instead of being the Steam alternative for GOOD old games, it has become just another shitty store for porn games and indies.
EGS is chinese owned which is enough said.
EA App is laughable.
VKPlay is interesting, but it will take them a decade to catch up with Steam.
>instead of being the Steam alternative for GOOD old games
moron take, this isn't a viable plan for a store since the number of "good old games" is limited and the number of people who want to buy them again to scratch some nostalgia itch is limited as well. They obviously needed to branch into current games or their entire business model would eventually dry up.
They haven't released a fraction of good old games, that people would like to play. Look at their whislist section on the forums. You also don't consider that with each passing year there are more games that can be considered old.
Filling unique niche is a way better business plan, than becoming yet another shitty store nobody uses, because Steam exists. moron.
We are so incredibly lucky that Gaben/Valve created the PC Gaming monopoly and not pretty much anybody else. He will die soon of old age and his bumblefrick braindead children will piss away his legacy.
I know you think Steam is shit now, but everything could be so much worse, enjoy it while it lasts because this is as good as it will ever get.
Do steam drones really not know what a de facto monopoly is?
>In a free market without government intervention this kind of monopoly is theoretically unobtainable
Huh.
describe a defacto monopoly and tell us how steam fits that, Ill wait
>A de facto monopoly is only able to be achieved by providing a far demanded product at all times compared to the competition, and even then there would not be a 100% market share.
Interesting, so a de facto monopoly will instantly fall apart when anyone decides to start actually competing with it instead of focusing solely on fricking over the customers?
>a de facto monopoly will instantly fall apart when anyone decides to start actually competing with it
Windows in shambles
You do realize that MS has been caught in several scandals over the years and the main reason they maintain dominancy is that they have more power than the legal system, right?
microsoft does not have a monopoly on operating systems, they do however very frequently engage in anticompetetive practices like Google, but the american justice system doesnt care if youve got the money for the israeliteiest israelite lawyers
windows shouldnt be allowed to reenable automatic updates or turn on fricking secureboot/csm in my goddamn bios. Itd be like my washing machine being allowed to unlock all the doors in my house.
when they benefit me yes
Steam doesn't require a subscription service.
no, its literally the one good "monopoly"
and its not even actually a monopoly, just the best service out there.
Want to see actual monopoly behavior? Check out what Crunchyroll just did.
>Check out what Crunchyroll just did.
I don't need to check anything to know streamgays deserved it
Valve is good today but nothing lasts forever. Trusting in them too much is kind of like building your castle on sand. There's no true good corporate fiefdom, you have to realize the consequences of it eventually
One advantage in the way Valve is doing things today, is everything important they've done is in the open.
If Microsoft does shit you don't like, you're fricked because Windows is closed source, and they have total control.
If Valve pisses off the Linux community, it is Valve that is fricked. They'll lose a lot of their developers, and those developers will have control over their projects, or can fork them and continue work from there.
This isn't a hypothetical, there have been more than a few projects or distributions or companies that seemed on top of the Linux world, that collapsed in a relatively short amount of time because they got full of themselves and thought they owned Linux.
yeah I know. With Valve you atleast feel like you have recourse for what they do. When paid mods came out, most other corporation would have pushed it through. Valve canceled it within a week or something.
They generally listen but as an individual you will get squashed eventually like an insect. We may laughnat Win7 devotees feelimg burned, but they will eventually do something to burn you and if the majority doesn't care, youve got no voice. Corporate fiefdoms are not the way.
Owning all your games on Steam is like building your home on another lord's land. Eventually it will have consequences. We just try to ignore that reality for now.
Only about the same as getting games from any other source. Eventually it just comes down to keeping backups, and trusting that the community can sort things out.
One advantage to the way Valve has done things, is once you have games running on an open source base, long-term support becomes possible for those titles even if the source code for the game itself is unavailable.
PC gamers own nothing and they're happy
No, they're terrible. But out Lord Sweenet is here to save the day.
please define how steam is a monopoly then go back to timmy tencent and let him know his new HQ will never be finished
How does steam stop you from opening your own digital game store
>open your own game store
>devs & publishers only deal in steam keys
>your customers are still lead back to valve
Ah yes very good, not a monopoly at all
And how is that Valve's fault? Are they mind controlling the customers?
>t. wolfire games
>Have competition
>Competition just is bumfrick moronic
>Gain billions because consumers like not being shat on
LE...DYSTOPIA...
It's a Store you stupid homosexual Black person, they don't own the games
everything cool about steam inventory system was ruined by russians, brazilians, and the german government. Its not that the sales were so great, it was that there was a period where you could buy and sell steam gift copies. You still can today but its so heavily gimped it isnt worth the effort
When the alternative is cancer like GOG, Origin and Uplay... yes.
They only have a monopoly on modern games, and even then it’s only because they managed to make a consistently useful and good marketplace with a not dogshit launcher. Somehow every other company fails this.
I used to think making a launcher isn't hard but apparently its a herculean task judging by everyone who isn't Steam or GoG.
disks still exist the fact that moronic suits refuse to use them to get around storefronts demanding censorship or refusing to sell your game is there fault.
Yes Black person. Complaining about Steam being a "monopoly" and trying to compete with it led to every frickinh company having its own fricking launcher they want you to install and manage an account for, even when you buy games from steam.
Dumbass. User complaints didnt lead to launcher hell. It was other companies covetously wanting what valve had. you think online comments got ubi, ea, etc to make their own stores, lol
It's the same thing with streaming services, companies saw Netflix and Hulu and wanted a piece of the pie.
>every frickinh company having its own fricking launcher they want you to install and manage an account for, even when you buy games from steam
steamgays made this bed, they can lay in it
>man im so sick of the steam monopoly im going to [competitor]
>welcome to [competitor], were here to support you!
>ahh yes finally a breath of fresh air
>now if youll just bend over
>why?
>why, for the kernel level anticheat of course silly!
>wha-what are those guys back there doing?
>dont mind them, just selling your data
>and why do you keep jabbing me with a spear
>how else am I going to mine bitcoin??
>o....k....well, can I play my games now?
>sorry, our servers have been down for 4 days, you cannot, also your credit card info that you opted not to save in our system was accidentally saved and then promptly stolen
WTF WHY IS STEAM SO POPULAR I DONT GET IT
>for the past 3 months Ganker was complete inaccessible in china because of vpns being blocked
>absolutely nobody complaining about steam
>workaround has been shared around wechat for accessing blocked sites
>suddenly anti-steam threads start again
Literally ban all third-world non-whites from discussion. Anywhere. Forever.
>post the pooh image
>anti-shills suddenly vanish like the wienerroaches they are
every single time
>Chinagays are the ones parading EGS
makes sense
chinagays will say some moronic shit like "tencent only owns 49.8% of epic games, why would they care if Epic Games lives or dies"
Tencent has like a 40% stake in EGS or some shit, they probably get social credit points for shilling it
Nah it's Indians.
>chinks shill because they are on tecents payroll
>poos shill because they are poor
Monopolies are legal though? You can't be penalized simply for being fricking better than all of the competition. That is on them to stop being so shit.
The only time a monopoly becomes a problem is when they start using anticompetitive practices to maintain their dominant position. Which to my knowledge Valve has never done.
steam's only monopolistic practice is not being a soulless corporate machine optimized to squeeze out into the outer edge of maximum profit from the situation
i mean, i'm sure it's more or less a soulless corporate machine, but if EA or epic would suddenly take over steam, i can promise you you'd notice it immediately
I will give Tim the following credit
>be old white gay boomer trying to hoard all of your money
>see fortnite making trillions of dollars
>IM INVESTING IN EPIC
>timmy pisses away every spare cent egs makes on lolsuits with apple and google
>surely itl pay out one day
>it never does
Last I heard the one against google actually turned something up, so they might get a payout there
I thought all they won was the ability to partner with google partners to have the app preinstalled on their phones and google got in trouble for implying that youd get in trouble for doing that. I dont support google but thats far from an outright win
>do nothing to compete
>opposition destroy itself
m-mm-monopollyyi u steammmie >:~~*(
Why do gabe's wienersuckers paint him as a benevolent dictator when that israelite had to get sued into adding a refund policy?
being able to return a played PC game was not standard practice in the US. I remember best buy and eb games let you return all games EXCEPT pc games because the CD keys were still redeemed to the original purchaser.
>EXCEPT pc games because the CD keys were still redeemed to the original purchaser
You must be talking about the ""physical"" Steam copy era of pc games because before that the average CD key was resuseable, outside maybe MMOs or other online only games
Nothing to redeem, just punch the key in at install and you're good
t. used to burn copies off for friends with a copy of the keys attached
no im talking about the early 2000s before steam was commonplace. lots of games had cd keys that once redeemed were spent and best buy/ebgames was not willing to return them, granted their return policies for console games were pretty shitty too. I remembee my sister got the zoo tycoon expansion for sea world and dinosaurs and she didnt have the base game, my mom attempted to return it and they wouldnt take it back
To be fair that wasn't normal in digital spaces at the time with origin being the exception, now if everyone but Valve did it then yeah I'd throw that complaint at them.
because people on here are stupid fricking orons with the memory of a goldfish.
What the frick are you talking about? Everyone and there mom has a fricking launcher.
The only bad thing about monopolies is that if shit gets bad you'll be stuck with it.
That's my fear but everyone but GoG are incompetent or publisher only stores
Timmy I would use your store if it provived better services than Steam.
Yes.
If no one gets monopolies, then the game will go on forever because nobody will run out of money, unless they get extremely unlucky rolls and lose their Go money to Income Tax every time, and even then it would still take an unfathomably long time.
Cool it with the anti-semitism