f13.net

http://www.guru3d.com/news/retail-threatens-to-ban-steam/

Looks like retailers are sulking that Valve are ahead of them in the race to figure out how to get us to buy games, so they want to ban Steam in games which they should be resellers for, instead of just making a better alternative.

Welp.

Even providing that there is not as much clout in the brick and mortar games store/retailer anymore, if Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Best Buy don't get on board with this, all it will do is spell doom for those stores boycotting faster.

Article's a bit brief for me to really know what they're on about.  

I have no problem with retailers insisting on a "No Steam" version for their stores.  The amount of hoops I have to jump through to play a game should be as low as possible, and if going to a brick and mortar store is going to require me to go through Steam anyways, why would I ever go to a store?  Seems like a valid complaint to me (see: sinij's Civ V adventure).

If, on the other hand, they're saying "We won't sell Fallout at all because it's available on Steam," that seems like they're screwing themselves out of sales.  Obviously I don't know the actual numbers, but I can't imagine that brick stores sell so much product that they could force an agreement like that without taking a fairly serious financial hit.  It's hard for me to feel much sympathy for brick and mortar retailers when the last time I went to one, there were more copies of Halo: Reach on the shelves than there were PC games in total.

I can't ever find decent PC games at brick and mortar stores.  No loss to me if publishers call their bluff.

That just cemented the idea in my head that Steam-only is a good thing.  Thanks!

I think "valid" is very near the bottom of the list of words I would use to describe Sinij's complaints about his Civ V adventure.

My interpretation is that they want to refuse to sell games if they use steam technology, so that they can try to get their cut of the download market which they're hideously late for, and they probably would have a rather large problem with making a service which could compete with steam/impulse.

On one hand I want there to be multiple providers, but on the other hand I don't want to have too many different providers that I buy games from either, since we're looking at what should become a permanent relationship. I reckon I'd set the max at 2-3 providers, unless they were to use the same strategy Matrix Games do, where they allow you to download the game from them for 1 year after purchase, and they also give you the possibility to get a physical copy sent to you via mail at no extra cost.

As for Lantyssa's comment, I have to agree. Each and every time I've tried to buy a game at my local brick and mortar store, they've either been sold out or they simply haven't even thought of buying it. Good luck finding a purchaseable version of games such as Jagged Alliance 2, for example.

Jesus Joseph, brick box stores still sell pc games?  :why_so_serious:

I'd say it's a nonissue since the bulk of their sales come from consoles. Once you start seeing shit being sold on XBOXlive and whatever playstation uses, brick box stores will be primarily hardware and "support" stores.

The article is more than a little misleading. Many retailers already have issues with Steam enabled games because they don't like the idea that the game they are selling comes bundled with a competing service. Retailers pay in advance for their games (digital distributors don't) so they more important to publishers than their market share of PC sales might suggest. This is already happening, game studios are being told by their distributors that major retailers will be unhappy to the point of refusing to stock the game if Steam is chosen as the multiplayer solution instead of an alternative such as Games for Windows Live. Obviously GFWL sucks balls so there was a bit of a push back and apparently the retailers aren't so much against any integration of Steam, just for where you need to go through Steam to activate the game and play it. If the game uses Steam for matchmaking but can otherwise use a regular desktop shortcut to launch and the Steam layer is largely transparent to the player (i.e. it doesn't put the Steam store in your face when you play the game) then they are mostly ok with that.

So a more accurate description would be retailers don't like selling a route to their obsolescence and publishers can't afford to ignore them and this status quo is unlikely to change for a while.

PSN is already selling about five or six big name titles that I'm aware of, granted they've been on shelves for a year.

Once Gamestop started trimming their PC selection down to a couple shelves of rattyass looking boxes, I started going elsewhere.  Frankly, I don't see a need for brick and mortar stores in my life.  I buy 80% of my titles from Amazon and I only spend money at Gamestop when I'm doing tradeins.  And I'm swearing off tradeins due to the ridiculous prices I get when giving them my games. 

Bring on the Steam holiday sales...

I am addicted to Steam's under $10 list. Sure, I am soo 5 years ago, but my pc is uber comparatively  :awesome_for_real:

I really wished they named who they were talking to.

Steam is assisting in a negative feedback loop around physical PC sales: Steam can offer the titles in a way that is probably quicker, possibly cheaper, definitely more convenient and with greater range than a physical store, so people move away from the physical store, meaning that the store drops the number of PC titles it sells, leading to players having to go to Steam for PC games, and the cycle repeats. So Steam's success is helping pull PC titles off the shelves.

That said, there is a portion of the PC gaming market who'd prefer not to download, so if retailers do start refusing Steam-released games there could be an impact on sales for some titles. Guess it depends how confident the dev / publisher is that Steam sales will make up for any lost physical sales.

I'm not entirely in agreement that it's all steam's fault. Obviously they're not exactly trying to stop us from choosing them rather than a physical copy, but the increasing hostility of misc publishers towards consumers have made the drawbacks of steam (even when weighed up against the hilariously superior convenience of use and range of titles) more or less irrelevant, at least to me.

I didn't start using steam seriously until I got fed up with EA, UBI and others' hijinks, along with the consolification of too many of today's AAA games, which has either forced me to look to a different genre, or to look to indie developers instead.

I didn't start using Steam until the only way I could get a game was a pre-order at a brick and mortar.  If I wanted to wait a bit to see how things shook out, or wanted to keep my budget low for the month, or felt I'd rather get it on sale, I was SoL unless I used Steam.  Once I got past that must-have-first-day mentality, the stores game me no option.

Steam is a piece of shit.  I really hate having access to all my recent games on the whim of Valve.

What Steam do you use?  I was a HL2 release date Steam user and I have never been unable to access/install a game.

FIFY

Also.  Fuck Steam/No Fuck You thread.  Here we go again.

On topic.  It's only a minor loss to me, and a boon to the looney toons Sinij's, if they stop bundling Steam with their versions.  Who cares.  As long as it's possible for me to enable the game with Steam on my own, then I really don't give two shits.  Sucks for Steam.  But you can't have everything.

Well, except that specialist game retailers like EB devote only a tiny fraction of their store space to PC titles, and have done so for several years since before Steam became the PC juggernaut that it is today.

OTOH, I do prefer a physical copy of the game to a download in general, even for Steamworks titles. And I often circumvent Steam's localised pricing by purchasing boxed copies from Europe. (Which is Australia is a part of).  :why_so_serious:

You need to buy yourself an XBox or PlayStation to go with your PC.

I have a 360 that I was given by work like 5 years ago or whatever. I

LOATHE

using the pad. So um... I'm going with "no".

This. The retail stores were the primary reason people believed PC gaming was dying, given that there was a tiny selection on a single shelf hidden somewhere at the back of the store. And now they are whining they're not a part of the market?

It was almost as bad watching Australian retailers complain people were buying online yet not seeing that as inevitable when the games (and pretty much everything else) are 50% cheaper and with a wider variety.

In any case they're free to use whatever economic muscle they feel they have. But attempting to stand in the way of consumer desire for cheaper and more convenient product generally isn't a long term winning formula. It is also cute they're complaining about steam having the potential to control the market and they're going to use their retail monopoly to make sure no one can do something like that.

Heh, all of what you said is true.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/business/retailers-call-for-gst-on-overseas-sales/story-e6freqmx-1225945938206

That's not from game retailers specifically, the shit we buy is too small to get hit by GST, etc. But I really do polish my inexpensively-purchased items with their tears.



Tools for the job, baby. Learn it, love it. Or turn in your gamer card.  :why_so_serious:

If having a gamer card requires using a pad to play FPS games, then consider my gamer card handed in. I'd unironically rather sit and play war in the pacific and be a full-on neckbeard all day than play FPS games with that atrocity of a control mechanism. But this is not exactly a new viewpoint from me, so that's probably hardly a surprise. :awesome_for_real:


The store I used to go to actually only moved the PC games to the back of the store sometime this year, so to me the "omg pc gaming is dying" began around starforce/spore, and got worse as more and more games became mere console ports. That is, until I embraced steam. I've unironically spent more on steam (and to a lesser degree, Impulse and GOG) this year than I have in brick and mortar stores the past 2-3 years combined, maybe even longer. Mostly because yay updated awesome old games, some because awesome indie games I never would've seen anyways since "shelf space is expensive yo".

Who said anything about FPS?

I said tools for the job. ie Fighting games and beat-em-ups, some third-person games, driving games, rhythm games, sports games. If you only play FPS and RTS and MMOGs(?) then sure, stick to PC-only.

Welllll, that pretty much describes me.

That's cool. It might also be the case for tgr as well. We seem to have had some crossed wires there when he took my "L2PwithController" to mean he should use it for FPS games. While I've taught myself to play console FPS games over the last year or so (mostly due to my wife's machine being underspecced for Borderlands)  I don't expect anyone else to do so. It is nice seeing them on the big TV screen though. (cue Sky).

The reason I singled out FPSes is because that's where most "l2pw/controller" discussions start and usually end. Well, that or 3rd person games, but I tend to lump both types into the same category. I never think "strategy games" when someone say "consoles", nor do I really think "driving games", albeit those at least work because there's at least steering wheels for the consoles. What I do think of when I think of consoles, however, is fighting games, beat'em'ups, platform games and the like.

So yes, FPS, 3rd person, RTS, MMOs and driving games pretty much defines my gaming tastes, which pretty much limits me to the PC. My main problem is that it seems like the majority of the "AAA" gaming industry is hell-bent on ruining the FPS and 3rd person genres for me, either through asstastic console ports (yes, even mass effect 2, where you for example duck behind a crate before you can jump over it, even on the PC), delays on launch compared to the console, or just a complete lack of a launch for the PC (like RDR, which was the last console game I bought, where fighting is either an annoying pan-fest (no autoaim) or simply press auto-aim, select target, fire). And don't get me started on SW:TFU. And now, failing all that, they have the audacity to tell me when or if I can even play it (Hi UBI/EA, etc).

Fuck Brick and Mortar stores in the ear when it comes to PC games. IN THE EAR. Steam wasn't anywhere near the successful service it is now 5 years ago when those same B&M stores started assfucking the PC game market - their declining PC game sales are mainly due to their policies of pushing those PC games into the darkest, dustiest corners of their stores. On top of that, they started refusing to carry in stock copies of any PC game that wasn't published by one of the big name pubs, so their dark, dusty shelves looked like 60 copies of EA/Activision and 0 copies of anything else. Steam is the financial fucking savior of the PC game industry and any PC game dev idiotic enough not to use them deserves to go out of business. If the B&M stores had started doing their digital distro services 5 years ago instead of the shafting given to the PC game industry described above, this wouldn't even be an issue.

Lolz, so the B&M stores are complaining about not getting the cut from the sales of games they don't even put on their shelves. :awesome_for_real: I know three game stops that don't even have a PC gaming section and the ones that do haven't changed a single item on their shelves in 5 years.

When the mouthbreathers at Game Stop started looking at me like I'd sprouted a second head if I asked about a PC game that wasn't Warcraft, or Call of Duty, I stopped bothering.  If I absolutely need a box, I'll get it from Amazon, or Best Buy if I just can't wait.  Everything else I can get online without having to dick around, and I don't have to worry about losing, or scratching the dvd, etc.

The retail stores have no interest in online purchase anyway and would not have come up with a steam equivalent. Their real money is in re-selling and that needs you to come into their store to drop off your old "physical objects".

I've long since converted to the 'if it isn't on Steam, it wasn't released for PC' mentality.  I'm hoping that the next generation of consoles goes DD as well, though there are other issues at play there (why stock a low-margin gaming console if you're not going to be able to sell software to that guy later?).

Hell - if MS starts distributing Windows on USB sticks or digitally, I won't even need an optical drive any more.

I like my library of games I didn't actually install on my computer bought along time ago, on steam where i can install and uninstall at convenience. I see no real reason for a Console DD system not to be able to do the same. You won't even need to pump money into external harddrives or usb, standard hard drive space available on xbox and ps3 aleady should allow for the 3-4 games most console gamers play at any given time anyway. Hell you can have the game leave behind your save-game files which won't use that much memory and can be ported on cheap flashdrives just like the old memory cards.

The circle of stupid is nearly complete:

Brick and Mortars complain that steam is unfair because it cuts them out of the profit loop.

Now a Game dev complains that Brick & Mortars are unfair because it cuts them out of the profit loop.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20022957-17.html?tag=mncol;title

At which point steam is jumping up and down going "pick me!".

Though if it's a choice between money going into the retailers hands or the developers hands I'm generally happier with the latter. But the problem is the developers also want games to carry premium pricing which provides a strong incentive for people to try and find ways to get the games cheaper (rental, re-sell, pirate). They need to both embrace online sales and pass the discounts from the more efficient distribution and death of rental / re-sale onto the consumer. Which they're very unlikely to be interested in considering.

Which is fine. Gives room for the indie games to flourish. There is a big price war going on between Indie Devs and Major Studio's and the fun part is the gamer for the first time in forever is actually winning the war, well PC gamers that is.

I think we're all happier with the money going to people that actually create, rather than the retailers. In the case of PC games when they are available for download, the B&M stores are fancy shippers. I don't mind throwing a cut to Steam because they actually provide a service, and they open up more opportunities to indie studios, as stated.

Well we know this is because the EBgames business model is built on being a pawnshop for secondhand games, and it's much harder to do so with PC games. Did I already say this the other night? I thought I did but might not have hit post.

No, fuck that to hell and back, unless you want to only have the option to purchase a 2-year-old game digitally for $50 when right now you could get it new for half of that or less if you shop around. That's the issue Aussies face right now with Steam - being able to buy Steamworks games from the UK or US for half the local RRP and then add it to a steam account is the way to go. (And the way I buy console games, as well).

The heavily PC game stores I used to go to when young either flipped to consoles or went out of business. Buy-burn-return was an immensely popular strategy.

At the same time, online distribution has improved and makes direct retail purchase less attractive.

Games Brief puts forward the suggestion that this bitching is actually less about Steam and more about XBLA (http://www.gamesbrief.com/2010/11/why-retail-doesnt-give-a-toss-about-steam/) - that if retailers kick out Steam titles, they can then move 'on principle' against console-based content distribution systems.

Are the retailers really that deluded that they think this will kill Steam and not them?

I was discussing the whole deal with used games with a friend of mine a few months back, and he was initially adamant that selling and buying used games were literally stealing from the developer/publisher. I tried to push him into telilng me why a game should be different in this regard compared to f.ex a book, but he wasn't really able to say exactly why. He tried a few arguments about how "the game was in just as good condition as when it was bought, whereas the book isn't". While there can be something to this, most books I read are in pretty near new condition when I'm done with them, and they certainly aren't a problem with re-reading quite a few more times, and the disc the game is on can get scratched and ruined, so I'm not quite buying this argument.

What made him relent, however, was when I claimed that for some, selling the game they've beaten can actually help the developers/publishers, since 1) the customer might take this into account when buying the game in the first place, thus accept the high price, 2) the customer recoups some of his costs and thus get more funds available with which he can buy new games, and 3) other gamers who don't have the funds to purchase a game at full price still has the possibility to buy the game used for less, and thus more people get to enjoy what the developers created.

But of course publishers will be inclined to see this as very black/white.

Yeah I wouldn't really care much if online distribution put a bullet in brick/mortar video game stores. (Mind you Fry's always has a great selection of PC stuff.)

This isn't a situation like brick/mortar pnp game stores (or even indie book stores vs. bigbox vs. amazon) where they actually provide a useful value added service that makes them worth preserving.

They are important to the current business dynamic however because they buy a lot of games and they pay for those games in advance. Without that front-loaded income channel, games distribution is a much riskier proposition - net effect games development becomes even more conservative.

The games brief article linked above doesn't seem to make a whole heap of sense to me. There's lots of other channels for selling consoles, new release games and attachments and that's the big retail and electronics stores. Consoles are now a big enough business they're sold at the same places that sell TV's and stereo systems. And those people are interested in big volumes and not interested in the second hand trade.

But the main reason is that I don't believe the retailers are planning that far ahead.

Also the fears of valve being a monopoly on the same site seem ridiculous. To be a monopoly I would have to be unable to get a computer game from anywhere else. And given they have no control over production of games, and that setting up an alternative digital distribution is something lots of people could and would like to do (if valve went evil), there's really not much they can do. Balanced against that is them making the PC game industry something with a future.

Technically, given that definition of a monopoly, MS doesn't have one either since I can get both OSX, Linux and various BSD distros. :why_so_serious:

That's probably console devs though.  The PC resale market is miniscule now, and I don't think has ever been all that large.  I actually find it rather funny.

The retailers' practices encourage digital distribution.  PC games took well to this, but publishers have touted consoles because they're harder to pirate.  Retailers resell games, but console devs complain about being cut out of the loop by corporate sanctioned piracy.  Round and round we go.

Actually, it's rather ironic that the PC games were what got the "online activations" if it's that small compared to consoles. I wouldn't be surprised if the PC resale market was pretty much non-existant though, since almost all the B&M stores I've bought games from have had a "you open it you keep it" policy to PC-games, whereas console games usually had a 3-for-1 exchange policy in the same stores. That and "return within 2 weeks to get a different game", which I used pretty damn quickly for the copy I got of GRAW, I can tell you.

I'm no lawyer but I believe a monopoly doesn't mean it has 100% of a market. Just that it has a dominant position and is abusing that for an unfair market advantage. Windows was busted for numerous abusive uses of its dominant market share. I also consider it a more serious case because it controls the foundations of a market.

Steam is just a distribution network. Its existence does not disallow or even make particularly challenging setting up a rival service, and any attempt by Valve to abuse its power is very likely to lead to such a service coming into existence. The steam services come closer but since they remain optional, and don't stop the game being sold through other channels, I can't find the interest to care much. It's also in active competition with the game retail market since that is ultimately just another distribution network, albeit one determined to kill itself.


Strangely enough all the PC gamers I know are playing subscription games, games with a substantial online component or steam games. Whereas most of the console gamers I know have a hacked XBox360. I even saw someone with a hacked Wii (though it is still gathering dust). I really wonder what the piracy rate on consoles is.

But I do agree the retailers love consoles because they have the highly promoted "big name" games, the games often have a fairly short time to complete, and they're eminently suited to resale.

This is my big issue with PSN - nothing ever goes on sale and game values never drop in price.  I can understand a big budget title at $50-60 for the first year, but after a time they need to drop the price if they want people to buy.  Like Steam does.  Sony just needs to get onboard.

I check Steam almost every single day to see what is on sale.  PSN, not so much because nothing is on sale.

I can sort of see where the stores are coming from. If I buy a game off of Steam. Good. I'm happy with it. But if I buy the box, I want the game and don't want to have to use Steam. For example, I went to the midnight launch for FO:NV, came home with my shiny new box and then couldn't play for a bit over 2 hours because I had to wait for Steam to unlock my game? Really? Fuck you Steam. I bought the box so I wouldn't have to screw with that stuff.

Frankly, if I buy the box I see no reason I should be forced to use Steam to activate and play my game.

Which is a very valid complaint but not at all what retailers are upset about, I doubt they care what drm or whatever we have to jump through as long as they make a box sale.  :uhrr:

It's also a great way to force retailers to adhere to the street date, which they seem to be getting worse and worse about breaking.  Another reason to write them off.

It's exactly what they are upset about. They want to sell a game and for someone to be able to play that game from the box without needing to open Steam first - not because they care deeply about the user experience but because they want to limit the exposure to a competing service that is bundled in the box they just sold.

I don't want to sound like the apologist for B&M stores because frankly I agree that they suck at the consumer end, but most of you in this thread aren't grasping the reasons why they are still important to publishers. It's easy for you as a consumer to go 'fuck Gamestop/HMV/EB/Walmart in the ear, I'll get all my stuff from Impulse' but it's a lot more nuanced for the publishers who get a lot of value out of their relationship to B&M retail.

Ok from what I understand.

Retails Big Cut + Publisher Cut + Developers Small Cut.

Steam Small Cut + Publishers Cut + Developers Bigger Cut.

You understand wrong.

Retail: We will buy X number of boxes. You'll sell them to us for Y price and we will sell them at whatever we think we can get for it. Here is a huge chunk of cash equal to X*Y dollars to pay for those boxes upfront.

Steam: We will distribute your game. Every time someone buys it we will send you Z dollars where Z dollars is the RRP minus our cut because digital distribution isn't free.

Z dollars and Y dollars may well be the same depending on the deals you've struck with your distributors and with Steam.

Regardless of the channel, the size of the developer's cut is the same because the publisher pockets any difference.

I see thanks.

So long term, if steam or something similar is the primary medium of transfer you can get rid of the publisher and pocket the difference.. win!

If there's an "activation time" on a steam game then that's surely something the publisher has told steam to put in place. I very much doubt steam has any interest in you sitting there with a box in your hand unable to play. Or them with bits on their disk they won't let you buy. Of course you could argue they shouldn't let the publisher dictate release times (and bloody piratical regional pricing) but that's not really their call since they're just a distribution channel (and don't have that sort of power).

These days with lots of games needing to communicate with the companies DRM server before you can play it is not unique to steam either. Regardless of where you bought the box.

Now you're in a whole different set of questions. Publishers don't just pay for boxes to be printed and DVDs to be burnt. They assume a lot of the risk of a project through investment during development - it's the reason why they have such a lot of influence over the finished product. Obviously studios who are owned by a publisher have no choice about cutting out that part of the chain but even independent studios generally need to find a publisher well before they have a product that's ready to go to beta. Self publishing is possible for very small projects but it gets harder as the headcount at the studio increases.

As well as providing the cash needed to finish the project, publishers will also be a one-stop shop for multinational distribution and marketing. That's very valuable to a developer who largely won't have that kind of reach or leverage and for whom it's not worth building those networks for one release every couple of years.

I understand fully the whole buy in advance thing.

The problem is with the article is that it really seems that it is only the niche video game retailers like GameStop that are the ones bitching, and they don't really even buy that many boxes of non-BlockbusterBlizzard games anymore anyway. If this torches and pitchforks thing included Best Buy and Amazon then it would definitely have more traction/point.

What about when Valve just cuts out publishers completely and developers can direct distribute through steam?

One can dream.

The reason steamworks is becoming more and more popular on the dev side is that Steam is taking the position of "let me handle DRM, patch distribution and a few other minor features (cloud saves, etc) for you", and the dev houses overwhelmingly like the idea of offloading all that crap.

The up shot for steam is that A) they get the devs in bed with them early, so it's an easy pitch to say "and how about we sell that game, too?", and it gets their name everywhere to the consumer. The second part is what B&Ms are upset about, but the problem is that they need to find a way to compete with what is essentially a better service. Steam needs the advertising to penetrate the market since they lack the stores and TV advertising hookups (PREORDER FROM EB! ads all over TV, but you've never seen Steam run a commercial saying they have the same preorder bonus), and the B&Ms need people to never ever see the better product's logo anywhere and actually go look it up.

I thought developers could publish their own game through steam already if they so chose.

Way back when, this was my view of why Napster freaked so many people out, and that it had very little to do with the ostensible "dirty pirates stealing our shit" angle.  As people figure out that you can provide better service for cheaper by selling downloads directly rather than selling physical media through a bunch of middlemen, the people who make their livings as middlemen for physical media sales are looking at a very bleak future indeed.

For any but the smallest of operations or a few atypical fully funded studios, they still need the cash to finish their game from a publisher. Steam may handle distribution but they certainly aren't going to fund a dev studio trying to bring their game out of alpha.

Advertising is also a major issue in this case.  If you want anything but small scale sales, you need lots of advertising and that's beyond the purview of Steam.  The networks that IainC mentioned aren't just a matter of distribution, but also a matter of getting ads placed in all the right spots in order to get your game known.

Sure, small games do fine simply by getting Steam to put them up as featured games, but that's not gonna be enough for a major title, so the publisher has importance in both funding and advertising even if you cut them out of distribution entirely.

It does, however, mean that it's possible that in the future developers will have a better position to deal with publishers from, perhaps?  If they can separate the roles into discrete entities - distributer like Steam, funding, and advertising, each separate instead of having all those things wrapped up into one, developers might be in a better position.  Maybe.  Just speculating on that.

I'm calling bullshit on this. I don't think the advertising for PC games is that critical in terms of expense if the game is good. Key part there, GOOD! Taking the publisher out of the equation could possibly open the door to better development.

Doesn't matter anyway. If we are talking about the "publisher" as being the person who pays for the game to be made and advertised then steam is somewhat neutral. Just another avenue to use or not. And since they own the product they have a lot of power. I'm free to think that any PC game publisher who doesn't see online distribution as a way to reduce costs, another marketing tool, a way to make DRM more palatable and affordable and to kill the resale market is mentally retarded but I respect their right to do so.

It's the distribution (moving boxes) and retail (boxes on shelves!) layer that steam is challenging. And as a PC gamer any difficulties they face fill me with happiness.

It is more attractive for MS to sell straight to the Xbox via digital download because it does save them physical creation and distribution of product. They can pocket that difference (even if they then sell it at a cheaper price). Remember: the console itself is a loss leader, games are the profitable part.

Plus there is no more used game market for DD titles. That would hurt even GameStop.

Valve doesn't yet have a pure monopoly, but it certainly dominates the market. If it wanted to use its market power to force certain things that would benefit Valve, they currently have the influence to do it. There are several different competitors to Steam, but none have the range plus in-built player base or public acceptance of their DRM system. If you are looking to get onto a particular DD service, Steam is the one you want. Provided Valve / Steam doesn't go evil against the players, just the developers, most people won't care.

Because it's only a monopoly over online distribution which is relatively easily reproducible (and in competition with retail). They can't say "your game is not going on our platform" because they don't control the production or consumption of games. So yes, most people correctly won't care.

A developer who finds Steam unacceptabe can go elsewhere without a problem, though. Steam is only as strong as its products and they don't even demand exclusivity. Companies can float the boat with other digital distribution systems while they still use Steam.

Market domination that depends on both the goodwill of the producers and the customers is no monopoly. The only power Steam has is the market share, which they lose once developers don't give them games anymore.

They do this quite often actually, though almost always with Indie Games.  My friends created a game and Steam told them that their game didn't fit with the overall idea of their Indie lineup.  They ended up going with another publisher and not being able to be on Steam.

That would be an example of them not being a monopoly then?

A retailer is not forced to carry product they find distasteful or inappropriate either. Though I would be interested to know what the game is.

It probably involved tentacles and school girls.

Depends how you look at it.  I mean the game wasn't amazing, but it wasn't bad.  It didn't get much exposure through the publishers they went through, and it could have had more exposure and get better word of mouth if it was on Steam, and the only way I knew where to buy it was because they told me where. 

With all due respect to Kall's friends and their game, Valve may have simply decided that the game wasn't good enough to be on Steam.

In general, I'd think that shitty games with big publishers/advertising/awareness behind them are much more likely to be carried by steam than shitty indie games. They have a vested interest in keeping the big publishers happy, and something shit with advertising is more likely to sell than something shit no-one's ever heard of.

I've bought a few indie games on steam which were seriously shit, so I'm not sure that's the main cause. Unless their game was beyond seriously shit that is...

I have mixed feeling about this...

1. Retailers are engaging in monopolistic behavior in a fight over abandoned (by them) market. When was the last time you have seen PC games "wall" in any game retailer store?

2. Retailers do have a point - they are being forced to promote direct competitor. Steam isn't optional, you can't avoid it even on boxes that you buy in retail.

3. Hopefully this push will open the doors for more competition for Steam.

I don't want good competition for Steam, they have great sales I like having my games in one place mostly instead of having to install 10 different programs.  :awesome_for_real:

Woohooo Sinij got involved in this thread!

 :popcorn:

I hear that, but sometimes they're quite wrong... Like they didn't want to sell Braid at first, and only accepted it after the XBLA version did so well. They don't sell the excellent Din's Curse from Soldak, but maybe that's because there was a pricing issue.

From a technical point, perhaps it is easy to replicate Steam.

From a product range and in-built customer base, it isn't.

Steam saying, "We aren't going to carry your game" doesn't stop someone from selling it elsewhere, but it does severely cut into a developer's chance of being recognised in the PC space if they stick to digital distribution. It's like writing a book and finding that Amazon won't carry it - sure, you can take it elsewhere, but you've just lost the biggest distribution channel.

Valve doesn't have a literal monopoly, but they do have the potential to wield a lot of influence with Steam so it could be argued they have a functional one (estimated at around 80% of the PC games market (http://gametheoryonline.com/2010/11/15/steam-valve-video-games-retail/)). They've also got it to the point where their DRM isn't even really considered DRM anymore. Any new service has to overcome players already having invested $100s into the Steam service to get those games, plus achievements, plus the connection to Valve's high quality titles, plus contracts with a number of other publishers.

I remember a while back when rumours of Apple buying Valve started to circulate. That'd have been interesting (and I suspect, like iApps users, PC gamers wouldn't have cared much what Apple did to games developers).

Well "good" or "shitty" are of course opinions, and so are relative terms.



Did this thread just begin to Circle the Drain?

At the moment the main reason there is no demand for competition is that steam is the superior service and more importantly well-liked. If they started to abuse their supposed monopoly power they would start to lose the latter. And with no way to restrict competition (unlike owning the production, or the rails, or the developers contracts) the only way they can compete is being bigger and better than the alternatives.

In short, on the range of things to be concerned, this isn't registering.

Geeze, after reading that article from Unsub one of the guys complaining is from "Gaikai's streaming service". That is not a service that is competing with steam. And any failure to find customers is more likely because you are providing a service that very very few people actually want than the influence of steam.