It's not a joke, so please desribe what you would do better with Steam.
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GI: [Anno 1800 leaving Steam] might not bode well for the...strength of Steam's marketplace, it most likely is good for everyone else (See Staff Post)
- Thread starter benzopil
- Start date
It's not a joke, so please desribe what you would do better with Steam.
Exclusive control over certain goods in a market: check for EGS, Steam enforces nothing.
Intention and ability to control prices for said goods: check for EGS, Steam allows free pricing outside the store.
I mean. You asked. It's a dictionary definition and not so much a textbook, but I didn't study economics and don't quite have any textbooks at hand.
I had actually been against using the word monopoly to describe egs or the anti-competitive tactics, but I may have to reassess that lol.
You know when you dont have an actual argument and resort to "well you should know what im saying is true' when your talking point is an opinion.
You have nothing to stand for.
And you go back to calling people disagreeing with you, blind zealots. You 100% know you have nothing to argue.
The only person that is sad is you in this thread trying to push this talking point without any actual arguments. Even People defending Epic dont disagree that Steam has a whole host of features that make it stand out.
"Steam allows free pricing outside the store"
Exclusive control over certain goods in a market: check for EGS, Steam enforces nothing.
Intention and ability to control prices for said goods: check for EGS, Steam allows free pricing outside the store.
I mean. You asked. It's a dictionary definition and not so much a textbook, but I didn't study economics and don't quite have any textbooks at hand.
No, they tell developers to not undercut the Steam price.
"Please note that Steam keys cannot be sold on other sites unless the product is also available for purchase on Steam at no higher a price than is offered on any other service or website."
Secondly, that's a ridiculous way to apply the term "monopoly" (and I'm not singling you out -- much of the anti-EGS mob does the same thing and this post is more of a response to this thread and others in general) -- competing services and retail spaces have exclusives all the time -- when the definition lists "commodity or service" it's talking more about the market as a whole (as in, all PC games -- it is silly to apply the term monopoly to a store that has the exclusive rights to one particular game). You wouldn't call both Amazon Video and Hulu monopolies just because Hulu has Seinfeld and Amazon has Sopranos -- they're competitors. You wouldn't call Hobby Lobby and Marshals monopolies just because they carry different art supplies, they're competitors. You wouldn't call Spotify and Apple Music monopolies even though some music is only available on one of them, they're competitors. Monopolies aren't about what products they carry, it's about market control -- a single game or even a few dozen games does not constitute the "market." Pretending like Phoenix Point is itself a market as an excuse to call EGS a monopoly is ridiculous.
Until EGS and their developer deals, small/medium sized developers had no choice but to choose Steam (for the vast majority of developers, this is still the case) -- that makes Steam closer to a monopoly than any of these other examples no matter how you try to twist the definition to mean something other than market control. EGS is nowhere near controlling the PC game market -- it is laughable to describe it as a monopoly.
You can argue EGS employs some anti-consumer practices. Whether this is by design or simply a current limitation they will overcome, this is one of the many areas they will be competing with Steam for customers. Unless you think Epic has so much money they can literally moneyhat so many games that Steam can't compete (which is nowhere near happening and I think is a ludicrous assumption), you can assume that Epic is feeling a lot of market pressure to add features and to be able to support policy changes that they are criticized for -- that's how competition works. There's too many bad faith arguments suggesting that EGS is forever static and won't naturally adapt to competition over time.
Also, Epic does fund development -- what, you don't think they pay developer salaries with the money they get from Epic? Epic also has their developer grant programs that have been going on for years. So can we please not spread conspiracies suggesting otherwise?
The truth is that many people here simply prefer the Steam monopoly. Just search this thread for "console" and you'll see plenty of posts saying they don't want the "console-wars bullshit" AKA "competition." Or they have unrealistic beliefs suggesting it's realistic to have competing services without exclusive content even though exclusive content is basically ubiquitous across any competing companies in just about any industry (see above examples). Yes, even when they aren't paying for the development of that particular content (again, see above examples). Exclusives are a very common way for competitors to try and overcome the network effects that give incumbents strong market advantages. In some ways, it would be more convenient to just have one storefront -- just like it'd be convenient if all online music was on Spotify instead of segmented across different services, or if all TV/Movie content was on Netflix, and I think that's what drives a lot of the sentiment here (and it's partly why, over time, markets trend toward monopolies that end up being worse for consumers) -- but pushing for a monopoly because a product you want happens to be exclusive to a competing service is, I believe, short-sighted and myopic.
I can't believe I read all that. Developers seem more or less free to price their games and put them on sale as they like outside the steam store. That rule is there for anyone who wants to intentionally abuse the steam key system.
As far as exclusives go, I more or less agree. It happens all over the place.
You truth that people prefer the steam monopoly is so twisted I doubt you believe it yourself. Many prefer steam. Obviously. That fact is too simple tho. Too benign. So your truth becomes that these people are slaves to perceived convenience and turn a blind eye to this supposed monopoly. I'm sure this just a slight miscalculation of wording on your part and unfortunately it tips your hand.
Still doesn't change that the cut is much higher in favor of the developer. Also factually incorrect as Crayon pointed out, even though I'm not sure myself.
Thank you for reducing us to a "mob". You can try to normalize exclusive all you want, they have no place on PC and have historically never been a thing outside of first party games. Exclusives do not lead to a better store, to better features, to better anything. They only lead to a bidding war that benefits only the lucky few to be picked in the short term, and whoever gets to kill his competitors if it happens at all. It's a scorched earth approach to competition. The point of calling it a monopoly is that they are taking away games meant to be sold on the platform through its entire ecosystem. They are not funding them, they are not adding anything of value. Your exemple is irrelevant.
Epic has no intention to add features such as discoverability and is moneyhatting left and right without any long-term plans or care for the developers past that first exclusivity period. They are left on their own to market their games, leading to hugely reduces cuts for them. Epic is literally harvesting future releases and removing them from the PC market in order to try and choke the competition. You are placing blind trust in EGS and then telling us we make our arguments in bad faith?
Yes, they do receive big bags of money after having stomached years of development by themselves - and that's not the point.
Ah yes, the mythical Steam monopoly. This has been debunked so many times it's not even funny. The way you demean the arguments put forward by calling them unrealistic without arguing further and equating walled-garden exclusivity tactics to "competition" on an open platform is interesting.
We are not defending Steam, we are attacking Epic for being asswipes and harming the entire platform in their egoistical attempt to force their way in. We are also not into being pissed on and told it's raining when we know for a fact Steam has been historically extremely positive for the platform when everyone else was deserting it. It is now a multi-launcher, multi-storefront ecosystem and the only way Epic has found to enter it is by shutting out everyone else.
This is bullshit and you know it. Your cynicism doesn't translate into arguments.
Or in conventional parlance, "make sure no customer gets a bad deal". Which is hardly a deplorable stance to take.
They could self-publish, they could go to GOG, they could go to itch.io. Those smaller developers you describe, who can't do any of those for some reason, are also those who would never be accepted into the walled garden of the Epic Games Store. The reason people go to Steam and not GOG, is because Steam is an open platform, while GOG is curated - the Opus Magnum snafu comes to mind - and they don't go to itch.io because compared to Steam, itch.io imposes a number of limits that will definitely limit sales (i.e., payment methods).
With EGS on the market and up and running, nothing would change about the fact that Steam would still be a platform anyone can go to for a chance to succeed, with much broader feature support than anyone else can provide. And the vast majority of devs would still go to Steam - because they can.
A monopoly is not judged by its size, or the degree of market control. A monopoly is judged both by whether it has exclusive control over a good or service, and by what it does with that control.
Steam has a natural monopoly on being a digital distribution service - it was the only one on the market for the longest time, and grown so large that it's natural to go to it. But with all that control, it still has industry-standard revenue shares. It still allows free pricing for submitted games. It still enforces nothing about where your games can be sold. It has all that control and all it does with it is ensure everybody gets a fair deal as far as it can reach. It does none of the market-abusing practices that define a monopoly, as if engaging in monopolistic behavior was punishable by law or something.
Epic Games Store, in comparison, has done nothing but engage in exclusionary abuse and predatory pricing since it entered the market. It actively works to obtain control over the goods available on the market by making exclusive deals (for a time, but it is important to take into account the sales slopes of digital media, which are predominantly front-loaded), its policies exclude ~18.4% of the world's population from access to these games, and its revenue share is so low that attempting to match it would eventually put any existing digital storefront platform out of business - including themselves if they were to match the features of those other storefronts. Its degree of market control is low, but as it works to increase it its monopolistic behavior will become that much more pronounced.
And it's not just about the moneyhats, and not just about the store launching in a barebones state. We have statements of intent from the people in control of EGS, on that they do not intend to "compete on features", but rather on exclusive content. On PC, where due to everything being a single platform it's nigh-unheard of to see timed exclusives. On PC, where stores always competed on features, such as DRM-free content, game subscription services, open revenue shares, or community functions. Where the only exclusives were always those that were made by the people who were selling them. That thing, where multiple platforms fling around money to secure some other developer's game for their own - that always existed outside the PC market, the "console war". And even then it was more benign, with developers being given money to develop a game, rather than to put their game on one platform or another. And we are right in that we don't want that bullshit - especially the latter bullshit - to develop on PC, to even set foot on the platform if we can help it. Because it's not competition - it's a wallet-measuring contest, and it ultimately benefits no-one but the one with the deepest pockets.
Because you know what, you're right, we are fine with this "natural monopoly" of service that Steam has come to have. Because they have done nothing with it so far that would warrant disdain. They do have a massive ceiling to improve towards - not even the sky is the limit there, just the top shelf would be fine. But that does not mean they need to get "deposed", because they're working their way up, just as they always were.
Epic Games made a massive misplay with their money and the launch of EGS. This curated exclusive bullshit does nothing but bring the ire of the gaming public to them, a train in motion can't be stopped by a sportscar driving head-on. An open marketplace, with the same limitations re:China and payment systems, with the same improved cut and lack of community features, but a solid discoverability toolset and free-to-sell download keys, would have put the pressure on Steam like nothing before or since. That's if the goal was to make a healthier PC marketplace, that's if the goal was to compete. A curated storefront that operates on exclusives cannot compete with an open platform by definition. As far as we can see right now, all Epic Games wants EGS to do, is hoover up the initial front-loaded sales of major new releases, and that is plainly just bad for the entire rest of the ecosystem.
I still don't understand how competition is having exclusives only selling on one store. The reason why steam is so great is you can buy steam keys from so many different places and that's what drives sale price down as they know you can just buy it anywhere you want.
Having everything tied just to the epic launcher and not steam doesn't push prices down, it means whatever price is on that one store is all you can pay. It doesn't cause price wars, it just makes it more likely for games to be super expensive forever.
Having everything tied just to the epic launcher and not steam doesn't push prices down, it means whatever price is on that one store is all you can pay. It doesn't cause price wars, it just makes it more likely for games to be super expensive forever.
What the people who say "it's competition" mean, is competition for being a more attractive platform for publishers. A platform with better rates, more visibility, broader userbase - better profits. Which would be all fine and good - were it not in this case done to the exclusion of everything else. (And not merely in the short-term, the very nature of an edge-of-profitability cut means that there will be no "better deals" anywhere, since that pushes the store into the red.)
It's kinda hilarious, really, that after years of being warned that Valve could disappoint or take advantage of its enormous invested customer base, it was actually their largest competitor that immediately began abusing the marketplace, and the press that started insisting that "no, the customers are wrong".
Also, something that occured to me regarding Steam's "similar price" policy:
It means that Metro, when its exclusivity ends, will be in the hilarious position of either:
a) raising the US price on Epic's store to match the Steam price they "beat", or
b) offering the same lower price on Steam worldwide, which EGS couldn't match
Steam "similar price" policy only applies to Steam keys... and even then it is quite vague, as it is meant to only punish those who are exploiting the system.
Maybe is great or publishers but not for me. I buy games not publish them so why should I even care about that. From my perspective that are zero benefits to buy from EGS unless they sell a game significantly lower than steam sale price.