I feel that there's an issue of ignorance and/or snobbery when it comes to the 'business' side of the 'gaming business'

[Loanshark]

Great topic OP and a well laid out post. A similiar thought struck me while reading a recent thread here about EA's own perspective on their (limited) switch support. A lot of posters were very upset, dismissed EA's reasoning outright, implying that EA's whole marketing department as well as their analysts are mistaken, while they themselves as Nintendo fans know better. The sheer arrogance and entitlement in that thread was extraordinary, as toxic as it gets on this forum outside of Etcetera. True, a certain amount of back-seat driving is par for the course when it comes to the development side, but gamers really start going crazy with it as soon as it touches the business side.

 

[7thFloor]

You're on the internet. There will be people who know more than you. Genuinely not trying to start a fight here - but your way of talking down to others on a subject you have some knowledge of is pretty snobbish.

I'll go ahead and do what I just recommended against and be a bit snobby. I too have a degree - an economics one. It also happens to be from a university that is world renowned. I'm not a business advisor, but I earn a comfortable life doing work related to the equity markets. I'd say - at best - you're as informed on the topic of business i am.

Even so - You and I are not some sort of authority on these issues, and while your takes may have a little more weight because of your qualifications you come off pretty poorly when you completely disregard others because you think you know better.

Click to shrink...

Aren't you missing the point of the thread, some people love to speak authoritatively about things they don't actually understand, and that behavior should be discouraged. As you said, your education does lend more weight to your arguments and opinions, your potential to be constructive is higher and it would be good of you to steer people in the right direction while avoiding a condescending attitude. It doesn't make you arrogant or dismissive to point out misinformation or the misuse of terminology.

 

[treble]

"Business" is just a way to excuse humanity's basest impulses. Anyone advocating for them has an interest in putting their foot on the gas pedal, heading to the bottom.

 

[low-G]

All fans of things, football team fans, movie fans, etc seem to be extremely negative and hatefilled.

However, the difference is game fans keep coming back for more abuse. They'll buy shitty sequels to games they hated. They'll begrudgingly buy that Nintendo platform even after they're tired of Nintendo's BS. They'll buy that Epic Store exclusive. They'll rebuy their PS4 games after Sony permabans their account.

I think fans of other things have an easier time letting go and moving on. I think that is the edge in which the toxicity comes from gamers to devs / the businesses.

 

[Plum]

I disagree with your assessment of exclusivity implying a monopoly. In economic terms, a monopoly is a market where the supplier has control over the price or the quantity of the good/service. This would typically be the case when there's a sole producer but that also doesn't have to be necessarily true, as a large market share relative to other competitors maybe sufficient as well. Many developers have questioned the fairness of Steam's revenue share rate but as there's no credible competitor to Steam, Valve essentially gets to set that price. This is in the market of gaming platforms where game creators are consumers and Valve is the supplier.

Click to shrink...

Having control over the price/quantity of a good/service is part of a monopoly, yes, but I don't see it as indicative of a monopoly and nor did those who taught me. One of the examples we went through when I was learning all this was the British supermarket firm Tesco. It is, by far, the largest supermarket firm in the UK and, therefore, has a significant amount of power when it comes to setting the prices that its suppliers have to pay for them to get a place in their stores. However it is not a monopoly in my eyes because it has not 'dominated' its competitors to the extent that it gets the virtually exclusive ability to set prices for suppliers. Steam is in the same camp; it is a significant company with a significant share of its market, and it does set the prices for its suppliers (game developers), but it is not large enough or powerful enough to stop many, and many significant, storefronts from forming and thriving.

You're on the internet. There will be people who know more than you. Genuinely not trying to start a fight here - but your way of talking down to others on a subject you have some knowledge of is pretty snobbish.

I'll go ahead and do what I just recommended against and be a bit snobby. I too have a degree - an economics one. It also happens to be from a university that is world renowned. I'm not a business advisor, but I earn a comfortable life doing work related to the equity markets. I'd say - at best - you're as informed on the topic of business i am.

Even so - You and I are not some sort of authority on these issues, and while your takes may have a little more weight because of your qualifications you come off pretty poorly when you completely disregard others because you think you know better.

Click to shrink...

This feels like it's veering into tone policing territory because, personally, I don't see the issue with acknowledging that one person in an argument/debate has more knowledge regarding a subject than the other. I'm in no way going to declare myself a 'Business Expert' or something and there are definitely a lot more people who know a lot more than I do, but I do know more about business than most people and I can't just ignore that fact when discussing things relating to business.

Maybe I just have little patience with this because Britain has had the problem of people being 'tired of experts' for years and it's gotten us into, well, that. Those who have worked hard to educate themselves on a subject are dismissed as elitist snobs for telling other people that they're wrong whilst those who are in the wrong are seen as inherently 'better' and therefore more 'trustworthy' because they, well, aren't snobs.

 

[Jarhab]

Honestly? I want to be civil about your OP, but your epic games write up REEKS of snobbery and (paraphrasing) "People don't know what a monopoly is and steam isn't technically a monopoly" is far more snobbish than any of the examples you're put in your post. I don't use EGS (or really PC gaming at all), but claiming that Steam doesn't have heavily monopolistic characteristics seems very divorced from reality. It's definitely a discussion with merit to whether that's actually the case, but DAMN you seriously hand waved it in your OP.

Click to shrink...

How is Steam a monopoly? What practices have they performed to suppress competition? As the OP mentioned, simply being the market leader doesn't automatically make you a monopoly. The fact that you admitted to not being a PC gamer is pretty telling.

 

[Jamix012]

Aren't you missing the point of the thread, some people love to speak authoritatively about things they don't actually understand, and that behavior should be discouraged. As you said, your education does lend more weight to your arguments and opinions, your potential to be constructive is higher and it would be good of you to steer people in the right direction while avoiding a condescending attitude. It doesn't make you arrogant or dismissive to point out misinformation or the misuse of terminology.

Click to shrink...

I agree with what you're saying to an extent - with background in subjects you can say things - but to then be dismissive when others try to create discussion because of your "qualifications" is the true snobbery here. Being dismissive is more than just having an attitude about what one knows - it's about legitimately knowing that even with experience, everyone can learn. No one's authority can't be challenged by legitimate discussion.

 

[Deleted member 32018]

Great topic OP and a well laid out post. A similiar thought struck me while reading a recent thread here about EA's own perspective on their (limited) switch support. A lot of posters were very upset, dismissed EA's reasoning outright, implying that EA's whole marketing department as well as their analysts are mistaken, while they themselves as Nintendo fans know better. The sheer arrogance and entitlement in that thread was extraordinary, as toxic as it gets on this forum outside of Etcetera. True, a certain amount of back-seat driving is par for the course when it comes to the development side, but gamers really start going crazy with it as soon as it touches the business side.

Click to shrink...

EA were part of the Switch reveal in 2017, when the Executive VP comes on stage and says that he loves the culture of creativity and goes to say that the middle name of his son is Luigi, I understand why fans are mad that they have all but abandoned the platform because Switch owners don't purchase enough MTX.

 

[Window]

Having control over the price/quantity of a good/service is part of a monopoly, yes, but I don't see it as indicative of a monopoly and nor did those who taught me. One of the examples we went through when I was learning all this was the British supermarket firm Tesco. It is, by far, the largest supermarket firm in the UK and, therefore, has a significant amount of power when it comes to setting the prices that its suppliers have to pay for them to get a place in their stores. However it is not a monopoly in my eyes because it has not 'dominated' its competitors to the extent that it gets the virtually exclusive ability to set prices for suppliers. Steam is in the same camp; it is a significant company with a significant share of its market, and it does set the prices for its suppliers (game developers), but it is not large enough or powerful enough to stop many, and many significant, storefronts from forming and thriving.

Click to shrink...

I don't know if I would call Steam a monopoly either but that's not necessarily relevant to the topic of whether Epic's exclusivity deals is anti-competitive behaviour or if it's actually increasing competition. As I said in my post, exclusive dealing isn't necessarily anti-competitive. Increasing competition in this space isn't predicated on Steam being a monopoly.

And I disagree that a firm needs to have exclusive market power to set prices to be considered a monopoly. I can't imagine any competition regulatory authority implementing competition law on such a narrow and tight interpretation of monopoly. In the end, it's about achieving better outcomes for consumers and that's the context in which market power needs to be assessed. Different countries' competition authorities have different yardsticks on when to intervene though. Australia's tends to be quite active.

 

[Jamix012]

How is Steam a monopoly? What practices have they performed to suppress competition? As the OP mentioned, simply being the market leader doesn't automatically make you a monopoly. The fact that you admitted to not being a PC gamer is pretty telling.

Click to shrink...

The quick answer is that pure monopolies don't really exist very often, but the idea of monopoly power exists for companies with large enough market share and google will show you many reputable sources for what monopoly power does (again - even if the company in question is not a pure monopoly.)

The question i'd ask about Steam in regards to its monopoly power is not "what has it been doing" but "what hasn't it been doing that a firm in a competitive market would do?" It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%, valve itself doesn't make games anymore really and is content to basically rest on its laurels only making minimal (outwardly visible) changes to its platform.

Not sure how me not really being much of PC gamer is telling anything, but I'm curious, what do you mean?

 

[eonden]

The quick answer is that pure monopolies don't really exist very often, but the idea of monopoly power exists for companies with large enough market share and google will show you many reputable sources for what monopoly power does (again - even if the company in question is not a pure monopoly.)

The question i'd ask about Steam in regards to its monopoly power is not "what has it been doing" but "what hasn't it been doing that a firm in a competitive market would do?" It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%, valve itself doesn't make games anymore really and is content to basically rest on its laurels only making minimal (outwardly visible) changes to its platform.

Not sure how me not really being much of PC gamer is telling anything, but I'm curious, what do you mean?

Click to shrink...

Lets break out this point:

1.It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%
Thats the standard cut by all stores and platforms. If anything, a reduction of the cut could be seen as a monopolistic move as they would be leveraging their size to take out of bussiness smaller competition. Steam has also always offered a better bussiness model than their direct competitor (in consoles) with free unlimited generation of keys.

2.Valve doenst make games anymore
They have 2 of the biggest GAAS games in Dota2 and CS:GO that have been continuously updated for years (together with another highly played game in TF2), as well as just released 2 games in less than a year (after a small drought in time tbf). A better statement would be "Valve doesnt make games for me anymore" as they have focused more on GAAS.

3.Basically rest on its laurels by making small changes to its platform.
Steam has made more changes in one year than many of their competitors have done since they have launched (looking at you Origin). That many people that do not use Steam do not see many changes doesnt remove that they have happened (next link is only for 2018):

Steam :: Steamworks Development :: Steam - 2018 Year in Review

At the end of each year, we like to take time to assess the work we've done over the past twelve months and do some planning for the future. This is an informal, internal process and normally isn't the type of thing we'd publicize. But as we started to look at the work we put into Steam in 2018...

steamcommunity.com

Steam has continued to adapt and evolve with time, as there is several competition to be had in the fielld (atracting players from consoles, reducing piracy to even lower levels and entering new markets, making a better store to compete with "internal platform competition" (Steam key resellers)). Steam has not stayed still nor used the "monopoly" power to force anything onto the market.

 

[7thFloor]

The quick answer is that pure monopolies don't really exist very often, but the idea of monopoly power exists for companies with large enough market share and google will show you many reputable sources for what monopoly power does (again - even if the company in question is not a pure monopoly.)

The question i'd ask about Steam in regards to its monopoly power is not "what has it been doing" but "what hasn't it been doing that a firm in a competitive market would do?" It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%, valve itself doesn't make games anymore really and is content to basically rest on its laurels only making minimal (outwardly visible) changes to its platform.

Not sure how me not really being much of PC gamer is telling anything, but I'm curious, what do you mean?

Click to shrink...

You can't really say they've been resting on their laurels considering they just released the Index. And who's to say they don't have games in development.
Do you consider Steam to be a monopoly?

 

[laxu]

The business side is often the part of game development that crushes the dreams of both players and developers. Publishers demand the game to be out for X fiscal/holiday/event season or developers take an Epic Store deal to have some steady, guaranteed money so they can get paid and put food on the table. The reasoning behind things like these is often reasonable from a business point of view, but leads to animosity from gamers and sometimes into broken, unfinished games like Anthem where the developers had lofty goals that got cut down to get the game on the market ASAP.

Likewise PR is hugely important for any company that doesn't have a solid following yet. From Software can just say "hey we have a new game coming" and people will pull out their wallets whereas an unknown indie dev will need to get the word out a lot more by getting streamers to play the game, websites to review it or just word of mouth from a site like ResetEra.

The Ooblets ordeal is a great example of a developer not understanding the value of marketing and public image. It also shows that developers can be just as toxic as some gamers, the difference is with most game companies you interact with a PR machine that knows how to remain neutral for better or worse to sell us a product that is made by a group of people whose political or personal opinions might not line up anywhere near ours but that has no bearing on how good they are as game developers.

 

[7thFloor]

The reasoning behind things like these is often reasonable from a business point of view, but leads to animosity from gamers and sometimes into broken, unfinished games like Anthem where the developers had lofty goals that got cut down to get the game on the market ASAP.

Click to shrink...

Anthem's development was troubled for a plethora of reasons that weren't business related, you should read the kotaku article about it if you haven't.

 

[Window]

Lets break out this point:

1.It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%
Thats the standard cut by all stores and platforms. If anything, a reduction of the cut could be seen as a monopolistic move as they would be leveraging their size to take out of bussiness smaller competition.

Click to shrink...

Not really, unless they were setting the rate at uneconomical levels to the point where they're making less than the cost of capital/market return rate.

A question about other platforms (cause I've never used any big ones besides Steam), which ones besides Steam and EGS allow self publishing? GoG?

 

[Necron]

The best business point that people consistently refuse to understand, and/or are very ignorant of: how licensing and legacy content rights can make game (re)releases more complicated. People in here seem to have the mentality that there's nothing that should stop a company from releasing legacy content and then forget that a game is made of multiple components. For instance, voice acting and soundtracks can sometimes require negotiation for rerelease due to licensing for use.

Or how someone else's intellectual property that's referenced in the game can cause even more roadblocks, due to the lack of future proofing during original development. Instead of understanding the nuances of licensing, people generally devolve into "BBBUT RELEASE IT!!1!1!"

Click to shrink...

As someone dealing with a lot of IPR, this annoys me the most actually.

 

[eonden]

Not really, unless they were setting the rate at uneconomical levels to the point where they're making less than the cost of capital/market return rate.

A question about other platforms (cause I've never used any big ones besides Steam), which ones besides Steam and EGS allow self publishing? GoG?

Click to shrink...

Technically everyone allows self publishing nowadays. It is just a problem of getting inside the curated store, which might require more work than viable if you dont have a publisher. Even consoles allow that.

And taking into account the profit range from GoG (which are never that great), there is certainly a close point where profit isnt that easy. And mainly, it would be a problem in the "internal Steam key market" (where oficial key sellers reside) as they do take advantage of the cut to put out discounts and compete with Steam (and other stores). A lower % means it will be much harder for them to operate at a profit.

 

[Plum]

The quick answer is that pure monopolies don't really exist very often, but the idea of monopoly power exists for companies with large enough market share and google will show you many reputable sources for what monopoly power does (again - even if the company in question is not a pure monopoly.)

The question i'd ask about Steam in regards to its monopoly power is not "what has it been doing" but "what hasn't it been doing that a firm in a competitive market would do?" It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%, valve itself doesn't make games anymore really and is content to basically rest on its laurels only making minimal (outwardly visible) changes to its platform.

Not sure how me not really being much of PC gamer is telling anything, but I'm curious, what do you mean?

Click to shrink...

Lets break out this point:

1.It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%
Thats the standard cut by all stores and platforms. If anything, a reduction of the cut could be seen as a monopolistic move as they would be leveraging their size to take out of bussiness smaller competition. Steam has also always offered a better bussiness model than their direct competitor (in consoles) with free unlimited generation of keys.

2.Valve doenst make games anymore
They have 2 of the biggest GAAS games in Dota2 and CS:GO that have been continuously updated for years (together with another highly played game in TF2), as well as just released 2 games in less than a year (after a small drought in time tbf). A better statement would be "Valve doesnt make games for me anymore" as they have focused more on GAAS.

3.Basically rest on its laurels by making small changes to its platform.
Steam has made more changes in one year than many of their competitors have done since they have launched (looking at you Origin). That many people that do not use Steam do not see many changes doesnt remove that they have happened (next link is only for 2018):

Steam :: Steamworks Development :: Steam - 2018 Year in Review

At the end of each year, we like to take time to assess the work we've done over the past twelve months and do some planning for the future. This is an informal, internal process and normally isn't the type of thing we'd publicize. But as we started to look at the work we put into Steam in 2018...

steamcommunity.com

Steam has continued to adapt and evolve with time, as there is several competition to be had in the fielld (atracting players from consoles, reducing piracy to even lower levels and entering new markets, making a better store to compete with "internal platform competition" (Steam key resellers)). Steam has not stayed still nor used the "monopoly" power to force anything onto the market.

Click to shrink...

Not really, unless they were setting the rate at uneconomical levels to the point where they're making less than the cost of capital/market return rate.

A question about other platforms (cause I've never used any big ones besides Steam), which ones besides Steam and EGS allow self publishing? GoG?

Click to shrink...

Hey! I appreciate the great discussion here from both sides but I feel that it's veering a little bit away from what this thread's about (and that's mostly my fault lol, I did start the whole debate). Would it be possible for another thread to be made because I do feel that the discussion about whether Steam is a monopoly has the potential (you never do know) to be really good :)

 

[Jarhab]

The quick answer is that pure monopolies don't really exist very often, but the idea of monopoly power exists for companies with large enough market share and google will show you many reputable sources for what monopoly power does (again - even if the company in question is not a pure monopoly.)

The question i'd ask about Steam in regards to its monopoly power is not "what has it been doing" but "what hasn't it been doing that a firm in a competitive market would do?" It hasn't, until recently, had any decent conversations about taking less than 30%, valve itself doesn't make games anymore really and is content to basically rest on its laurels only making minimal (outwardly visible) changes to its platform.

Not sure how me not really being much of PC gamer is telling anything, but I'm curious, what do you mean?

Click to shrink...

1) 30% is the standard cut for digital distribution. It's the same cut that Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Google and GOG take. None of those companies have reduced their cut even after Valve introduced their scaling cut based on a game's revenue.
2) Valve allows developers and publishers to generate and distribute Steam keys for free. That means zero cut for Valve and allows resellers to offer lower prices than available on Steam.
3) Valve allows developers and publishers to keep store pages on Steam and use Valve-developed resources on games that are exclusive to other platforms.
4) Valve still develops games and supports existing ones. Within the last year, they've released Dota Underlords, Artifact and Aperture Hand Lab.
5) Valve has constantly iterated on Steam ever since its inception. Just recently, they added Steam Labs which gives customers a way to choose which discoverability tools Valve should work on next. The newly-introduced Interactive Recommender is the first result of that initiative. The reason that Steam has so many more features than its competitors is because it hasn't been stagnant at all.
6) Steam is not required for a game's success. EA hasn't released a game on Steam in 8 years. Blizzard has never released any of their games on Steam. Some of the most popular PC games aren't on Steam (League of Legends, Minecraft, Crossfire, Fortnite, etc).
7) Valve doesn't require games to use Steamworks nor does it prohibit games from launching simultaneously on other platforms.
8) Valve doesn't pay for exclusivity.

I said it's telling that you're not a PC gamer because you clearly have no idea what you're talking about and haven't bothered to do any research.

 

[eonden]

Hey! I appreciate the great discussion here from both sides but I feel that it's veering a little bit away from what this thread's about (and that's mostly my fault lol). Would it be possible for another thread to be made because I do feel that the discussion about whether Steam is a monopoly has the potential (you never do know) to be really good :)

Click to shrink...

True, sorry for taking over the topic. I just read that and had to answer some of those points. Thanks for your OP. And I do agree with you on PR being an important task that is always forgotten in general (and more in gaming). You can make the most awesome product ever, but if noone knows about it, or is off-put by the image of it, it can (and most likely will) end up being a disaster.

 

[Meg Cherry]

I don't see it as snobbery to correct an incorrect usage of a term, especially when you then go on to misuse the term again by implying Steam has 'monopolistic characteristics' whilst not actually referring to what those characteristics are.

Click to shrink...

Redirecting conversation to be about the technical dictionary definition of 'monopoly' - rather than actually engaging the discourse about Valve's power in the PC gaming distribution space - is snobbery.

Placement on Steam is effectively a prerequisite to success for the vast majority of smaller developers. This gives a single company immense control over the platform, despite the existence of alternative storefronts.

That's all people are talking about when terms like 'monopolistic practices' pop up. It's about the present power dynamic of the platform, and the potiential for abuse.

 

[blueredandgold]

You left out the grand daddy of all of these - piracy and the blase attitude that stems from the fact that as long as there has been someone trying to do business legitimately in this industry, there's going to someone striving to take it without paying for it, almost like second nature.

Then trying to justify that practice by any means necessary, even by conflating it with other issues and moving the goal posts.

 

[Window]

Technically everyone allows self publishing nowadays. It is just a problem of getting inside the curated store, which might require more work than viable if you dont have a publisher. Even consoles allow that.

Click to shrink...

Right but how many actually allow a dev to publish a game to the store by themselves without having to go through a long QA or curation check? I probably doubt Origin would be part of this. I think Origin, Uplay, Battlenet are publisher specific stores unlike Steam or GoG which makes them less of a competitor (from the pov of developers).

Edit: okay fair enough, let's continue this elsewhere.

On the actual thread subject, while I generally agree I think this has less to do with gaming and more to with the internet in general as the OT threads kind of illustrate. On the other hand, some threads on gaming are weird because of the number of armchair strategizing which occurs in some of the sales threads which can be interesting and thoughtful at times and completely bonkers at (most) others.

 

[eonden]

Right but how many actually allow a dev to publish a game to the store by themselves without having to go through a long QA or curation check? I probably doubt Origin would be part of this. I think Origin, Uplay, Battlenet are publisher specific stores unlike Steam or GoG which makes them less of a competitor (from the pov of developers).

Click to shrink...

The only stores that allow that would be Steam and itch.io.

What you are talking about is curation, not self-publishing, andde. Only "not curated" stores are Steam and itch.io as GoG, Discord, Origin, and EGS are curated.

This concept can also be tied with problem of monopolistic attitude:
For instance, not that long ago, many independent developers used to complain that Steam by virtue of being a heavily curated storefront (similar to consoles) in an open market, actively harmed developers as their success could be impaired by not launching on Steam (something that they had no control for). Important to notice that there were at the time also different stores that allowed them to launch without issue (such as itchio or desura). Steam heard those complains and opened up more and more to independent developers to avoid acting as gatekeepers that could prevent those games' success by not being on Steam, starting with Greenlight (kinda like a popularity contest for new) and later on with Direct (requiring only a small fee for new devs per launch).

 

[Plum]

Redirecting conversation to be about the technical dictionary definition of 'monopoly' - rather than actually engaging the discourse about Valve's power in the PC gaming distribution space - is snobbery.

Placement on Steam is effectively a prerequisite to success for the vast majority of smaller developers. This gives a single company immense control over the platform, despite the existence of alternative storefronts.

That's all people are talking about when terms like 'monopolistic practices' pop up. It's about the present power dynamic of the platform, and the potiential for abuse.

Click to shrink...

Showing people that they're misusing very heated terms such as 'monopoly' shouldn't be seen as snobbery, especially in a thread like this which is not actually about the 'discourse' surrounding Valve's power in the PC gaming distribution space. In my eyes people being more knowledgeable about certain terms and aspects of business only serves improve the discourse as a whole because that knowledge can be used to look at what Steam actually is rather than what they wrongfully believe it is.

 

[Meg Cherry]

Showing people that they're misusing very heated terms such as 'monopoly' shouldn't be seen as snobbery, especially in a thread like this which is not actually about the 'discourse' surrounding Valve's power in the PC gaming distribution space. In my eyes people being more knowledgeable about certain terms and aspects of business only serves improve the discourse as a whole because that knowledge can be used to look at what Steam actually is rather than what they wrongfully believe it is.

Click to shrink...

Wouldn't it be more effective to actually approach their concerns about WHY they believe Steam has monopolistic tendencies, rather than lecturing them on the technical definition of the term?

Because it genuinely seems like that's just driving the conversation into semantics for no real reason.

 

[Plum]

Wouldn't it be more effective to actually approach their concerns about WHY they believe Steam has monopolistic tendencies, rather than lecturing them on the technical definition of the term?

Because it genuinely seems like that's just driving the conversation into semantics for no real reason.

Click to shrink...

Because when one side has wrongfully decided that something is a certain way (they're declaring Steam to be a monopoly, not saying it has monopolistic tendencies) then the discourse as a whole is tainted. I used the example of how socialism is perceived in the US: things that aren't socialism are made out to be that way and, as such, any real attempt to further the discourse is hampered by the factor of "that thing is the enemy and must be stopped."

And I'm not driving the conversation into semantics because this thread was never about that conversation in the first place. The whole 'Steam is a monopoly' thing was but one of three main points I made (and a minor one at that) but, due to the heated nature of EGS stuff, it's become the primary point of discussion.

 

[Darknight]

This has been a long problem that isn't limited to games. It's anything in general where people will often ignore or just won't understand why a business does something and makes the decisions that they do. If anything they dismiss the argument as to a simple "why should I care as a consumer?" I hate that response so much. Understanding why things are done should be at a bare minimum especially if you want to change the thing that is done. If you want to change behavior, you have to understand the details in what drives that behavior and how to make it so that those details are no longer desirable. Another one I hate is when people complain about money being left on the table without understanding that often what they want means the company ends up with less money.

 

[MegaManTrigger]

I definitely agree with you there, but I'd also add that the lack of game preservation/re-releases isn't completely criticism-free because of those reasons. The gaming industry tends to heavily favour short-term contracts when compared to other mediums such as TV and especially film and that, to me, is something that should be called out.

Click to shrink...

I totally agree with the fact that it shouldn't be criticism-free, but this is actually refreshing for once because you're asking the more important questions such as contract length + trends of business deals related to licensing in gaming relative to other entertainment industries + finding a sustainable way to future proof instead of having to do the same song and dance every new generation of consoles. That's at least way more productive than complaining about drip-feed to the point of not understanding the nuances of licensing. At the same time, there's also the fact that game companies have recognized that they can sell legacy content again and still make a decent amount of money doing it.

As someone dealing with a lot of IPR, this annoys me the most actually.

Click to shrink...

I can imagine.

 

[Terra]

Arguing about definitions as if words don't have loose and colloquial meanings. Maybe business folk need some English classes...

 

[7thFloor]

Wouldn't it be more effective to actually approach their concerns about WHY they believe Steam has monopolistic tendencies, rather than lecturing them on the technical definition of the term?

Because it genuinely seems like that's just driving the conversation into semantics for no real reason.

Click to shrink...

Do you not see the harm in misusing loaded terms like that? You can explain the correct usage of the term and approach their concerns at the same time, those two things don't conflict with each other at all.

 

[Ogodei]

People speak cavalierly to be sure, but to assume the opposite, that the people under fire are doing the best thing for their business (setting aside whether that thing is morally right), which ascribes too much competence and too little personal flavor to what often happens.

The EA-Nintendo thing, for instance, I think is attributed to a certain malice. The early releases on the Wii U were self-sabotage to sell a narrative of failure to the investors, when the motive instead was more to assert dominance over the industry, like they did with Sega, to show what happens to manufacturers who cross EA. This is not a correct business approach, it's a power play.

You here stories of Randy Pitchford's shenanigans, or what happened to Hideo Kojima in his final days at Konami.

Like politics, business is an interplay of systems and personalities.

Another part of it is a frustration with the system itself. Like with Reggie for instance. He may have had personal feelings when he went out there to defend NCL's bullshit that he had to suppress, but that comes with the territory of needing to put your humanity away in the pursuit of someone else's profit.

 

[Alek]

This varies from studio to studio. I have friends at EA that do not crunch, and rather enjoy the work they do, and they've had 20+ year careers in the industry.

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I always hear things like this but I think it misses the point.

I think that you can judge the moral quality of a business / society by how it treats it's lowest, and most disposable staff members.

At companies like EA, Rockstar, Sony, you have folks that do crunch extremely hours. You have QA staff that are treated like they're worthless, and inequal to other members of staff, you have people on zero hour contracts that struggle to get by. You have policies that discriminate against staff members with mental health issues, you have toxic work environments that people choose to turn a blind eye to.

With this in mind, I think 'my buddy works in x department and says things are okay for him' doesn't really add anything helpful to the conversation. Yes, not all game developers are treated like shit, yes, not all work environments at big studios are terrible, but that doesn't take anything away from the very real issues, that affect large numbers of employees across the games industry.

 

[Velocity:Design:Comfort]

J

I don't see it as snobbery to correct an incorrect usage of a term, especially when you then go on to misuse the term again by implying Steam has 'monopolistic characteristics' whilst not actually referring to what those characteristics are.

Think of it this way, if a prominent journalist had said "the lack of memory on the Switch is making it so that you can't store many games," then I wouldn't call someone a snob for saying that memory and storage space aren't the same thing, especially if that person had years of education on the subject. Why is it different for business?

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jason knows more than you lol

 

[Walnut]

J

jason knows more than you lol

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....about?

 

[justiceiro]

I understand your sentiment of feeling like your job or the object or your study is treated wrongfully or not valued enough, but I also think you are giving to much weight to random, reactionary comments posted in the internet. I know, it gets repeated a lot, but it does so because its a bottom of the barrel level of simpathy it gets.

Also, we are consumer, so we want the maximum paying the minimum. I would be more simpathetic if I didn't knew that the job of the "businesses" people is not making me pay the maximum possible, but most of the time, it is. So I can only care about what I want and what I value, and so everyone else who post here.

I understand it's the bunisses side of people who get things like composers, writer, the right localization team and the right team to do distribution, but from my perspective, when the business team show up from facing the consumer a lot, something is going very wrong. The one who needs to see the business team work is not the consumer.

 

[Armaros]

J

jason knows more than you lol

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So Jason has an education and training in business? Most specifically regarding monopolistic practices?

 

[finalflame]

Great points, OP. People understand very little about the things they criticize here.

 

[cardboardboxer]

This is easily my favorite OP on here of all time. It constantly irks me how many gamers often seem to be willingly ignorant about how valid business considerations shape the decisions of the developers and therefore the games they love.

Some my (least) favorites:

"Company doesn't do thing I want or re-release game I want and they are leaving money on the table/lazy devs/hate money." What comes to mind here is the people who just refuse to accept that the Virtual Console died because tying games to the online service is a better business model for Nintendo.

"X thing COULD happen if they would just hire more devs/not be greedy/spend more money." The obvious example here is a certain position taken in the recent Pokémon controversy.

"X thing was done amazingly by one gaming company once and now I expect it to be the standard everywhere instead of seeing that company as being particularly talented." Obvious example here is how people treat the Xbox's amazing backwards compatibility as the new standard for Sony or Nintendo instead of seeing it as a technical marvel from THE top software vendor in the world like it is.

"X product is hard to find because the company that makes it is practicing artificial scarcity to drive up demand for the product." NO company in this industry is practicing this. Every single one wants to sell as many products as they can as soon as they can. Now what does happen is a few times a company will have a conservative forecast for a new product that is far below demand and it takes a while to get extra production capacity online for additional units. But no company in gaming wants to make their product hard to get. That concept just needs to die.

"Why should you or I care about X business consideration, we aren't shareholders we are the customers!" The answer is "because if you want to have any clue of how to set your personal expectations of the likely outcomes of whatever the situation is the best way to do that is by looking at the business considerations at play."

 

[7thFloor]

J

jason knows more than you lol

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please don't drive-by shit post lol

 

[cyrribrae]

I agree that it's hard to find people who really care about the business side of things, and in some ways it can be refreshing to hear people just talk about it. But there's such a fear of backlash with those discussions, I can understand why they're so guarded. Even in the Ooblets controversy, I appreciated the initial announcement (not the blog post) for being honest about the money, the deal, AND humanizing the impact of that on real humans with real lives and real concerns about how to live them.

I also think your post brings up some of the reasons why this is the case, though. It's complicated. Business is hard to understand, no less so than all the technical details. And, I would argue, the same level of misinformation and ignorance can sometimes be seen on that side of the equation as well. "Why can't they just add in internet that works" "They're so stupid for not listening to the fanbase and get rid of this mechanic" "This game would be good if they had just made the character like this" etc.

I think "monopoly" is a great example. For you and the government, monopoly has a very specific meaning that Steam certainly does not reach. And, I think it's fair to say that Steam has not historically thrown their market leader status around in too obvious a way that would be a problem for consumers. But.. I also would argue that dismissing the argument that Steam's market leadership is worth challenging on the basis that "monopoly" is the wrong term, is perhaps too strict of an expectation for people. In the same way that I would recognize that someone complaining about the "graphics" has a valid opinion in not liking the way the game looks, even if they don't know how ray tracing interacts with global illumination.

But yea. That's why I really appreciate Phil Spencer being so open about the business of Xbox. Obviously, he's not going to just lay out the entire strategic plan, but he doesn't shy away from saying that everyone needs to find a business model and that his job is to make sure that the division is profitable. I shouldn't necessarily care whether or not giant corporation X or Z make money, but I appreciate the context to help think about those things too

 

[Catshade]

It's business-development instead of strictly business, but I remember the rage on gaf because the skullgirls dev dared to ask tens of thousands of dollars in kickstarter money for additional characters dlc. "Its just 2D sprites with a few frames why do you need thousands of dollars to make it!?"

 

[snail_maze]

This is a good topic. At the end of the day actually selling your product/service is what matters most if you are actually running your studio as a business and not as a way of expressing yourself as an artist.

I also always find the "EGS is breaking the steam monopoly" discussion funny since the entire thing only came about after the success of Fortnite, which in turn isn't on steam. Pretty much none of the most successful PC games are on steam

 

[TheDutchSlayer]

The industry did this to themselves.

By not explaining how the industry works without real numbers and without real stories.
And more about "magic" "wizards".
+ "how awesome is your game? Dude its so awesome".
And secrets and profit above all else.

It would take 10's of years completely 180'ing this attitude to change the naritive in the industry.

 

[GhostTrick]

I just wanted to say OP, it was a nice writeup. But it's already devolving into a steam vs egs thread. So yikes.

 

[Xiaomi]

The industry did this to themselves.

By not explaining how the industry works without real numbers and without real stories.
And more about "magic" "wizards".
+ "how awesome is your game? Dude its so awesome".
And secrets and profit above all else.

It would take 10's of years completely 180'ing this attitude to change the naritive in the industry.

Click to shrink...

Yeah there are few industries as secretive, wilfully deceptive, and exploitative as the games industry. They set much of the foundation of the industry around gamer hype and obfuscation and allowed it to get out of control.

Want to know what Hollywood movies are coming out, maybe read a plot synopsis? Simple enough; it's online for years. Want to know what books by your favorite author are coming out this year? List of titles from every publisher will be released far in advance. But if you accidentally release a DLC advertisement two days early in the games industry? It's a big fucking deal, and people will lose their shit and possibly their jobs about it. That's not a normal business model, and the sooner the games industry shapes up, becomes more honest and transparent, unionizes, and gets rid of toxic gaming hype, the better.

 

[Sandersson]

It still doesn't change that Steam can influence the industry with it's power and probably has done so behind the scenes without consumers knowing. This is why I won't get annoyed with people not using the perfect dictionary definition of a monopoly because I understand what they mean.

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Aah, the "EGS is chinese spyware"-tier comments appear. Every business with the biggest market share is a monopoly, Valve doesnt innovate anything even though its literally the best launcher that there is and offers the most functionality. On top of that Valve the monopoly's extra ordinary profit is actually an industry standard, hence the extraordinary profit is zero or all console manufacturers and retailers are also monopolies because of said cut. Oh yeah and fuck dictionary, just make up words as you go. Holy fucking shit I think I broke my brain reading your stuff..

 

[Asbsand]

I think the business side of things is often viewed with disdain because the business side of game development often is what gets in the way of consumers getting, what they want.

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This. I am pretty pragmatic about certain things like the EGS deals because it doesn't fully inconvenience a lot of gamers to a reasonable or objective degree. It's a timed exclusive and the inconvenience disappears even if the hype is already dead by then, and objectively the inconvenience is launching a game on a platform you may like less, but that tradeoff to your inconvenience of launching a product compared to the, not just convenience but, safety and support it ensures the developer is what I would call "good business". In some cases it might even have been the means of developers greenlighting a pc-port.

But what I wanted to say especially to the quote is a very great turn of phrase I heard from a person on YouTube many years ago and it's about two types of companies:

There are some companies out there in games business that don't think alike, specifically in what they say...

A: "Make money so we can make more games."
B: "Make games so we can make more money."

This is, maybe a bit banal but to me is still the ultimate distinction between a the mentality of companies like EA and a company like 2004's Bungie or the Iwata-era Nintendo or, if I am to stretch it far as I can, 2019's Capcom.

I know there's a lot of factors and even the better "passion"-companies occasionally slipped into pure capitalistic approaches to game dev like the New Super Mario Bros. part of Iwata's legacy or, if I'm being extreme, EA in their lootbox era which would then be their "safety" net to the road to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order... yeah, sorry but I doubt it. That's a personal take though.

The capitalistic approach to games publishing that EA has often taken goes beyond "creating a safety net", they've made too blatant, too obvious missteps in their bartering with us the consumers. A lot of their approaches have seemed like what I think it is: Greed. I do know that if you look at their yearly reports they don't always rake it in and certainly not last year, but I believe they would make less short-term thinking if they truly cared about the games they release and show they understand why a consumer wants to buy it, beyond the careless mainstream consumers who are victim to advertisements and where companies spend their marketing budget. But the people at the top of that company enjoy the privilege of their positions a bit too much, and they seem like they just want more. The top of EA from the outside looks like a lodge of lucky people who get to make asinine decisions for games publishing with only one goal in mind: We have to make more money, and games exist to achieve that... And I don't believe all companies actually act on that idea as EA or Activision do.

...And I think the backlash you see is because people who play games can look at what good things games can do, and how, with the worst business conglomerates such as EA in the industry, there seems to be such an active push for "gaming as a money machine" that it is becoming the culture of work, which it may have always had a lot of, but now it's really becoming commercial, attracting people who want nothing else to do with the medium than billions of dollars, and it's also actively pushing gaming in the opposite direction of its values of artistry, fun and even "play" by going too far into purely capitalistic ventures.

 

[Swenhir]

What can I say? Great write-up, balanced and detailed.

If I had to sum up why I agree, it's that I find that the conversation and media-PR circus has devolved into a fracas that has almost nothing in common with the topic at end. It's childish, about popularity rather than arguments or correctness and it feels like everyone - gamers, developers and publishers - is dragging the level down at terminal velocity. In other news, water is wet, but it's always good to read sanity checks like yours OP.

I hope this mess settles down soon and saner heads prevail.

 

[Deleted member 32018]

Holy fucking shit I think I broke my brain reading your stuff..

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Where did I say that Steam was a monopoly? No company is technically a monopoly right now otherwise they would have been investigated.

It seems like you are getting riled up for no reason and trying to explain business terms to someone with a degree in business (me) is hilarious.

Also the definition of words change over time to better suit the world we live in.