A similar thing is happening in PC gaming. Tons of new stores making exclusivity deals to try to take from Steam which I don't think has ever had an exclusive title.
It's quickly ruining PC gaming for me. Thanks DRM.
It's quickly ruining PC gaming for me. Thanks DRM.
The multitude of stores is proving very difficult for independent developers that would ideally release on every store, because each one comes with different APIs, DRM and community features that require bespoke integrations in both the game and game server (if you have one). The documentation for this stuff is rarely great due in part to the secrecy surrounding the industry, and the speed at which publishers are knocking their own stores together.
Don't worry, they're working on that. EA Access, Microsoft All Access, and others are looking to fill that "missing feature".
I'd also point out that on the Nintendo Switch subscription program, there are a number of games (such as Tetris 99) that you can't buy or play without being a subscriber.
And so, I'd argue that the change is underway, today.
Aren't all of Valve's titles exclusive to Steam? I remember being annoyed that I had to install steam for some version of Counter Strike in the early 00s, and didn't think the situation had changed.
They’re allowed to release elsewhere, it’s just such a pain compared to steam that nobody does so.
IMHO, exclusives are obnoxious and I'm glad Steam doesn't do that. The physical retail market is full of crap like that, or pre-order bonuses that are tied to particular retailers. All of that garbage is a cancer on the gaming market.
They are removing themselves from even the possibility that I might think about buying. I just don't shop there. If I can't find something that interests me on Steam, GOG, or Humble, I stop looking. And I also didn't really appreciate the constant upsell for SP:FBW DRM, and other Ubisoft titles, while I was still playing. They pulled out from Steam to not pay the "Steam tax", but they didn't lower their prices to compensate; they just made the "Steam tax" into the "Ubi tax". If consumers still have to pay it no matter where they go, they don't really have any incentive to shop at a different store.
Sounds like an exclusive to me. You could buy Days Gone (a "ps4 exclusive") from walmart and gamestop (so there's competition at the retail level), but you're still locked to the PS4 platform. It's slightly different for PC because you could conceivably get the cracked version without steam and that steam is free, but arguing it's not an exclusive because you can buy at multiple retailers is a weak argument.
This is the same problem with video streaming, we don't have competition on who can create the best UI, the highest bitrate, the best recommendation algorithm, just multiple monopolies.
Epic on the other hand scares me. They spend heavily on exclusives and will have to make that money back. I doubt this will be possible on just their share in a highly competitive market. Thus I doubt their long term plan coming to fruition will be in us cumstomers best interest.
It wasn't healthy if you were a developer, and were forking over a monopolistic 'PC game tax' to Valve.
Or if you cared about discovery.
Or if you cared about curation (Steam is full of crap!), or approval of games (Steam won't approve my game!). (These are two extremes of the same problem, and many people have issue with Steam's handling of it - they either want it to be stricter, or less strict.)
Mind you, it's entirely possible that you were perfectly content with all of Steam's positions on this (As well as how capriciously they changed, year, over year... But if you claim that, you stretch my credulity.) However, if you were not 100% satisfied with the state of that storefront, its searchability, discoverability, recommendation engine, curation policies, and refund policies, then it would have been in your best interests, as a consumer, to have multiple competing storefronts.
GoG gave Steam a kick in the ass about a number of its consumer-unfriendly policies. Epic is giving Steam a kick in the ass about its market-gouging 30% tax. The Satan-spawn of Origin, UPlay, GFWL are giving Steam an example of how not to run a storefront. I don't even know what Twitch and Discord are doing.
You can sell directly though your own channel and give steam keys. Afaik without paying the 30% steam tax. Those keys don't count for stuff like reviews, to prevent abuse. But this seems like a reasonable trade-off for all parties involved. I'm happy to use the launcher of my choice, dev is happy to avoid the tax, steam is happy to make more likely to use their storefront.
I mostly agree with you and would welcome competition. But I don't see benefits for me if stores compete based on their library of exclusive titles.
As a kid I was addicted to video games and dreamed of working in the industry (that dream is what got me started programming at 8). Now, at 39, I've lost all interest.
With streaming services, you need to pay each one of them, each month to watch your stuff.