So You Want to Compete with Steam (2018)
fortressofdoors.com
fortressofdoors.com
Previous discussion (215 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16173199
Not to mention that as Linux user, they might be the single biggest force that made it so that I have more games on Linux than I have time to actually play.
I think this is why they’ve been able to experiment so much the last few years, to varying success.
You mean like to "solve the cheaters problem" they made so that free users in tf2 can no longer use the chat, while it's still full of cheaters?
Plus often the strategies competitors cook up actively put me off, I don't want the additional overhead of managing more accounts/payment options/social platforms I already have more then I want. And making me jump through those hoops to play an exclusive game will more often then not mean I just don't play the game
Microtransactions, real money loot-boxes, gambling, NFT marketplace, battlepasses
doesn't milk it's users?
Dota used to have $35 "arcanas", a high quality skin for a single hero which were released intermittently - but that wasn't enough money, they're now placed $200+ deep in the yearly battlepass. If you played any of their games, you'd realise they're one of greediest in the business.
They certainly offer a lot of ways to send them money, but it doesn't feel like they're pushing particularly hard. All that Dota stuff is cosmetics, is it not? No gameplay boosts?
Plus, they were talking about Steam the platform, not individual games Valve has developed.
But in any case, while you could argue that that's kinda pushy, that's Valve the game dev, not Valve the platform owner. I don't play Dota so that stuff doesn't affect me at all.
Some of it is outright bad if you blindly rely on it because it goes by global statistics. How was that old story about the air force trying to create a perfect seat for the "average" pilot again? They measured everyone and averaged the results and then they couldn't find a single pilot that fit. The static list of suggested items is interesting, but the "dynamic" suggestions for the next item to build are something I mostly ignore.
And none of which are even close to necessary.
The problem with selling convenience in F2P games is that the developers themselves created the issue they are selling the solution to. For example, having little inventory space. This isn't something that requires development resources to fix, so it's very clearly just there as a problem you can pay to solve. None of this applies to Dotas stuff.
There is a huge difference between cosmetics only and gameplay affecting microtransactions.
With current prices they are not micro anymore anyway.
I bought a new racing wheel a while ago and it wasn't quite working on linux, after doing some searching I found that a Valve employee was working on a patch to the kernel to fix this racing wheel just to make gaming on linux better.
They're standing on the shoulders of Giants, but I also don't see (m)any of the other stores doing likewise.
It doesn't need 'good commercial titles', it needs to be seen as the preferred option for supporting Indies over steam (i.e. if you are presented with the choice, go for itch. If you're already on steam then steam has earned its money).
On the other hand, if you're someone who is frustrated with the commercial nature of current stores and are pining for the simpler times - itch is very much going to scratch that... Itch.
I personally end up mostly on Steam, but on the occasion that I've really wanted to support a developer (usually puzzle games like Patrick's Parabox) I'll go to itch. The bundle for Ukraine recently also had some excellent finds in there.
tl; dr - if you are an indie connoisseur then yes, if you just want to game then probably not.
That's really the trick. Valve is targeting "whales" in the same way that mobile games are. Just not as blatently.
CS:GO and the attached gambling economy regularly goes on to destroy wallets of parents and others at risk of gambling behavior.
Valve certainly isn't a saint, but when it comes to steam, it's a decent platform that gets the job done and doesn't get in your way, no dark patterns there.
I'm not sure that Steam pioneered them but microtransactions are great, they enabled high quality games be free or at least cheap to access for casual players and the few who really dive deep into the content pay accordingly.
Loot boxes and other stuff are things that people want and enjoy. Can be unhealthy for some people but let's not pretend that there are large number of people living on the streets because Steam milked them away like an illegal casino.
Their ways are not designed to make you sell your car to buy a skin.
When Nintendo sold me a game thats unplayably busted on the Switch they just shrugged and told me to suck it up. Steam didn't.
They also pioneered a store that plays less of a moral police than any others.
(Despite all that, I usually prefer GoG these days because I despise DRM and Steams login limit.)
Linux support is nice though.
Seems like Australia should sue other stores as well.
Haven't tried with GoG though, never needed it there.
The oldest articles I can find:
Origin [2013]: https://www.pcgamer.com/ea-origin-refunds/
Steam [2015]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2015/06/02/valve...
And as another person (and if my own memory serves) mentioned, Steam's move was nearly entirely driven by pending lawsuits.
Don't get me wrong, I primarily use Steam and support them because they're the only company really caring about Linux, but I don't think they can be given the credit for pioneering the current refund landscape.
And for GOG not to have a limit on playtime makes sense, since (unless you use Galaxy), they have no way of knowing how much you've played a game.
This was years before Valve would issue refunds even for other similarly broken titles.
I requested refunds from them before they got sued by the ACCC, got told to take it up with the game developer. Contact the game developer who told me to take it up with Valve.
Afterwards they just tell me I played too many hours (ironically because I was trying to repro the issue on a few maps to demonstrate it wasn't me/my computer/etc that was shit)
Guess what, I usually get my refunds back from companies that tell me to f** off.
Is anything stopping the UK from keeping the same consumer protection laws inherited from the EU?
/s
But yes, to your point, Sony doing it on Cyberpunk was extraordinary.
Star Wars Republic Commando, by chance?
I've tried a refund when the studio publicly stated they have no intention of patching the game after launch.
I don't consider that a positive. Big Box stores usually have 15 days for returns.
A lot of big box stores don't want to do 1:1 refunds if the seal has been broken.
They banned loli.
https://kotaku.com/steam-is-banning-sex-games-with-young-loo...
These are consumer law issues that should extend beyond games.
As someone who only uses Steam (and used to play TF2 before all the hat things, but not DotA), I still see Steam in a good way. And I actually discovered that Valve indeed created all the things you mentioned (except NFT markeplace, which I believe is an exaggeration).
I believe that it's good that EGS is trying to compete with Steam, but on the other hand, I'm scared that EGS's tactics will force Steam to use the same tactics and make it less user-friendly.
I e, they pushed gambling and gacha stuff to children. I've always felt they had come up with a perverse incentive s structure with these sales.
it's not greedy if the users are buying it willingly. The game is not pay to win - you can skip all of it, and just enjoy the game on its own.
Not many free to play games can be said to have this.
Valve pioneered a lot of those things before anyone even realised that they were profitable. The way they stumbled into the gambling market looked, from where I sat, like an accidental evolution of a company that was experimental and evidence based. Particularly on DOTA - unless something really changed since the last time I looked you can play the whole game for free and the winner is determined purely by skill. Valve is being entirely reasonable in how they make money - giving people who are huge fans of the game a way to spend money on it.
Other games have a free-to-play but pay-to-win model. League of Legends requires you to pay if you want to play with the newer, more powerful characters. Hearthstone is free to play but adds newer, more powerful cards every season. Building a competitive deck of cards could cost $150-200 per season.
That’s not to say I like this lootbox bullshit. It preys on people who have a weakness for gambling. If I were wired differently I could have spent thousands on them. I think they should be regulated out of existence.
Valve is certainly doing(has done) better than the market ethically, you need to look into their competition to see the state.
Blizzard once crowdfunded a prize pool and ran away with the money.
If valve is milking users, then everyone else is butchering them.
(There were some edge cases e.g. CSGO agents but they are working to bring it down to a tiny difference)
I feel like I'm out of the loop here. Didn't those come more from mobile gaming and Asian free to play MMOs or Battle Royales? Didn't Valve make the "traditional" buy-once games like Half-Life, Portal, HL-derivatives like Team Fortress/CS?
As for milking its users, Steam (the platform) is an incredible value (for purchases, refunds, reseller ecosystem, etc.) and an awesome utility (community mods, auto updates, reviews, cloud sync, streaming, Proton, multiplayer APIs, etc.). I think the one fair gripe about them is that they take a pretty large cut from developers and force them to use the Steam payment processing, which takes another big cut. But for end users (players) it's a wonderful platform, especially compared to its peers like GOG Galaxy, the EA/Ubi/Microsoft clients, the Epic Game Stores... none of those come close in usability.
Individual titles within the platform might choose to use lootboxes and other crappy monetization schemes, but that's on them, not Steam. There are thousands of games that have better monetization models, and Steam helped revive the dormant indie PC gaming industry and then blew it up a thousandfold... almost none of those games have predatory pricing models.
As for cosmetic skins, what's wrong with that? Who cares how much they charge for those if it doesn't provide a gameplay advantage of any sort, just blinky particles? Compared to any ACTUAL predatory P2W game, I'd so much rather support games that only sell cosmetics.
It seems so unfair to reduce all that Valve has done for the PC gaming to "lootboxes and high priced skins". Without Steam PC gaming would probably have died by now, and with it the most amazing renaissance in indie titles since the shareware days.
There's a reason that the slogan "we used to make games, now we make money" has been half-jokingly attributed to Valve. For years, their biggest revenue producers have been their free-to-play games with cosmetic microtransactions such as CS:GO, DOTA2, and TF2. As far as I know, their last "traditional" game was Portal 2 in 2011. Half-Life: Alyx could be argued to have similar production value, but was released as more of an erstwhile "pack-in title" for the Valve Index headset.
But they're purely cosmetic? That sounds like a wonderful business model for all involved, especially vs the predatory P2W crap that's really infesting the market (especially in mobiles and MMOs). I'd probably also rather than a F2P cosmetics-only game over a buy-once game... if only because that usually implies there will be a proper server farm hosting the games, lessening cheaters or peer to peer hosts with terrible connections.
The cosmetics will cost you, though.
Although I suppose its dubious whether real world money gambling (valve) is more or less exploitative than the gambling directly implemented into game design that the rest of the industry took up.
Real money in exchange for convenience (storage space in PoE) or purely cosmetic items (non-combat pets, hats, angel wings, whatever) ? Fine.
The "good for users" alternative to Steam is GOG, but it's basically an also-ran in the market.
I have a love/hate relationship with Steam. I love that it "just works" on Linux, but I hate the DRM and lock-in. When I mostly used a PC I'd always favor GOG or some other distribution method, although I did have lots of Steam games as well. Now that I own a Steam Deck - and playing non-steam games is a bit of a pain in the rear (but at least possible) - I find myself buying into the platform even more (which, no doubt, was the entire purpose of the Steam Deck).
I feel like this exemplifies Steam. It's not unambiguously anti-consumer, and it does provide some real value, so many of us are willing to accept the tradeoffs involved.
Then if a game is an exploitative grindfest, blame falls on the dev/publisher for choosing to implement whatever-it-is.
I love Steam and I hope it's never bought out.
As much as I wish Valve made more games, I'd prefer this to them being publicly traded.
I mean, I don't remember the last time something came exclusively through Steam by exclusivity agreements. That cannot be said for Epic Games though.
Sure Epic had to come up with ways to increase their competitive advantage while having an inferior product with smaller catalog and worse ux, all problems inherent to a newer product trying to penetrate a consolidated market.
Steam felt like it was just there, adding features and improvements in a slow but steady pace and really offering value to both players, by introducing sales and democratizing access to games (sure in the EU and US it might seem less important, but coming from Brazil I can't begin to tell how much of an impact digital outlets had to providing access to quality games on emergent markets), and to developers by single handely making piracy somewhat obsolete.
Sure it had problems like high fees for small devs, a case can be said that this monopoly over time started hurting the small dev, or the massive flow of low quality games, but to call it a walled garden is a far cry from reality. We gamers got it good and we sometimes don't appreciate it. Just look at the state of streaming services to see what could have been.
It's a walled garden, because you can't use their various services on their own or with third-party services. The games themselves are just rented to you, you can't run them without your Steam account.
You can even sell codes in your own store, WITHOUT STEAM GETTING MONEY. That's incredibly generous.
I don't understand why you would expect them to give away their features for free. That's like expecting a a restaurant letting you use their cutlery and tables with your own food.
Finally, you have never and will never truly own a game. No, not even when they came as CDs. It was always just a limited license.
This is a common red herring - nobody means owning the actual IP for a game when they mention owning physical games. They mean having control over when, where and how a game is played.
Physical games give more control to the user, assuming DRM allowed that.
(and the real issue is having DRM or not, not being physical vs digital - for example my physical DVD copy of Bioshock has some stupid DRM limitation whereas my GOG copy is fully DRM-free, giving me more control than the physical one)
> I don't understand why you would expect them to give away their features for free.
Incentives? Won't comment to that. But, what I expect is that my services and tools don't constrain their interoperability. Open protocols are nothing new. Neither are closed platforms.
If this really were an issue, GOG would be a lot more popular. Most people just don't care. It's actually really nice having Steam just auto-manage my entire library across all my devices, seamlessly, with all the mods and updates and files and such all taken care of. And being able to seamlessly stream to the TV/phone/Steam Deck is great, along with Big Picture mode.
I have several DRM-free titles on GOG that I never end up using -- only bought them there because they were slightly cheaper -- but now I wish bought them on Steam instead, because it's so much easier to actually PLAY the game that way.
Sometimes walled gardens are nice if the alternative is the untamed wilds...
As for "renting" games, well, not so long ago they were $50 a pop and if you broke the CD, too bad. Now those same games are routinely discounted by 75%+, and my library has increased in size a hundred times because of it. If it takes a rental model to get us there, that seems like a great tradeoff, honestly... like movies, most games don't really have infinite longevity anyway. If I can play it for a few years and then it eventually disappears for whatever reason (which almost never happens, btw), usually they will re-release an updated version later on with improved graphics and such anyway. It's not like digital games are a collector's item. In fact the subscription services (Xbox Game Pass, etc.) take that one step further I wish more games did that. The idea of "owning" a copy of software is dubious to begin with... one way or another you're paying for the development, whether it's a buy-once model + expansion packs, buy-once + DLC, subscription, lootboxes... every game does it differently these days, but overall players have a lot more games at a lot more price points.
It's (thankfully) not like the Apple/Google Play duopoly. You can still by and large sell PC games however you want, but a lot of devs/publishers choose Steam both because of its marketshare and because of its useful features.
In this sense those are walled gardens, but because of the nature of those markets. E-commerce, telecommunications, datacenter, banking to some degree are all examples of hard to penetrate markets.
The original article goes on to explain that going head to head against solutions that are consolidated in these market are a waste of time and money. Better to find and exploit a niche that is still untouched.
I totally use gog and other stores.
This is a problem that has to be solved by those actually able to do something, and that is the regulatory agencies for the US and EU, not multinational corporations or placing the responsibility on individual consumers. The multinational corporations have no interest in kneecapping their "competitive advantages", and consumers don't care or don't even know just how fucked up the entire entertainment industry is ("crunch time" isn't just an issue in games, but also in movies!).
That's stuff like actually enforcing labor regulations (e.g. the Directive 93/104/EC that prescribes a maximum week work time of 48h)... and that linked together with stuff like passing "supply chain laws" (that hold corporations liable for labor rights violations by their suppliers) should put a stop on these practices.
Unfortunately, labor regulations enforcement is pretty scarce in the EU as it is, and the US are pretty much a regulatory wild west, at least when seen from an European perspective.
Unions may be controversial in the broader software development sphere, but they're obviously desperately needed in game dev.
(P.S. Re: "margins are razor thin": A lot of this comes down to the gaming industry's version of Hollywood accounting. The big publishers like EA, Ubisoft, etc. are making a killing off of their mistreatment of their studios' staff)
Sorry, I meant "everywhere I look outside of the big publishers" instead of "everywhere I look." Of course, the big publishers make crazy money by milking old franchises and through large economies of scale. If that's the kind of games industry we want, then it looks like the working model is oligopoly.
Large scale Microtransactions (TF2).
Cosmetic Microtransactions in a Single Player / Coop game (Portal 2).
Loot Boxes (TF2, though they really got bad with CS:GO).
And worst of all, a planned economy that collects "sales tax" and enables children to gamble. Not even "simulated" gambling where all you get is a cosmetic locked to your account. Just straight up gambling. With cashing out if you happen to be lucky and know when to stop.
Oh, and don't forget paid mods - a concept that has similarities to previous Steam Workshop games, but blew up right in their face when it involved a third party that people usually just joke about having their players fix all bugs for them after ship.
Also, sure, you can't withdraw from a Steam account. But that doesn't mean it's not monetary value. It's easy enough to find someone who wants a game and you buy them a gift and they give you the money instead. And paying for CSGO items outside the ecosystem is tolerated enough that people still do it.
Edit: I'm also pretty sure they patched in-game ads into CS 1.6 at some point, but can't remember for sure. Anyone else recall that?
The reason Steam exists and is as strong as it is, is because every other game developer abandoned PC gaming and went to the consoles, for an entire decade.
Including Microsoft.
People not only hated Steam, they hated PC gaming.
You had to use Steam to get HL2. This got them on enough PCs that they could build the dominance they have today.
There are obviously other reasons for their success, but the other poster is spot on both about what they did, and how many people felt about it at the time.
There couldn't be anything more false. Game developers flocked to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 because Microsoft and Sony entered a bidding war and flooded them with money upfront to build exclusives for their platforms, while in the PC gaming space there was no such "free" money to be had upfront, as game studios had to fund development themselves or raise money from publishers and hope the end product would be a success to get their money back and make a profit on top to stay afloat.
And people didn't hate PC gaming, they hated the poor quality XB360/PS3 ports that were being pushed on the PC platform.
I think we can get a clearer picture if we compare it to Epics launch: No cloud saves at all, shoddy service all around. The only thing they had going for them was buying up exclusives (many of which had already been promised as Steam releases). Steam/Valve is really a saint in comparison, even back then.
I mean, at launch these features definitely did not exist (cloud saves) or were buggy (friends lists). Holding Half Life 2 hostage behind steam was definitely controversial at the time, and Steam was kind of... not great for quite a while. Valve were in it for the long haul though and it really is a great ecosystem now, there are still some gripes to be had but like you say, compared to every other store on PC there really is no competition.
A fun article from the time it was released: https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/32981
At release internet speeds were honestly too slow and the software was filled with bugs.
Still, the EULA states that steam is a subscription, for currently 0 (USD|EUR) per month. So at any time they might increase that fee.
As someone who purchased Half-Life in a physical box in a retail store before Steam so much as existed and was happy downloading update patches and using a server browser until Steam forced me to create a Steam account and become a Steam user to continue playing Half-Life online, this is true. I feel more exploited than milked.
Also, Steam has a long term strategy in the interest of customers and I believe gaming in general. Supporting other platforms as Windows for example. They are smart enough to look beyond the horizon and can make predictions for possible developments in the market. I highly appreciate that as a customer.
App stores like Steam, for all their problems, provide real tangible value to developers. It simplifies distribution of files and updates (no need to set up your own CDN/P2P network and write server/client code to handle game updates), provides integration of payment (no need to negotiate your own deals with payment processors), and in Steam's case also provides extra gaming specific value-adds like cloud saves and DRM that would also be costly to build/integrate in-house. If you think about all this, the cut they take could be justified for the right customer.
The difference between Steam and something like the Apple App Store is that Steam does not have have monopoly power over PC game/software distribution. As a developer you get to decide whether Steam's cut justifies their value to you individually. If you don't like Steam or it doesn't make sense for you, you don't need to use it. And many indie developers do exactly this -- they sell at conventions, release physical media, offer direct downloads/sales from their own site, use competing platforms like itch.io, Patreon, Dlsite etc.
Steam is good because the platform they are on is competitive and thus to succeed you have to justify your value.
Steam is popular because it won a brutal evolutionary battle in the realm of PC distribution. PC games have never had any barriers to distribution, and old distribution methods (physical media, direct downloads etc.) still work just as well today as they did decades ago.
Developers use Steam not because they are forced or bribed to do so, they use it because it is better -- it's just easier to make money by distributing via Steam (it could be any combination of things like the wider audience reach, easy DRM integration, built-in CDN and auto-update, built-in cloud saves, etc. etc.). In a sense, Steam's victory is like that of Wikipedia, GMail, or Youtube etc. It provided something that was for a long time magnitudes better than the competition.
Looking at it this way, I think the article does miss one final way one might "beat" Steam -- a fundamental paradigm shift in how someone consumes games as entertainment. Steam's success depends on the idea that people want to do "PC gaming". That the idea of collecting, downloading, installing, and running games that they choose themselves on general purpose machines they own themselves is attractive to enough people.
I personally believe and hope this idea will stay with us, but I am also from an older era of tech. What beats Steam will not be a better Steam. It will be something else, something that maybe seems obvious in hindsight but impossible to imagine today. Just as a fish does not question the water it lives in, and we the atmosphere we breathe, to truly compete with Steam, one must be something so obvious that consumers would wonder why anyone would ever choose anything else.
Right. It will probably still have to be better than Steam though.
Like a game streaming service in which all the games are available to play. Pay $20 per month, play any game whenever you want. The economics might even work out. They could pay each publisher $x for each hour that each person plays their game. More money for small studios since more people will be trying their game for a few hours, still lots of money for the big guys.
From the players perspective it would be like buying a AAA game every 3 months. Expensive, but you get all the other games too and you don't need an expensive gaming rig.
Or another idea - no monthly subscription fee, but you pay $X/hr for each game. Big games cost $0.10 per hour, free-to-play costs $0.005 per hour. Make the numbers work out so that publishers get the same overall revenue, but players like the flexibility. You could even limit your monthly spend. Cloud pricing for games?
Sadly, like the fragmented streaming video ecosystem, every publisher wants their cut and there's probably not a future where they're all integrated under one roof. Sad, really, because that would be so much easier for players.
I'm a very casual consumer of games (I play a mix of big popular titles as well as small niche indie titles) and Steam is an amazing experience for me compared to all the alternatives. I can get games during discount events and play them when I have time, knowing that the games in my library will be there available for me to download even years into the future on whatever PC device I happen to have then should I want to re-experience them. Having a monthly streaming service makes no sense to this kind of use case where (1) games are diverse (2) usage is bursty not regular (3) on-demand access to old titles is desired.
I think one way to get more people onto streaming, is to, like mentioned above, (1) make available a new pay-per-use $/hr model as an alternative to subscription, (2) keep the roster constant, do not cycle games out every month, cycle them out every decade if you have to, and (3) use actual compute pricing for the actual type of compute used: games that need a high-performance GPU? charge cloud GPU prices, indie titles that can run on a potato? aim for just CPU instance prices.
Of course this is never going to happen. The industry is hungry for that sweet, sweet, MRR. Nobody* is selling perpetual licenses anymore. It's all about showing that you have perpetual faucets of revenue these days.
But didn’t epic kinda subvert this?
Epic spent ludicrous amounts (I assume) of money on exclusivity deals and giving players freebies. But their store itself sucks. Maybe the dev tools are low friction, the store was far worse than Steam for a long time, and still is.
I just started the client: 30 seconds of loading (okay, that was a lot longer than usual… did new free games arrive?)
Click library: "We know we are slow, so look at this skeleton loader". It’s my fucking library? How can this take seconds to load?
Click a game to find out more: It launches the game. Why do you have a launch button below the game if everything is a launch button? (replace launch with install for uninstalled games) Information is "right click" -> "go to store page". Wow.
Back/forward: It’s a fucking Electron app, you get back/forward for free. No, wait, if you use some dumb JS Framework you don’t, and they don’t. Half the time, back/forward on the mouse does not work properly because they didn’t manually implement the hooks for whatever framework they are using.
Okay, rant over. Anyway, this clearly shows that you can have a high-friction crap-client and still get people by just throwing enough money at devs and players for long enough.
1. Steam won't live forever (or I may get banned) and I'd like some games there just in case.
2. Some games aren't available on Steam, e.g. Sifu.
3. Better handling of multiple devices. I can play a game on my MacBook while my daughter plays another game on the home computer on her account. One of the things I don't like about Steam is that one account can lock another out, even when it's different games being played on different computers.
Even then, i try to use Goldberg's Steam Emulator (really a drop-in replacement for Steam's DLL) and Steamless (a tool that removes Steam's DRM, though in more recent games this is rarely needed and indie games pretty much never seem to use it) to make a "Steam independent" version. Both are open source (kinda, Steamless is not strictly FLOSS but the code is there) and available on GitHub.
This doesn't always work though and Steam provides no indication if a game has DRM or not (the Augmented Steam extension does tell if there is Denuvo but that's about it and i don't think it is 100% accurate), which is why i tend to buy games at dirt-cheap prices on Steam so that if i end up with a copy i can't separate from Steam i'd only have spent very little money for it (and i am able to play the game in the short term anyway).
They also have unlimited money to bribe developers and players, with paid exclusivity and frequent giveaways.
So maybe they didn't score 100 on the test, but they definitely got a passing grade at least.
Remember, do not use Epic's own game shortcuts that the client created for you, since the shortcut path has the Epic client's COM object bound to it.
As a note, this also works for games that's installed from GoG galaxy that requires the client to be up before the game runs.
It's baffling to me that they took this angle. Hardware exclusivity I think in general is regarded as a negative (aside from weird tribalism/fanboyism among the more hardcore crowd) - but seeing that and thinking you can do the same thing with a software platform is just ludicrous.
Yes, you can buy exclusivity deals and force users onto your platform - but only for those games. It's trivial for players to bounce back and forth between different platforms when it's just software - you can't trap them just because they had to use it for one game they wanted. I'd be more forgiving if they were using exclusivity as a marketing tool alongside an actual attempt at a competitive platform - but as you've outlined and from what I've seen for myself, the experience is hot garbage.
I'm guessing for most users, the Epic store is just a glorified launcher for a bunch of games they got for free, and one or two exclusive games they couldn't get elsewhere.
Of course you can Monday morning quarterback this and point out Stadia's limitations (weak games library, hurr durr Google Reader, etc), but still, the cards were stacked in their favor and they still couldn't pull it off.
Of course I'm not claiming to speak for everyone in the industry, just for people in my network who I either discussed it with or whose opinions I saw online. But it very much isn't the case that everyone predicted success until "Monday morning quarterback"ing.
* Google has a reputation for abandoning services, and games bought on Stadia would be locked there. What happens if/when Stadia goes under? Who knows, but there's a decent chance of, "tough shit, all your games are gone."
* It's hard to get momentum when you're targeting hardcore gamers, who mostly already have consoles/PC's, thus removing one of your biggest advantages.
The idea might have worked if the subscription included access to games. Since at least then you aren't buying in to the platform with lock in.
But latency is an issue, so the experience will always be inferior in terms of responsiveness. Which, to a lot of gamers, means it would have to be a budget option, not a luxury one.
I have tried playing multiplayer games like CS:GO on geforce now, and that gave me latency issues and was not a great experience.
It's a separate subscription (free to $20/mo) for the streaming service, but you can play many of your current titles without re-buying them (not all, due to publisher withdrawals).
To play ALL your games, Shadow.tech will stream a full GPU-enabled desktop that you can run anything you want in.
Hell, I'm a developer in my 40s, and I only got a decent-ish gaming PC at the start of the pandemic.
Stadia could be amazing if Google had any interest in it. Even OnLive of 10 years ago was amazing. LiquidSky knocked everyone out of the park, but had licensing issues unfortunately (play unmodified Steam games in the cloud what?!).
There are plenty of people who don't want to invest hundreds of dollars in consoles and gaming PCs but who still play plenty of games. Apple understands that with their Apple Arcade, but Apple doesn't understand gaming. Google doesn't understand gaming either.
I used to be a hardcore gamer but being in my forties with kids and job I dont have the time to game as much as I used to. The whole just stream the game, no fiddling with installs and patches were very tempting to me. Given that I dont game as much it would be nice not paying for a beefy gaming PC. I already have great internet, I need it for work.
I also have two preteens that are starting to game, its cheaper to get multiple stadia subscrptions that they can then play where they want, on my macbook, the TV or a cheap chromebook.
I think google's biggest mistake was requiring you to buy the controller up front. If they had let people sign up with just their existing PC it would have been much easier to get people onboard.
The monthly fee was for 4k and other features that weren't necessary. You could stream anything you bought on Stadia for free at 1080p, no subscription.
It was like buying a game and getting a console for free, but with an optional upcharge for an even better console.
The marketing for all this was horrible. People still don't understand what Stadia was and wasn't. And the launch was limited to people willing to spend $130 for the custom hardware.
That hardware wasn't necessary. They just decided to do that at launch as a way to milk some gamers of their money in return for early access.
But again, the marketing was horrible. And the free access came many months later. For a system that it's best feature was the free streaming access, they completely destroyed it at launch.
And of course, as everyone pointed out back then, Google doesn't support the things they create unless they're related to advertising somehow. And they've already shut down all the studios they created to make games for Stadia.
And the big "wow" feature that they kept advertising, "negative latency", never got released. Many thought it was already in it, so the latency that Stadia has was very disappointing compared to the hype that Google gave it.
It's just a disaster from start to finish, marketing-wise.
I was able to loan friends my GeForce Now account so we could play something together (they didn't have a gaming PC). And streaming doesn't imply lock-in; GeForce Now just uses your Steam library, Shadow just streams you a virtual Windows desktop (with whatever software you want to install on it, you essentially have root).
If you live in a city, fast (enough) internet is like $50/mo and you need it for your work/TikTok anyway. A good gaming PC is like $1500-$2000+ and is noisy and hot and Windows is a pain to keep updated, etc.
I'm not saying game streaming is the future or that it will replace traditional PCs, but it's definitely a useful service!
Game streaming isn't for everyone, but there IS a market for it. In that market, though, Stadia is by far the worst offering. They should've had gamers lead its design and development, but they run it like it's some sort of business cloud offering... just totally missed the culture.
This had now been answered [1]:
> We will be refunding all Stadia hardware purchases made through the Google Store, and all game and add-on content purchases made through the Stadia Store.
1. https://www.ign.com/articles/google-is-shutting-down-stadia-...
I play lots of games, have over 1000 of them on steam, and jet somehow stadia only had 5 that i was interested and already had on steam.
But hey, lets try anyway, so I try to subscribe and: its not available here.
Almost no promotion, most of my friends(some of whom live in USA where I presume stadia does work) who also game didn't even know about stadia.
And then when they didn't6 just autowin all the customers, they kind of just let it go.
This was only true during the first five months of release, when you had to buy the Founder's Edition, which came with hardware to access the service. All purchased games can be accessed without the subscription via Stadia Base, and they planned it this way from the start[1]. Stadia Pro primarily provides the perk of running games on better cloud hardware, providing a 4K HDR surround sound stream instead of the baseline 1080p stereo stream.
Stadia would just not accept any credit card I threw at them, including a virtual card I created specifically for this service after the other ones failed. It also even refused those which Google happily uses to charge me for my GWS and YouTube Premium.
It was not a geolocation thing - Stadia happily serviced a neighbour.
Under these circumstances, I gave up. If you make it hard for me to give you money, I simply won't.
Once you have the platform, the bare minimum, you can start trying to get customer. You do that by playing on price, quality (within your platform parameters), catalog and since it's subscription base, long term commitment. Basically, either it was a hit, or they had to accept bleeding a lot of money to finalize their market entry.
They didn't push much and price and catalog, and they didn't commit either, as everyone expected.
They pull off a tech demo, they were never serious on the gaming market, and it showed.
GeForce Now, Luna, PSNow, XCloud, etc. are doing much better. Stadia is just the neglected stepchild of game streaming, not representative of the overall health of the technology.
I should note that Google by no means invented game streaming. OnLive did it ten years ago, and today there are still other small providers like Shadow.tech, Parsec, Paperspace...
I think Nvidia has the real advantage here though, being the only ones who can produce those gfx cards at datacenter scale. Unless one of the other providers want to develop their own chips, they're always at the mercy of Nvidia. Even during the COVID GPU shortage, Nvidia was able to keep GeForce Now sustained with enough hardware while the other providers struggled... Shadow had a waitlist of several months, for example.
I remember not playing Half Life 2 for a while because it required Steam and I refused to install it. I eventually gave up and joined (17 years ago according to my account) and over those 17 it's one of those services that just got better and better.
Linux gaming is now in the "it just works" territory. They fixed controller support (no more using dodgy drivers to make your PS3 controller behave like an xbox 360 one). They added support for online in local only co-op games (one person streams the game to the other, the other person sends controller input).
There are so many cool tech features built into steam that I really can't imagine using anything else at this point.
All of us who didn't play CS did not care at all about Steam. Then late in 2004 HL2 came, that was a bigger draw but still, for many of us who didn't buy it.. don't care.
My Steam account is from 2009, but I distinctly remember that I tried to sign up some years before for no good reason (maybe to grab a name) and couldn't get past the unreadable Captcha and because I STILL had no pressing reason (around 2006?) I let it go.
I'm not saying I'm a hardcore Steam user, maybe more like a casual user who buys some games from time to time and I didn't feel a pressing need to sign up for the first ~6 years of service and at some point they had enough benefits that people signed up and bought games.
TLDR: Steam was a niche product for many years so the current discourse about "the default game purchasing platform" is completely different than "publisher-owned distribution platform for 3 games"
And then after becoming "the default game purchasing platform" they continue to improve the experience and invest in cool technological advances. The post says:
> Unfortunately, you can't just build a better mousetrap,
But no one has come even close to building a better mousetrap, the alternatives suck. Valve didn't just become the biggest and sit around stagnating and buying out the competition. They continue to innovate, at least in my humble opinion.
Rockstar/xbox/epic/blizzard site in order to play it, wtf.
I would pay 1$ if steam created those accounts on some their random ass emails and just let us play
That said, the Steam store page does tell you in advance this will be necessary if you know where to look. I don't buy those games, if I want them I'll eventually grab console versions used.
I’ve even made it a personal policy to only buy digital only games through steam.
https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/australia-fines-valve-over-...
Had the opposite experience after a game stopped working 3 days after purchase due to its update (forced, if memory serves). Valve refused the refund because I played the game for more than 2 hours before it stopped working. Haven't purchased anything from Valve since.
Epic has arguably been the most successful, but the article is clear about that. They have millions (billions?) of dollars to burn to break into the market by giving away free games and paying for exclusivity deals.
Microsoft is an interesting case because they also have Xbox which leads to a bleedover into PC game sales with the same users.
Now here's an idea I've been toying with. Steam has made all the information available for other companies to create handhelds that run SteamOS. I wonder if other AAA publishers, hell, even Epic Games, will use that IP to create their own consoles that are linked to their platforms? It's worked for MS with the Xbox, and the Steamdeck is selling like crazy.
It seems that hardware is the key that unlocks consistent growth for gaming platforms, and even now, Steam basically "owns" the PC hardware market.
Regardless, it's gonna be a great decade for gamers I think because competition has never been higher!
Steam or Epic never needed that. What both of them had was immensely successful games but each utilized their own advantages. Steam used its Counterstrike network effects to grow their platform, CS was also their guinea pig to test their Steam idea in the first place. Epic on the other hand has a Fortnite windfall and it is spending its way to relevancy.
I don't mind custom launchers that much (although there are a few because how bad they are) because sometimes they have uses or at least just another click but once it requires an account, my blood boils a bit as well
"Crossplatform" even applies to other games on PC, because you cannot use Steamworks on games sold outside of Steam. So unless you are releasing Steam only, it is not a good idea to rely on Steamworks for networking.
Off the top of my head, Deep Rock Galactic is one such game. It was on Steam for about 2 years before being put on the Windows Microsoft Store as part of Xbox Game Pass PC which cannot play with Steam versions of the game.
As a Linux user, at least the last time I tried to play that game, it could not integrate at all with audio input devices, and trying to get accounts to link up with friends via the Microsoft website was either impossible or really clunky. IIRC I had to have someone with the Windows Xbox app invite me to the crew.
They don't even try to do 'cross play' outside of the Xbox / Windows PC ecosystem, and at least my perception based on experience was that other ecosystem isn't baked into the game but as an implicit external dependency (friends list, audio input).
My point is that Steamworks doesn't support being one of those external dependency on games not released on Steam. Xbox does, as seen with Sea of Thieves being released on Steam.
Plenty do bake it into the game, because that Xbox login will not work otherwise on Playstation or Switch. Or even Android or iOS. See Minecraft. But I can't bake Steamworks into games not on Steam, PC or otherwise.
Not like Valve is the only one with this issue though. It also applies to GoG's Steamworks competitor as far as I know.
Blizzard games are not sold in Steam.
Not the fault of Steam at all.
https://www.fortressofdoors.com/so-you-want-to-compete-with-...
I especially like being able to read negative reviews on games that look appealing to me to identify whether the primary complaints about them are actually things I'm likely to care about.
Idea for a competitor: let users post video reviews!
I kid -- but a simple thumbs up/down metric could help separate signal from noise (as is done with current text reviews on Steam).
A store without reviews is mostly useless for exploration, while the Steam review system is excellent. I very often wait for a game to come out on Steam just because I want to see the reviews before buying.
I've been gaming for more than 3 decades. Know very well what I like and what I don't. Sure, gameplay videos are great but as an old FPS guy, looking for gameplay recorded by someone who knows what they are doing takes more time. It really does. That's why I look fir videos after taking the time to read what people think.
That said, I've stayed away from professional reviews for more than 2 decades.
Steam generally does a good job of bringing relevant issues to the top, like latest patch breaking something, less than stellar netcode on fighting games, etc.
Also for older games, sometimes you get people playing for 1000+ hours who says that the game turned to shit 3 months ago and you'd never get that just watching a gameplay video that came out a few months after the game was released.
Steam reviews also track over time, again, videos don't. I watch videos for new games and use them with Steam reviews to see if I'd like a game or not, but for old games the reviews are much easier to get a clear picture of what the game is like the day I'm planning on buying it.
News to me.
Also forum plus release notes (available on Steam, but not sure about competitors) provide a great picture if game is really supported or not. Same example Detroit PC port - zero patches over a year, almost no "green" replies on the forum from dev team, zero acknowledgment of critical blocking issues. In the same year Horizon PC port was also released with some bugs. It had two dozens game patches and fixes over a year, and devs immediately acknowledged existing bugs, like in a one week time frame.
You can probably guess that in future I will avoid products from Quantic like wildfire and all such info can be found on Steam, for any corporation. So mister Tim, you can keep your stance against customers, and I will keep buying games on Steam and GOG.
I really like GOG lets me download games direct from their web page.
>They have built up too much consumer trust over the years, to the point that people automatically view competitors with suspicion. For competitors to succeed, Steam will have to start being aggressively anti-consumer.
this is often said about "sin goods", you know... like alcohol or drugs or guns..... people need cigarettes so why not ours.".....
we don't have good things on the internet these days. Good things are often taken over, sunset and killed off like geocities of the past. Steam is one-off nice and that is a good thing overall
Such is the price of a winner take all industry. My hopium is that it changes in the future so that the customers win, and the small guys win before the big platform does.
Sure, if apple/google switch to 5%, steam will have to follow suit but for now, with steam deck for example, they are actually using those profits to help the dev community reach more customers.
Its not the best position but its way better than what apple/google does imo
The only conditions under which I can imagine switching to another store is if publishers would suddenly stop releasing their games on Steam en masse. And I mean en masse, not just one or two popular publishers.
You can say the same of GOG. Right now I am playing more GOG games than Steam games, even though my steam library is much larger.
Also, none of my friends use it, so if I buy a game on GoG, I'll eventually end up buying it on Steam too.
The big case for GoG is buying older games as in general they're much easier to get working on a modern PC than buying on Steam (no idea if that's true, but it feels easier to me).
> Also, none of my friends use it, so if I buy a game on GoG, I'll eventually end up buying it on Steam too.
I was only addressing the longetivity requirement, not the UI or the network effects requirements.
For example, GOG does not sell any game with DRM or Internet connected crap, even if it requires making tough decisions like removing the Hitman reboot from its store.
Nowadays I only buy from steam if:
1) it's not on GOG, AND 2) it's a game I desperately want to play
I don't think condition #2 will ever be met, because no matter how hard I try to get addicted to video games I just get bored and do something else.
I buy from GOG because I like the idea that I actually own (not licensed, like steam) and can play the games I purchased even after game stores all shutdown.
https://www.gog.com/forum/general/games_that_treat_gog_custo...
Thing is, people are happy with steam. Nobody cares for something else. Doesn't matter if your platform is better. Steam hasn't changed really at all over the years and... to be honest, it works for them.
That in itself is a feature.
I did not had the tiem to screw around with cracks or some way to find an old client, fuck Valve, if your new client is not compatible with the OS then fucking stop update it, or make it possible for someone to continue playing the game, maybe a super simple Launcher that does not need Chrome.
Whenever I boot Windows to play games, I have to be ready for multiple GB of updates to download, on a metered LTE connection, just to be able to open the launchers.
I am not even sure what they do, when I buy a game the only thing I want is a URL to download it and a way to be notified of optional updates. Email or RSS feeds would to that just fine.
Why do we accept so much useless bullshit?
DRM-ing the game should be possible without forcing a launcher, but probably that would be bad for business.
Perhaps it is too large, but its interest are for the benefit of the consumer for once. This is a unique feature, it does not exist in any case that could constitute a monopoly elsewhere. Any political support against Steam would be full of special interests of large gaming companies that want to offer a worse service.
And aside from GOG they all do offer a significantly worse service by any merits the customer could value.
Those kinds of posts are just giving me a reason to do it, out of spite.
The tail does not wag the dog. I cannot remember the last time the layperson consumed most of what they do from genuine interest. Astroturf still sells, but for how long?
I'm sorry, but this is incredibly naive.
Yes, some gamers are like that, sure, but most aren't constantly scouring the internet for any hint of the games they like, even if they're into indies.
I'm way more knowledgeable about video games than almost any of my gamer friends, and I still don't know that much, there's just so many games out there these days.
And then when you get outside you have platforms like Itchio.io. With even more stuff and lot of it free..
For money you really need to be on Steam. Or be very prominent on level of Minecraft.
Not so sure tho...
Luck has a bigger part in any Human endeavor than what any of us says :p
The loss in sales will easily hurt more than any cut Valve takes.
Pretty much considered a fallacy at this point. https://samuelmullen.com/articles/startup-fallacies-if-you-b...