Hacker News Reader

Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

Yeah it's worth nothing that Steam is allegedly responsible for the default 30% cut number app stores get, by sort of arbitrarily picking it, and that Steam is an absolutely crushing monopoly that has so much of a vice grip on the PC gaming space that when you go outside of it, tons of people whine and cry because everything is expected to just use the thing that takes a third of all revenue.

Nobody likes buying exclusives, but it's basically the only way to break into a market under such heavy capture.

View on HN

Steam adds a lot of features to games though over just having a windows install. Setting up multiplayer for indie games before steam was always annoying, with steam it is very easy and gives a uniform way to play with friends for every game I own there. There are many such quality of life things from steam, to me as a user it means I prefer paying more for games in steam than to pay for it without steam.

> adds a lot of features to games though over just having a windows install

Sure, and that goes into ways it should be able to compete well with other stores, not just be "the default".

> a uniform way

Also known as "a complete monopoly", and this is exactly the mountain that any competitor has to completely break. Epic's use of both paid exclusives and free games is to build you enough of a library that you (and your friends) likely have and want to play at least some Epic Games, and hence, already have both Epic and Steam installed.

Only once both stores are somewhat similarly available to you, can Epic really compete on the price and features aspects.

EDIT: The other thing that's important to realize about monopolies is that nothing remains the same forever. You might like Steam today, and feel we should all just let Steam be a monopoly because they're "good", but what happens when Gabe retires and a private equity firm comes in?

The only difference between Steam and Ticketmaster is that Steam hasn't tried to maximize value extraction yet.

> Epic's use of both paid exclusives and free games is to build you enough of a library that you (and your friends) likely have and want to play at least some Epic Games, and hence, already have both Epic and Steam installed.

The epic store program is trash though, it is extremely slow and clunky and power hungry and lack most of the features I have in steam. They do have multiplayer integration which is nice, I have played games with friends there that were free, but the store being such a bad program is the main reason I still buy games on steam.

Steam isn't some super well made program, if epic store was a better program I would prefer buying games there for that reason. But as is epic store is way worse in almost every way, it takes seconds just to view a page, the epic store is much nicer to browse as a web page than in their dedicated program but I can't play the games from their web page.

If they fixed that then I don't think people would hate buying games on epic store, but until then I am pretty sure the main reason people still prefer steam is that epic store is garbage. Not sure why they don't just fix the app instead of spending so much money on exclusives or free games.

> me as a user it means I prefer paying more for games in steam than to pay for it without steam.

Unfortunately this is not an option. Valve's Steam agreements forbid publishers from charging less money on competing platforms.

https://www.masonllp.com/case/valve-mass-arbitration/#:~:tex...

(Others have pointed out that this fact is contested, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38625225)

I disagree with such contracts, I think they shouldn't be allowed, at least when you are as big as steam.

I can see it being reasonable to ban selling steam keys for less than they are sold at steam. But selling a steam-less license for less than what it costs at steam seems reasonable.

It's not just contested, but contradicted by reality. Many games on steam can be purchased from retailers who receive keys directly from the publishwr (e.g. Green Man Gaming), at a substantial discount. Sometimes that discount price is much closer to the after steam cut amount the publisher would otherwise receive.

The rumor, for many years, was that you could sell a game separately and if it didn't use steam keys and steam services Valve did not care. If you wanted to sell steam copies, there seemed to be two conditions. 1. Keys sold off of steam must make up less than some percentage of on-steam sales. 2. If you have a sale on another storefront, there must be a matching sale on Steam in some time window.

It is entirely possible that valves notoriously bad communication abilities resulted in a company believing a total ban on discounts was policy, but the fact that other publishers seemingly are not and were not held to that standard for many years is certainly odd.

Steam is good. But they have some sketchy policies. Eg epic requires games offered on multiple storefronts to have cross play compatibility

The important thing is that Valve does not engage in anti-consumer practices, and they provide a vastly larger infrastructure than Epic Games, going far and beyond your typical storefront and providing a rich, unparalleled gaming experience. I do think that their price control for multi-platform launches is in very bad taste, but unfortunately this is commonly found in retail.

I buy from GOG sometimes, because they also have a unique value proposition with their anti-DRM stance. Other than that, Steam simply provides the best service by leagues, and it's very take-it-or-leave-it when it comes to the 30% cut.

I personally would love for them to reduce their cut, I think 30% is massive. It is worth pointing out that the 30% cut is well-established in many industries outside of gaming, such as franchising. But it's also fairly standard within gaming.

- Gamestop, Amazon, Best Buy and Wal-Mart take a 30% cut.

- PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo each take 30% from their console stores.

- GOG, Microsoft take 30% from their game stores.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut...

> Valve does not engage in anti-consumer practices

Yet. Imagine how PC gaming would look if tomorrow you woke up and Valve said, hey, our cut is 50% now. The problem with monopoly capture is once a company has it, it can choose to abuse it at any time in the future. And even if you have complete faith in Valve's current leadership, those people get old and die or retire, and the next guys may not run things the same way.

> But it's also fairly standard within gaming.

One of the things uncovered by these lawsuits is largely than everyone settled on the 30% cut because Steam picked it and got away with it. We should definitely blame Steam for this abusive tax on the game industry, even if many others have now copied it.

> Imagine how PC gaming would look if tomorrow you woke up and Valve said, hey, our cut is 50% now.

I would expect a bunch of bright, freshly-laid-off engineers would get together and try to seriously compete either through a single platform offering, or a system of integrated services. I'd love to see Valve's platform advantages a little more democratized; but you can't deny the level of engineering that goes into their products. SteamVR, Steam Play, streaming, Steam Deck, Proton, it goes on and on.

> We should definitely blame Steam for this abusive tax on the game industry, even if many others have now copied it.

No more than we blame anyone else who followed suit, as a gain, Valve chose a number that was already massively standardized in many industries. If the 30% cut is too much, someone should seek to disrupt them at a 5-20% margin.

> If the 30% cut is too much, someone should seek to disrupt them at a 5-20% margin.

And we have come full circle: Epic's cut is 12%.

Epic is absolutely not competing with Steam in any meaningful way for me as a consumer until they compete on several more fronts, or at least integrate with services that allow them to do so.

If Steam was just a store frontend, I wouldn't use it. I just established their competitive offering above.

In fact, EGS's primary way of competing, exclusives, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's anti-consumer, and a poor substitute for engineering a competitive feature offering.

I actively avoid their store for this reason, and have passed up on their exclusives in the past, despite being interested in the IP.

> In fact, EGS's primary way of competing, exclusives, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

You're only noticing because of the competition. Without it games would be exclusive to Steam and you would never notice. Anything from The Finals to Lethal Company, PUBG to Destiny 2. Are these any less anti-consumer because they're only on Steam? I don't think so.

I'm speaking of exclusivity deals. None of those games had exclusivity deals with Steam.

You're blaming Steam for not having worthy competitors, but that isn't their job. Valve/Steam doesn't engage in exclusivity deals, EGS does. And Valve-published games obviously don't count, there's no deal, they just decide not to publish elsewhere.

And remember: the closest competition is literal piracy. I'm not only noticing that Steam provides a quality service worth paying for because of EGS. I don't think you understand how many would-be pirates instead have gigantic Steam libraries.

And I'm asking you how exclusivity deals are more anti-consumer than exclusivity without deals. I'm not saying they have exclusivity deals with Steam and I'm not blaming Steam for anything, but that doesn't change the fact that as a consumer I'm forced to use Steam to purchase those games. In the same way I'm forced to used EGS to purchase their exclusive games.

So why does a deal between a publisher and Valve or EGS make a difference to me, the consumer? Why aren't all exclusives anti-consumer regardless of a deal that might or might not exist?

> I don't think you understand how many would-be pirates instead have gigantic Steam libraries.

I don't understand your point though. Are you saying no one should compete with Steam because users will pirate the games? I don't think that's a good reason to give Steam a monopoly.

> And I'm asking you how exclusivity deals are more anti-consumer than exclusivity without deals.

The former are in Valve's control, the latter are not. Valve can't help it if they're the best in town and no one else is able to compete at their level.

> I don't understand your point though. Are you saying no one should compete with Steam because users will pirate the games?

My point is that Steam offers a better service than piracy, which is very hard for a digital storefront to compete with. They achieve this by being more than a storefront. The way they conduct business is reasonably open and any funded competitor could emulate their success over time with careful design and engineering. Part of that is being consumer-friendly and having an open culture.

> I don't think that's a good reason to give Steam a monopoly.

No one gives them a monopoly. I don't follow your argument here, because you seem to be suggesting that we should handicap Steam in some kind of Harrison Bergeron scenario.

Well let's stick with the exclusive discussion because I'm not sure where the other is going either.

>The former are in Valve's control, the latter are not.

Why does this distinction make a difference in how anti-consumer it is? The store owner or Valve's (lack of) control doesn't make it any better for me as a consumer.

To summarize my position here to avoid more confusion: Exclusives deals don't make exclusive games any more anti-consumer. Because the deal or lack thereof doesn't effect me as a consumer.

So my original reply is that all of these exclusive games are the same level of anti-consumer. But you only notice when it's not Steam exclusives, because that's your platform of choice. I'm not blaming Valve for anything, I'm just using games on their store as an example of games you don't think of as exclusives or anti-consumer.

Valve doesn't do exclusive deals. Even some of their best first-party titles made it to consoles. I don't know how you can blame them for not having more competitors.

I don't know how you keep thinking I'm blaming Valve for anything when I've reiterated that I'm not multiple times.

I'm just using games on their store as an example of games you don't think of as exclusives or anti-consumer.

Your argument just makes no sense. Exclusive deals are extremely different from a game simply releasing on one store out of convenience.

I'm not arguing about the differences, just that they're the same in one aspect. You're saying one is bad because it is anti-consumer. I'm pointing out that the other is the same level of anti-consumer, and that you have just not noticed.

Deal or no deal is not relevant to the consumer so it doesn't change how anti-consumer it is.

> And we have come full circle: Epic's cut is 12%.

Epic's cut is 12% because they can afford to lose money on it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/11/07/tim-sweene...

EGS is in "growth-mode", which, among other things, means they have to provide a current service that offers better terms than the service they intend to provide once they reach Sweeney's ideal 50% market share.

They spend a ton of money on exclusives, enticing offers and other substitutes for attractive features.

We should blame them and everyone else abusing platform economics to take a 30% cut. Not a 30% margin. Their margin is much higher

Steam do the same pseudo-ownership crap Sony have just been lambasted for. The cart page explicitly says 'purchase' but you have no right to sell, trade or lend them. Steam only reluctantly added refunds due to legal obligations and if you have a justified reason for a refund outside of the 2 hour/2 week window, you have to communicate with Google-esque customer service.

Years before Half Life: Alyx, Valve said they would never make single player games again. It made sense - TF2 was making silly money selling silly cosmetics. Presumably, the economics have now changed to make single-player viable again: any further player-base goodwill means a few more years of getting away with predatory BS.

>communicate with Google-esque customer service

This is a strange allegation; While I have little personal experience with Steam's consumer service, the typical report I hear is that it is excellent and very helpful, while Google more or less doesn't have it at all. I've even successfully refunded some games that were a bit over the 2 hour window.

They promised to fix my damaged Steam Deck LCD screen for free 8 months ago, and I still haven't sent it in because I was on the move a lot.

Twice I have renewed the ticket with staff deeply apologizing and asking for them to print a new RMA, offering to pay this time, and they just send me a new RMA free of charge, which I have twice disregarded. I can't think of another digital business off the top of my hand which would put up with my shit.

Well if it's any motivation you should go get on that haha

> Presumably, the economics have now changed to make single-player viable again

I think alyx/deskjob primarily exist to sell hardware rather than make silly money on their own. You even get a free copy of the former with any index hardware.

Good points, thank you.

Valve is certainly better than others, but they do prevent publishers from selling their game for less outside of Steam (if they sell that game on Steam), and I think that is anti-consumer.

If you're going to make statements like this, at least be correct. Valve don't prevent yoou from selling your game for less outside of steam, they prevent you from selling _steam keys_ for less outside of steam. You're perfectly free to host it on your own website for $10 less.

(See update at bottom for a source supporting parent's claim)

That's not correct from what I've read. You are more than welcome to ask for a source instead of accusing me of falsehoods.

"To help maintain its monopoly power, Valve uses what is known as a Platform Most Favored Nations (“PMFN”) clause in its agreements with game publishers which prevents game publishers from selling their games on other on-line gaming sites with lower costs, fees, and/or sales commissions for less than the game publishers sell their games on the Steam platform"

https://www.masonllp.com/case/valve-mass-arbitration/#:~:tex...

Nothing about that refers to Steam Keys. I did do some cursory searching to find sources which disagreed with this interpretation but was unable to find any. There's always the possibility that the class action lawsuit was misguided or incorrect- so if you have any sources that say otherwise, please provide!

..Or I suppose, some examples of games that sell for less (excluding temporary sales) on other stores than they do within Steam.

EDIT: Elsewhere someone provided this Ars Technica article where an unidentified source at Valve said this does only apply to Steam keys, which is likely what you are referring to: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...

So it's definitely a contested fact.

To be fair, it probably falls under speak to legal, but it's in the SDA on steamworks.

That can't be right. You can routinely find good deals on Steam keys using ITAD (isthereanydeal.com) which just searches a bunch of key sites for you and compares prices. So are all these sites breaking some rule then?

Most of the key sites are reselling bundled keys, doing region nonsense or are outright fraudulently purchased and laundered. There's a blog post from an indie studio that is roughly titled "don't buy our game from those sites, please just pirate it instead"

Steam is also the reason Linux desktop is becoming more and more viable for everyday use (yes, including gaming) through Valve's involvement with Wine, Mesa, and other parts of the stack. As a consumer, I'm glad this is where the store's cut is going to, instead of perpetuating the Windows monopoly and lootbox gaming. Not to mention that Steam has tons of quality of life features that EGS still lacks: written reviews, discussions, gifts, I could go on and on... There are many reasons people prefer Steam besides its popularity. Epic had so much time and resources to improve their storefront and expand platform support, but they just don't seem to care.

> I'm glad this is where the store's cut is going to, instead of perpetuating the Windows monopoly and lootbox gaming

Valve is practically the ones that mainstreamed lootbox gaming with Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, and Dota 2. When others like Rocket League have removed lootboxes from their games altogether, Valve don't bother. The lootbox "winnings" being tradable and having an item marketplace (in which they take a cut of all transactions), makes it even more egregious to me.

Valve was the originator of loot boxes...

MapleStory Introduced Loot Boxes and Randomized Rewards

> Steam is an absolutely crushing monopoly

Origin, U-Play, EA Play, etc. Blizzard titles are not on Steam. Microsoft Game Pass, and before that Games for Windows Live. Some physical releases require Steam, many do not. GOG. Edit: itch.io. So it's easily disproven. The other option sucking (e.g. not allowing reviews) does not a monopoly make.

Overwatch 2 and Diablo 4 are both on Steam actually.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com