There's more noise about this than Microsoft's mass layoffs at the game companies they bought up.
PC games can still be physical. Burn some discs or copy the files onto a USB stick and put it in a box. I think it's crazy that boutique companies like Limited Run Games completely avoid the platform when it's the only one left that isn't actively hostile to the core principles of the company. Admittedly PC does have the image of being a digital distribution only platform these days, but it's illusory and breaking that illusion is a marketing problem.
People were pretty pissed about the xbox layoffs, it's just that things move fast and this was the next thing.
First off, console games have gradually moved away from offering physical copies for years. This had the (probably deliberate) effect of killing the used game market. Earlier attempts to kill that market were driven by the proliferation of digital content that could not be resold.
Second, physical copies on the PC have not been guaranteed for a very long time. I would suggest it was actually the wide-scale proliferation of indie games that did more to kill the physical copy market than any deliberate transition from AAA studios. There are thousands of indie games out there now. Without digital copies, it would be impossible for anyone to actually purchase any of them.
And the momentum to move away from physical copies for PC gaming has been there for a very long time. No one was going to Best Buy to pick up a physical copy of minesweeper. There have been other factors as well, such as the popularization of MMORPGS which provided years of content from a single physical copy.
Really though, the idea that without Valve, the PC gaming market would still be chugging along on physical game copies just isn't realistic. It goes completely against the momentum built over the last 25 years of PC gaming.
- While it could be argued that Valve runs an effective monopoly of the PC platform based on their marketshare, Valve operates on a platform with competitive options including DRM-free stores.
- Game consoles have always been more attached to physical media than PCs.
- Sony is the largest player in the market (disregarding mobile phone gaming) with more total marketshare than Valve and the PC platform. This makes them a much more visible target.
Boxed PC games were practically dead by the time Valve started selling 3rd party games on their marketplace. Most game stores around me had stopped selling them or massively shrunk the shelf space for them. Xbox, Gamecube, Playstation 3, they had whole walls of the store dedicated to their stuff. PC games had a couple of shelves in the middle of the store, if even that. Sales for PC games had massively fallen between 1999 and 2005 while the rest of the game industry exploded.
The industry had shrunk over a third in five years before Valve started selling online. You can't say it was "thriving".
Sony has never stolen a game from me, unlike Valve. The closest incident was that movie thing, which was more a failure on their part to negotiate perpetual licensing with the rightsholder.
You can still play your purchases on an operating system that isn't actively fighting against you running them.
That's like saying Volkswagen has a monopoly on Volkswagen cars.
Sony clearly does not have a monopoly on the video game industry, and a plurality of video games are cross-platform across consoles, PCs (Windows/Linux), and even MacOS.
But I cannot play 'Astro Bot' on another platform.
Are they not two kinds of games?
I'm arguing that your comparison isn't the right one.
A BMW and a Volkswagen are two types of apples. They both let you drive form A to B.
A Playstation and a Nintendo Switch are two types of oranges. They both provide entertainment in the form of video games.
How you drive (and how enjoyable your drive is) from A to B, or which games you play, are specific characteristics of the hardware you chose to use to accomplish the task. Neither of those are two types of anything, as it were.
But the analogy breakdown because a car is more or less a complete item you buy and use for a purpose (aside from consumables) whereas a playstation is completely useless without games to play on it.
So maybe volkswagen brand gas would be the best analogy here.
Oh, looks like cars and consoles aren't that different after all.
Someone else in the thread made the comparison to fuel, I'll go with that. Last time I checked, there was no such thing as petroleum DRM.
I'm getting a tad lost, though. The point of the sub-thread is that Sony does not have a monopoly over the video game industry. They get to choose which games are allowed on their platform and under what terms. Consoles and Cars both have proprietary components and open interfaces. A console and car have different purposes. And the average consumer has broad discretion to use cars and consoles from whatever manufacturer they wish to.
Sony host a massive, massive marketplace. That's where their monopoly lies, they have end to end control over distribution of not only their games, but anyone else who chooses to publish on the platform, in addition to control over how those games are played and on what hardware.
This hands them an enourmous amount of power over the third parties that make up the majority of software sales on their store. The way they've constructed their ecosystem and services also greatly disincentivises it's users from switching. Games aren't cross-compatible, so buying in for another console means they have to either keep their console (which they could otherwise have sold) or give up their library. Even keeping both means having to choose for one online service over another. These kinds of decisions might not matter to someone over a certain socioeconomic status, but it still matters to many.
I don't think that a market of it's size should legally be allowed to exist. It's exploitative by default and I would be supportive of the EU recognizing Sony as a "Gate Keeper" under the Digital Markets Act and taking appropriate regulatory action.
One can dream.
Until you actually buy one.
Obviously there are levels of wealth where this is all irrelevant, either because buying every console is a relatively minor expense or because you can't afford any console whatsoever, but for the people in the middle where you can more or less afford a console, once you buy into one, you're now kinda stuck with it.
People still give money to Sony for some reason, but as far as I'm concerned that's on them. Call it victim-blaming at this point, I guess.