But they aren't tied to a store? When you download a game from Steam, it's just an executable on your box. You could put it on a hard drive and move it wherever you wanted. You don't have to launch games you bought with Steam through Steam. They aren't streamed. They are saved locally to your computer. You can only *download* it from that store, sure, but that's not apples to apples. If I buy a game from GameStop, they won't give me another copy for free, just cause I threw away the copy they gave me. Once you download the game, that's what they sold you, and it's notionally your responsibility to keep track of it. Them allowing you to keep downloading new copies forever isn't strictly necessary, and costs them money every time you do it. And if you can run the games you downloaded without Steam, all you're saying is "there should be other places to buy your games." But there are. Those exist. Less people use them, sure, but what do you propose? Kill Steam because too many people use it to buy their games? Legislate that people are required to shop at other stores?

well, many games are tied to the steam client (through the steam runtimes, steam DRM, steam input, needing a steam account for online play...). for most games, no, you can't just take the executable and do whatever you want with it. you'll need the steam client, and this creates a lock-in effect. because you need steam open to play all your steam games, you won't look elsewhere for games, and you won't see games not on steam, unless they're big enough. imo, the solution to this is to break the lock-in, have interoperability between clients. there's no good reason why cross-play between steam and GOG, for example, is an exception and not the norm. there's no good reason why the steam client is required for so many games, there should be offline installers. there's no good reason why steam input only works with the steam client. part of the reason why proton is so amazing is that it's open-source, other steam technologies should be the same!

> You might not immediately recognise the name Santa Ragione Because you clickbait vultures don't use proper nouns in your goddamn headlines?

> There are games exclusive to Epic that do just fine. Alan Wake 2 took an entire year to become profitable. It's because the one store everyone uses didn't carry it.

Yeah, it's a monopoly. That's not a value judgement. It's not calling them evil or criminal or anything. It is a necessary recognition of their market position. I.e. - they have competitors, but those competitors *do not matter.*

>You might not immediately recognise the name Santa Ragione, but the independent Italian studio has been creating boundary pushing, award-winning games for over a decade and a half now. Award winning, best indie game studio yet the name is unrecognisable...? It's pretty fishy just from the beginning of the article. I checked their game, some are not well received, and their latest game have only 92 reviews on Steam. Not good, seems like the studio is already on their way out and he believe Horses gonna save the studio. But if you look at the game https://youtu.be/JYewjNYxV-8 It's an asset flip niche horror game, it's not gonna save the studio. So what left is the dev trying to spin a sob story to hopefully rile up the anti-steam crowd to get some pity sales.

Sure, many games are tied to various Steam services, but that's by the choice of the games developer. Steam offers various built in services that game devs can choose to use if they want. It's not like it's some kind of requirement. You might as well complain that game devs use Windows binaries, locking their games to only run on Windows. Sure, I prefer it when they target other platforms, but that's 1000% not Microsoft's fault that the dev chose to dev for their platform. I'm not mad at Microsoft for so many games being Windows only. I'm mad at the devs. And games that build themselves around Steam services are *of course* going to be tied to Steam. That's a choice the devs made. If they wanted their game to run without needing the Steam client, they trivially could have built it that way. They just would have had to either reimplement all those Steam features themselves, or done without. And if people want those Steam features, every store client who wants to run those games would have to implement those features in an interoperable way. It's easy to say "have interoperability between clients," but that's glossing over the potentially thousands of dev hours required to implement all of the features needed. And that's assuming they could all agree on a spec. And to your final point about being open source. First, it gives very "any musician who gets paid is a sellout" energy. But more than that, it doesn't actually solve the problem you have. Even if Steam open sourced their tooling, that doesn't mean other players in the space could integrate it. Steam has grown organically for the past 30yrs, and trying to extricate the deep inner bits and then graft them on to your own solution isn't as easy as it sounds.

Satisfactory made $11 million in the first year when it was exclusive to Epic (and not available on "the one store everybody uses").

I understand that this is a problem for the studio, but no one would expect Disney to distribute a David Cronenberg movie. Steam is THE mainstream distribution platform for games, and for that they are already pretty open for weird shit. It's this weird american free speech thing only for video games: "I'm allowed to make it so you have to sell it!". No?

Exceptions mean there's no rule, yeah? Minecraft, therefore, 90% marketshare doesn't matter.

Their previous game seems like a proper hand-drawn stuff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqDalFNDdAw

> Exceptions mean there's no rule, yeah? 1) when you're arguing that it's impossible for a game to make a profit without Steam, yes 2) my post was in reply to you listing a single game that wasn't profitable for a year and blaming that on it not being on Steam. If my example is not a valid argument then you shouldn't have argued that way in the first place.

> they have competitors So not a monopoly.

Absolute monopolies are fiction. Standard Oil only ever controlled 85% of America's oil. Monopoly is when your competition does not matter - not when it does not exist. There will always be *someone* competing with you. But if I open Mindbleach's Video Emporium and move six units per quarter, the impact on Steam is approximately dick. So is Epic's.

> impossible Strawman. It is demonstrably much harder for games to profit, when they're not on Steam. Exceptions are rare viral hits. Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically, because it wasn't on the one storefront that handles an overwhelming majority of PC sales. The difference between PC games not on Steam and iOS games not on the App Store is *slim.* So yes, there *are* games exclusive to Epic that do just fine, *but not many.* Odds say, fucked. Being unavailable on Steam means most PC gamers will not consider buying it, and may never even be aware of it. We have a word for that.

[Monopoly: ](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/monopoly) > 1: **exclusive** ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action >2: **exclusive** possession or control >3: a commodity controlled by **one party** >4: : **one** that has a monopoly

> Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically Exceptions mean there’s no rule, yeah?

Struggling is the rule, not the exception. Most games do much worse when they're not on Steam. Most means more. Do you understand that?

https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined > Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors. That is how that term is used here: a "monopolist" is a firm with significant and durable market power.

Saturnalia also looks pretty good tbh. Maybe this is what they mean by having external party joining the porject instead of having people inhouse doing the work. >As Pietro puts it, Santa Ragione operates "more like a film production studio, where people kind of come together for a project rather than being there all the time", often from fields outside video games. Saturnalia's art director, Marta Gabas, for instance, is a film and theatre set designer who had never made a game before. The visual is significantly different between game, and this new one in particular feels like they run out of money and have to use bought asset to stitch together a game with no visual coherent. Gamedev is a very risky business and they seems to be on the way out anyway.