I sell games, sir, because I’m not made out of money. I buy digital too but it’s impossible with most AAA titles these days. I mean, I’d say it was your money to spend how you like, but Steam monopoly means games are more expensive than they need to be and you’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

Alan Wake 2 is a great example because it’s a game with both critical and popular acclaim that will be remembered years from now. Despite this, people decided to ignore it - they couldn’t be bothered with alternatives. Most of you claim those games on EGS so you don’t even have to make an account. This means that the platform now has such a high impact on what you consume that you’re going to skip on one of the best games of the year even though all that stops you is that it’s not in Steam. That’s a terrifying amount of power that people aren’t bothered by even though we’re talking about company that’s smug about selling gambling to children.

Sorta. The legislation that applies to physical copies of copyrighted materials is different and comes from the time when the only physical copies of copyrighted materials were paper books. Whilst strictly speaking you are buying a license for both, for physical media it's quite a different format of license with quite different conditions than for digital media. The physical media license is implicit, standardized (the same no matter where you buy the media, the publisher or even the game) and associated with the media (i.e. ownership of the media means having the license) which means that it's transferable without requiring a 3rd party intermidiary (literally giving or selling the media means giving or selling the license that is associated with it). Digital games licenses, on the other hand, are not standardized and vary from store to store, publisher to publisher and/or even game to game. They're all very explicitly personal (associated with the buyer) and them having or not of any of the buyer rights from in the implicit license of the physical media is all over the place. Most notably, it's very rare for them to be transmissible (it hugelly depends on the store) and even then it requires a 3rd party to approve it (generally the store). As far as I know, there is not consumer license for digital media which has the same or more rights for the consumer than the implicity license for physical media and only commercial licenses (which cost thousands of dollars) will give you more rights than that. Things like EULAs are pseudo-legal attempts at circunventing the implicit license of physical media, which is why they're not valid in most countries (they're deemed a one-sided attempts at forcing a change of the implicit contract terms of the sale, after the sale has been concluded, and hence have explicitly been deemed as having no contractual force whenever those things got to court in most of the World).

> Valve has an arguably better platform but is more expensive Yes, I think everyone would agree that Steam is the best PC games platform > doesn’t have some exclusives Well yeah, that's the definition of exclusive. Sony, Epic, and Microsoft pay to have games not available on other platforms. First parties don't release their games on other platforms to increase the attractiveness of their platform. Valve does this with their first party titles as well (CS:GO, Half Life, etc), but they release very few games. Exclusives are the definition of anti-competitive behavior. Valve only does this for their first party titles, and other than that is *very* competition friendly, since they allow devs to release on any other store, as well as make free keys to sell elsewhere. As a platform, they behave much better than pretty much everyone else, with maybe only GOG beating them due to license transfers and DRM-free commitment. Steam arguably has the best customer service in the industry (or if not best, very close to it), so it's less of a concern. > Valve didn’t figure out how to port Steam to ARM Why would they? Windows on ARM is pretty much nonexistent, emulating x86 on ARM on Linux has severe performance issues, and the best platform support for ARM is from Apple, where there's even less game selection. Most games don't work on ARM, so there's little point in supporting it. But Steam does work on macOS on ARM (I think it uses Rosetta still?), where devs are actually going to port their games to ARM. Windows and Linux on ARM are incredibly niche and games just aren't ported for those platforms. I guess they could do a compat layer like Rosetta, but it'll be a terrible experience running a game through a compat layer. AFAIK, EGS and GOG don't support ARM on anything other than macOS (and phones for EGS), and why would they? > dragged their feet on x86-64 Why does that matter? The only reason to port to x86_64 is to access more memory. Even while Steam was x86, games could still absolutely be x86_64. During the transition, they still needed to support 32-bit, so why do extra work when the benefits don't really apply? I've helped update to 64-bit, and it can be a lot of work. Why prioritize that? > I'm not sure where that money goes - Steam features like Steam Input (i.e. all that stuff that makes them stand out) - Linux support - tons of investment into WINE/Proton, drivers, etc; this is huge for Steam Deck - hardware development - Steam Deck, Valve Index, etc - marketing - both their products and other devs' games - employee salaries - Valve employees are paid very well - legal fights - e.g. patent lawsuits - Gabe's yachts - similar to how Unreal Engine profits are used by Tim Sweeney They're not public, but it's not hard to estimate since they publish a lot of data about the platform.

I started buying games after buying myself an OG play station. Even back then, I remember $40 and even $50 MSRP game prices. Their greatest hits line was discounted to $20. Final Fantasy 7, which remains an all time favorite of mine, [was $50 at launch](https://www.gameslearningsociety.org/how-much-was-final-fantasy-7-when-it-came-out/). Their greatest hits line was generally priced at $20, which offered a way of discounting games after launch. IMO man games in Steam follow a similar pricing strategy these days - high launch prices with discounts later. Note that I'm not advocating for the digital only model. Not being able to sell your games again is super lame.

Steam doesn't have a monopoly, they have a massive market share that they don't abuse. Even on their own platform (Steam Deck), they went out of their way to allow competition by giving access to desktop mode, and you can add non-Steam games to the Steam app, which means I get all the nice platform features from Steam in my EGS and GOG games (Steam Input, Proton, etc). There's nothing stopping anyone from switching to a competitor, like EGS, GOG, or any of the publisher-specific platforms. EGS even takes a smaller cut, so they can afford to sell games for less, yet they largely don't. PlayStation and Xbox are completely separate platforms, yet prices are similar to Steam, and usually higher for older games. Valve doesn't set prices, publishers do. If you don't like prices, complain to the publishers, not Valve. You really need to qualify your argument here that Valve somehow caused higher prices. In fact, if you look at game prices *before* Steam and adjust for inflation, games are cheaper now.

Valve sets their cut at 30%. Would it be this high if Valve had competition? Would games cost the same if the cut was 10%? Why is it so high in the first place? What’s being offered in return?

They _do_ have competition, and apparently publishers are willing to pay that fee. Also, it's more like 20-25% for larger games (IIRC 25% for sales >$10M, 20% for sales >$50M). I think GOG is still 30%, and [they seem to be losing money even with that cut](https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/29/22808199/cd-projekt-gog-losses-restructuring-earnings-2021), and [EGS apparently _still_ isn't profitable](https://www.theverge.com/23945184/epic-v-google-fortnite-play-store-antitrust-trial-updates), so I really don't think 12% is sustainable. Valve _might_ be able to do it, but that's because they have massive market share. > Why is it so high in the first place? What’s being offered in return? - marketing - Steam platform features for users (e.g. Steam Input), Steamworks for developers (e.g. DRM, multiplayer, achievements, etc), and things like SteamVR - platform support (e.g. Proton for Linux, Linux driver development, etc) - devs don't need to do anything to support Steam Deck - regional pricing - so publishers don't need to think about it If publishers felt they were being ripped off, they could go elsewhere. We've actually seen some big names go off and make their own platform to keep more of the revenue, but then they came back. It turns out Steam offers a fantastic service for users, publishers, and developers. Other platforms like EGS and GOG don't offer anything _close_ to what Steam offers, which is probably why Steam still retains a massive marketshare without doing anything anti-competitive like paying for exclusives or bribing users w/ free games. They literally just offer a premium service and charge market rates for it.

Valve building their own Android for games is not beneficial to Linux. I don’t know how many times do you guys need to be surprised. > If publishers felt they were being ripped off, they could go elsewhere They must be perfectly happy with those 30% then! It’s not that gamers sit out any non-Steam exclusive. I’m not going to argue any further because it’s pointless. I wanted you to learn on somebody else’s mistakes but you’re very set on repeating them yourself before that.

> Valve building their own Android for games is not beneficial to Linux. I don’t know how many times do you guys need to be surprised. ? When did I suggest they did anything of the sort? SteamOS is just Linux running Steam in Big Picture mode in a separate virtual desktop from desktop mode, with the root fs in read-only mode to prevent users from bricking it by tinkering. That's it, you can get pretty much the same thing with [Bazzite](https://bazzite.gg/). I use Linux on my desktop (openSUSE Tumbleweed), and games run the same as on my Steam Deck, but I could also get the same setup as SteamOS if I used something like openSUSE Kalpa (KDE) or Aeon (GNOME), which also has a read-only filesystem. > I’m not going to argue any further because it’s pointless Well yeah, because every point you've brought up is either wrong or completely overblown. I really don't understand what "mistakes" you're talking about. Steam offers a great service, better than everyone else. If that stops being true, I'll buy my games on another service. I was just fine w/o Steam for years when I first switched to Linux, and I'll be just fine w/o Steam if they ever screw the pooch. For now, they have an excellent service for users, publishers, and developers, and their competition is subpar for all three. I have hundreds of free games from EGS and hundreds of games on GOG, so I won't be hurting for something to play if Steam ever decides to go evil. But for now, I'm getting _really_ good value for the money I spend, because gaming on my OS of choice is _way_ better thanks to Valve's investment, and I have no problem rewarding that.

That's exactly my point, you are taking the stance that people didn't buy alan wake because it wasn't on steam, to a degree that's true, i'm saying that i think a larger proportion didn't buy it specifically because it **was** on EGS. If it were released as a game you could buy and play sans-platform, then i'd agree with you. It'd certainly see less sales than a steam release, because steam is where everyone is. My stance is basically if you remove steam entirely, Standalone Sales > EGS. Add steam back in and you get Steam > Standalone > EGS Think in terms of food, you're basically saying the it's the fault of the 3.5 star monopolistic countrywide chain fast food place that nobody want's to eat at the recently health-inspection-failing 1 star food-poisoning cafe. Is there a monopoly, sure, is the competition so bad people avoid it regardless of the monopoly, also yes. If you were using something like GOG as an example, i'd fully agree with you, but EGS has seemingly infinite funds and they **still** managed to release something so bad nobody wants to use it, even for "free" games. It's not even just the platform, epic as a company have a reputation, so they have to also overcome that, which they have not. > That’s a terrifying amount of power that people aren’t bothered by Historically there's been no need to be worried, generally, i agree that's not ideal, but again name a viable comparable alternative. > even though we’re talking about company that’s smug about selling gambling to children. You mean as opposed to the company that actually lost a class action regarding loot boxes in their game targeted at children? You aren't even wrong about this but "People don't buy games from this company who famously lost a lawsuit regarding gambling targeted at kids because this other company who also do sketchy kids gambling things are ..better at PR?" isn't a convincing argument. Everyone should be better at this, but they aren't.

For the longest time, they couldn't undercut physical MSRP with digital MSRP because they didn't want to upset Walmart and have them stop stocking their wares.

You mean the regulations that force public companies to prioritize shareholder profit over all other concerns?

You’re getting downvoted but you’re (almost) right. There are other platforms especially GOG which allows to download DRM free installers, but most of the people have no clue about this.

We know about GOG but most Dev Studios avoid it like the plague for some reason. Couldn't possibly be related to DRM money.