*Oh, how the turn tables turn.

Game distribution platform Rokky has just released the results of a study it conducted with 306 senior managers of PC game developers (all from the US or UK)

Unsurprising that they find this, since that’s what their business is about.

MAXIMIZE GLOBAL GAME SALES WITH ROKKY

Expand sales of your PC game beyond Steam. Sell game keys to 200+ global storefronts simultaneously with Rokky. Enjoy revenue increases of up to 100%.

Epic has offered quite a few decent games for free but their forced client/launcher is such shit that its not even worth installing. I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised if people pirate games even after they’ve gotten them free on epic just to not have to deal with that bullshit.

Heroic Games Launcher

An Open Source Epic, GOG and Amazon Prime Games Launcher

(heroicgameslauncher.com)

Works on windows, Mac and Linux. Connects to GOG, Epic and Amazon.

It’s a free market, right? Customers choosing what they prefer and all that? And then eventually the one that provides the best price-for-service ratio comes out on top? Something like that, right?

If you want to stop Steam from being so ubiquitous with PC gaming, then create some proper competition. The only one that comes close in my eyes is GOG.

They’re a functional monopoly in my case since I’m on Linux. GOG is the main competitor for my money.

You do not understand the issues around monopolies and it shows.

You do not understand what a monopoly is.

Unlike yourself apparently, I learned that in school: Monopoly is made up of two greek words “monos”, meaning single, kinda like mono and “polein”, meaning sell. It’s a market where there is a single seller. But unlike what you think, it is not possible to simply “create better competition”. A monopoly is controlled by a single entity. You can not enter a market controlled by a singular entity without ludicrous amounts of luck or wealth. There is a reason why even the US, the country with the most, largest monopolies in the world, has antitrust laws.

I had a reason to call you out, you didn’t even get any insight to my thought.

Valve is “de facto” monopoly, bit the actual monopoly potential is in Microsoft hands. Microsoft is for PC gaming industry what Google is for the web browser one. Sure, there may be other cool web browsers, but it’s Google that (through Android base) decide whic web browser will be delivered with the next billions of Android mobile device: some elderly people on smartphone don’t even know what is a web browser (“oh, you mean when I Google? I don’t know: I just Google”).

All future new PC will be sold with Microsoft Store and Xbox junk ware: Microsoft has been exceptionally shitty for not being the actual monopoly in the PC gaming industry. But that’s a very feeble protection: break Valve business is just a mandatory “security update” away to happen. They can break Steam little by little (such as suggested by Tim Sweeney) or just a big blow by sheer monopolized manipulation (such as Google not allowing adblockers to chrome to feed their advertising business)

Very smart. You learned how to repeat words written in books. You’re probably very proud of yourself.

You still don’t know what a monopoly is, however, considering this is a discussion about Valve and Steam.

But keep trying.

I’ve been gaming on Linux for a year now and I have (and run) way more games from GOG than Steam.

Historically I avoided Steam because of the whole “you don’t own the games, you just license them at full price” nature of the “phone home” validation they have for most games, so I had a much larger collection in GOG than Steam to begin with since I would only get from Steam the really interesting games which I wouldn’t find in GOG (plenty of games I simply did not buy because they were Steam only).

That said, running GOG games in Linux is as least as simple as Steam games, thanks to me using Lutris which does all the heavy lifting of properly configuring Wine and VKDX to run my games and even integrates with GOG to directly download the installers: in practice I have about the same chance of success with click-and-play installing and running a game in Linux from the Steam Store via the Steam App as I do from GOG via Lutris.

Then on top of that, because I’m a techie, I actually prefer Lutris + Wine because it’s so much more open for configuration than Steam and to figure out yourself how to run games for which there are no pre-made configuration scripts, such as pirated ones - for example, for one of my Steam games I couldn’t at all find a way to run the official version of the game in Linux via the Steam App, but I could get the pirated version of that game to run just fine via Lutris.

I even have a default setting in Lutris which will run my games inside a Firejail sandbox with networking disabled plus a bunch of other security settings, something I can’t do in Steam (were I can only do it for the entire Steam App, which won’t function with disabled networking).

I don’t need to keep trying, as this isn’t about me convincing you, but simply about me showing that you are wrong, which according to our like/dislike ratio I successfully did. You do not matter here. The academic truth does.

You put value in a like-dislike ratio and you think you can educate me?

You haven’t proven me wrong, you’re just another brainlet preaching to a choir of people who seem to be adamant at painting Valve as having a monopoly.

I mean, everyone has their preferred little dillusions, I guess, but an argument of popularity fallacy doesn’t make you right.

Microsoft tried to flip the switch years ago to kill anything outside the Microsoft store. That’s when steam released the original steam machines. Combined with general negative response to the messaging Microsoft has backed off, but they absolutely want to do it still.

You’re absolutely right, it doesn’t make me right. But that’s not what I said anyways, so I don’t think you did what you think you did with that.

You little radlib you, always confusing being a fan of a thing with that thing being good <3.

If you want an actual breakdown of the points where Valve uses its monopoly to manipulate the market. But I’m not sure you’re interested in that, since you haven’t even explained a single aspect of economy, but only been telling me ho wrong I am. Shows incompetency.

Unless games become something we truly own, steam is going to stay dominant. It’s more like a utility than a storefront. If you want to remove the dominance of steam you need to force a way to move libraries of games to other platforms.

Steam also got their monopoly the honest way by simply being the most consumer friendly option.

Steam isnt a single seller though. There is GOG, there is Microsoft store, and other wasys to purchase games.

Many of my favorite games don’t have drm, and you can just copy the install folder and boom, you own a copy

Right, and everybody buys their games over microsoft store. I don’t even know what the hell GOG is supposed to be. A monopoly is not characterized by no other players, it’s chracterized by a lack of seriously competing players. There is a serious difference. Chrome isn’t the only player. It’s still a monopoly with 70% of market share. It can move the market at will with little meaningful resistance.
If I go and sell lemonade, that doesn’t do anything to CocaCola.