First line of the article seems fairly contradictory to that.

Wait now I’m even more confused

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)

There’s nothing in this article that suggests that they polled more than just senior managers.

Two things:

1. …

You’re confusing ownership of the “copyright of a game” with ownership of the actual instance of a game.

In jurisdictions were the Law is not just bought and paid for by industry lobbyists, you definitely own that copy you got when you downloaded the offline installer from GOG same as you would a game CD. What you don’t own is the copyright of the game.

Further, even in the jurisdictions were IP Law is thoroughly bought and thus has been subverted to serve media industry interests, you de facto own that copy you got when you downloaded the offline installer from GOG: because the way things are set up with GOG (meaning, no DRM), the copyright owner would have no recourse but to literally take you to court to take away that copy, which they won’t because it’s too expensive so not worth the cost - unlike with Steam they can’t just switch off you access to it by toggling a flag in a database.

Curiously, with Steam they can block you from accessing the copy of the game you bought even in the non-corrupt legal jurisdictions, because if they just block you from accessing it even if they legally can’t, it’s now up to you to take them to court to restore access to something you legally should have access to, and you won’t do it because it’s “too expensive so not worth the cost”.

2. …

Whilst the whole thing is a bit of a mess with multiple takes on multiple jurisdictions, the praxis side is the same everywhere: “Possession is 9/10 of the law” as the saying goes - so if you have it fully under your control (so, no “phone home” system that can lock you out from using it) THEY have to take you to Court and justify to the Judge why they should be allowed to take it away from you, whilst if it’s not under your control and they just take your access to it away from you, YOU have to take them to Court and justify why they should have to restore you access.

Even were you do not have legal ownership of a copy of a game, the way the GOG stuff is set up, once you’ve downloaded the offline installer you have de facto ownership which is pretty costly for them to overturn.

Meanwhile, the way the Steam stuff is set up you do not have control over that instance of the game and they can just take it away from you, and then it’s you who will have trouble overturning it even in jurisdictions were you’re legally in the right.

If only all monopolies were so user-positive.

I suspect what’s unique in valve’s case is that they don’t have investors and board members and other stakeholders to lead them toward short-term profit maximization.

It surprised me that only 10% had tried selling their games on GOG. I guess the thought of going DRM-free was scarier than the monopoly of Steam.

Yeah, of course it would. Senior Manager position is something that basically only exists for bigger studios. From the 306 developers interviewed, probably only a small part are indie developers.

Remember when Ubisoft came crawling back to Steam?

Gabe won’t live forever. I guess we have until then

I dread the day where GabeN is leaving valve

meh, IDK. it won’t change the basic facts of the company, there will still be no stakeholders.

Depends. Whoever will follow up, can charge the company into a public one

certainly possible. I just think Gabe isn’t the only Gabe who works at valve.

The problem with this “anti-monopoly” rhetoric is that players want to play on the same platform as everyone else.

Nailed it, this is an ad for their company, that’s all the poll is, and of course it backs up the purpose of the company, almost like they set out from the beginning to create a poll with the results they wanted. Once they did that, they fired up their email (or hired a PR company) and spammed every news outlet they could to get them to cover. Steamdeckhq was dumb enough to take the bait, literally advertising this company for free, and OP continued that idiocy by posting here.

Is it a monopoly though. Monopolies are there to protect the consumer, not really the seller. A developer does not need to use steam at all. I really don’t think steam can control the pricing like that. Like, if steam started to raise prices on people buying the games, then I feel like people would still jump ship. Places like gog and itch.io exist. There are plenty of game stores as well, Microsoft, Nintendo, ea.

The problem developers have is they feel if they make a PC game, that they have to put it on steam and no other platform or they won’t make money. But the developer still has choices and I feel like steam is pretty reasonable with their cut and the tools they offer developers. A developer can even sell their game on a different platform at the same time they sell it on steam. They can even sell steam keys on their own website if they wanted to.

To call steam a monopoly is a bit of a stretch. People still have plenty of choices and steam isn’t circle jerking their consumers.

What makes Steam so compelling for consumers is that it’s more than just a digital storefront and launcher. They’ve expanded into so many different areas: Steam Input, Steam Remote Play, Steam Friends, Steam Workshop, Proton, Steam Marketplace, etc.

There is so much they do that it’s not really just a store anymore – it’s an all-in-one platform. Most competitors do not come close to equal in any of these features; they usually just have basic launchers and maybe decent friend systems.

In my opinion, GOG is the best competitor yet because of their DRM-free installers and GOG Galaxy on windows which allowed you to have all your games in one place.

Maybe they tried to target only senior managers but were only 75% successful.

Also, the conflict of interest is apparent in the first 4 words of your quote, which explains why they picked such a weird study population.

Steam is the reason I was able to get away from windows without having to give up a lot of games (and probably would need to do annoying troubleshooting for the ones that do work, since most of the compatibility issues I have seen were because the game tried to run natively instead of via proton).

Yes if GOG is an option I go for that.

They really need to split all those things off.

Are they a store? A launcher? A forum?

They should pick one thing and let other people do the others.