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72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[–] 0 points 10 months ago (8 children)

A monopoly is defined as being the only seller, so I don't think you can be one without being the only seller. But our laws (are supposed to) target companies that use anti competitive practices to drive the market closer toward that being true. There's at least one suit that alleged it, but they had a difficult case to prove it. Valve doesn't deal in things like locking up exclusive titles that make it harder for others to compete.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    A literal monopoly is defined as that yea, but the definition used in legal would be a company with significant and durable market power and has the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

    In the cases that were being used as an example, they were already a monopoly going into the case due to their market standing, however at the end of the case it was also determined they were in violation of anti-trust laws as well.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (5 children)

    Do you believe Steam has the power to raise prices when those prices are set by vendors on their platform and there are at least two other major players? I suppose they have the power to try to exclude competitors, but those competitors would be buoyed very quickly by Valve attempting to do so. And even still, plenty of the biggest games in the world (Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, League of Legends) aren't on their platform already.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

    Without a doubt yes. They already do for the most part. Steam sales are the goal of the industry, thats why epic is having to go to the lengths that it is to try (and fail) to get customers.

    steam already:

    • restricts sale prices off platform
    • limits what a publisher/dev can have as a discount price
    • limits when a publisher/dev can change their price
    • restricts access to free keys for games
    • dictates the standard for revenue sharing
    • forces steam to always be at least equal to the cheapest price around
    • restricts putting an item on sale outside of the platform unless there is a planned sale on the steam page in the near future

    Like I can say for certainty yes, due to even a handful of these restrictions, if steam decided to unilaterally apply an additional base fee of x% of the game cost (which they can do), devs would be forced to either abandon steam (again the largest PC gaming market out there) or raise every other storefront price.

    There will be other options yes, but it would be like opening a lemonade stand in a dark alley vs at a busy crosswalk. Steam would need to raise the price significantly in order to convince a studio is who trying to make a profit to jump ship.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (3 children)

    But I think that being forced to abandon Steam, which is for sure an option they all have in a world with GOG and Epic, is exactly why Valve doesn't really have that power. As soon as that guy sees the $5 lemonade, he's going to hear the other guy yelling that there's a dark alley selling it for $1 around the corner.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

    finetuning the lemonade stand analogy, both stands would need to be the same price, as the busy street has a sale price restriction for alternative stands. The lemonade vendor would need to decide whether it was worth losing the busy street as a whole in order to use the dark alley in order to keep the lower 1$ price

    Developers and studios would need to be willing to leave steam (whos market share is estimated to be 75-80% of the PC third party gaming market) and either make their own(costs money + no userbase) or go to the next big thing which would likely be epic (who is at an appoximate 15% game share despite having a 12% cut vs 30 and releasing weekly free games)

    My money is on the devs just raising their price to match steams new price and also allowing both markets to exist.

    note: The percentages I gave are actually on the lower end by the way from the numbers I found. I saw some sites quoting steam to be in the 90's for market share in third party PC gaming.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    I don't see it, especially since Steam got to where it is now by stealing customers who rejected that same price hike on consoles. Everyone learned that Steam sales offer deeper discounts than digital purchases on consoles' walled gardens and that online is free. If customers are savvy enough to do that, they're savvy enough to find other storefronts in a world where Steam sucks. As I see it, anyway. I think I'd have to see the world change in a substantial way to believe otherwise.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    I definitely see your concept as plausible. However I think that amount they raise it by would need to be pretty substantial for it to be worth the risk of the studio/developer bailing on steam as a whole.

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