Is Steam Dangerous to the PC Gaming Industry?

[lilshortstuf]

So I was over at the Escapist Magazine when on their forums I saw a link to an article giving 5 reasons why Steam may be dangerous to PC gaming.

 

Reason 1: Monopolies stifle distribution innovation

 

In a free market, innovation and improvements are encouraged by competition. The problem occurs when one company is so far-and-away ahead that no-one else can catch up. Think of Google. Think of Facebook. And now we should be thinking of Steam in the same way.

 

Reason 2: Monopolies stifle creative innovation

 

I keep hearing that is getting harder and harder to get onto Steam, and if you don’t, then your game won’t sell. The PC has always been an open platform on which it is easy to distribute games. If Steam becomes a de facto monopoly, Valve decides which games we see. A bit too competitive to Half-Life? No distribution. We don’t like Match-3 games? No distribution. We’re not sure that anyone will want a game based on farming? No distribution.

 

Reason 3: The little guys don’t get a look in

 

Helping the little guys is hard. When you’re big, and profitable, and important, it’s easy to prioritise the big publishers over the little guys. The little guys are already struggling on the console (although PSN provides one route to market), but the PC has been their lifeblood. A megalithic monopoly could rationally decide that it is no longer cost-effective to support the little guys.

 

Reason 4: Steam has all the pricing power

 

Retailers won’t work with indies: it’s not worth their while and, more importantly, indies don’t give them marketing support.

 

What if that becomes true of Steam? Valve is in a position to say “your game won’t sell without us. We want a bigger cut, or upfront marketing commitment, or some form of guarantee.â€Â

 

Reason 5: Valve doesn’t need to promote the platform

 

For all their weaknesses, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo spend a lot of money promoting and improving their platforms. Steam doesn’t improve the PC as a gaming device. I am a lot more comfortable about oligopolies when there is something in it for the consumer (like subsidised home consoles, for example).

 

 

Here is the full article in you want to read the other few bits: Five reasons why Steam will destroy the PC games industry | Games Brief

[Oreo]

this is stupid, how the hell else would you be able to get millions(maybe not millions but alot) of games in one spot, if there wasnt steam youd be buying shit from some wierd wbesite or have to go out and buy a disk

[Dan1]

If I can't get the game on Steam, I go out and buy the disc. So, I don't think Steam is in anyway dangerous to PC gaming. If anything, it keeps PC gaming alive.

[bort]

there are other content distribution platforms like Impulse or Direct2Drive but they suck compared to steam. Impulse is nice, until you try buying multiple copies of a game. You realize that your games aren't tied to the account you bought them on -- they're tied to your PAYPAL email address, even if you don't have an Impulse account registered with your PayPal email address. Forget gifting a game to another account. Forget using your one PayPal to buy a game for both you and your brother. So in order to get to the game you just bought, you have to create a new Impulse account, using your PayPal email address, and then you will see your games in there. You can view your game keys and then log out, log back in with your real Impulse account and manually activate them. Oh, whatever you do, DO NOT buy the same game twice in a row. Do it one at a time, log in, get your keys and paste them somewhere safe because when you buy a second copy of the same game, the game only appears once in Impulse and there is no way to see the key for the first copy. /rant

[I Love Lamp]

Lamp to the rescue. Also, writer is an idiot.

 

Reason 1: Monopolies stifle distribution innovation

 

In a free market, innovation and improvements are encouraged by competition. The problem occurs when one company is so far-and-away ahead that no-one else can catch up. Think of Google. Think of Facebook. And now we should be thinking of Steam in the same way.

 

The companies mentioned were underdogs of their niche market for many years. Google worked long and hard to grasp the market away from AOL. Facebook only recently (within the past few years) managed to outpace Myspace.

And, regardless, Steam is just a distribution platform. And it's not the only one either, not by a longshot. Battlenet, Greenhouse, and that new one Ttam is always jerking off about.

 

 

Reason 2: Monopolies stifle creative innovation

 

I keep hearing that is getting harder and harder to get onto Steam, and if you don’t, then your game won’t sell. The PC has always been an open platform on which it is easy to distribute games. If Steam becomes a de facto monopoly, Valve decides which games we see. A bit too competitive to Half-Life? No distribution. We don’t like Match-3 games? No distribution. We’re not sure that anyone will want a game based on farming? No distribution.

 

Wow, this writer is TEH DUMS. Stating something broad like "if you don't get your game on steam, it won't sell" is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard. Like I said before, Steam is but one of many vehicles of distribution. Sure, it's the most well known one, but there are many others. Not only that, Indie developers love Steam.

A number of other members of the game industry then spoke out against Pitchford, including Ron Carmel of independent developer 2D Boy, who said that "no other digital distribution service I know of, PC or console, pays a higher cut of the revenues out to developers."

Steam (content delivery) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I'm not going to waste my time responding to the rest of the article, I have better things to do than riposte authors who don't research what the fuck they are writing about.

[wild bill]

[RetiredTacos]

dum..

[Hamhugger]

steam is helping keep pc gaming alive. get that crap out of here

[lilshortstuf]

I hope you guys realize I don't think Steam is dangerous at all I just wanted to see what people thought.

 

What I find funniest is the difference in opinion between HG and all the people on the Escapist's forums. They are all like well yeah that's capitalism blah blah blah.

[Weeman]

i dont care about monopolies, if you had an idea that got you to that point, then you deserve all that money.

[n1ckkkkk]

Do not pass go.

Do not collect $200.

[fox*]

how stupid....

[John]

if I can't buy it on steam, then I don't buy it.

[lordps3]

You don't have to have your game be distributed by Steam to get it out there. A lot of the free mods that are steam send you straight to their website anyways, where you have to download it, im sure there is an easy way to connect that to paypal where you would have to pay for the game to download it from their website. Of course steam gets your game out there more.

 

I've bought two non valve games from steam, Bioshock and Company of Heroes. Neither worked very well, and although i know i have directX10, neither works on dx10. I'm never buying a non valve game on steam again. But valve games are the best games out there (imo) in their respective categories.

 

Blizzard is also owned by vivendi btw.

 

Vivendi itself is starting to look like a monopoly. They own NBC Universal (out of the news channels, NBC is the best imo), they own ActivisionBlizzard, activision controlling one of the hottest series, CoD. Blizzard being the best RPG/RTS developer in the bizz, and Valve, the best FPS/Action Adventure developer in the bizz. Vivendi also controls like 80% of the music industry i think.

 

And with the huge popularity of consoles, steam is helping keep PC gaming alive. PC gaming is the most competitive and the best, not just imo but for a fact. So kudos to steam.

 

But monopolies like Micro$oft do suck.

[Spectre]

Nah.

 

Makes it easy for gamers to spend money on products which support the industry,

[Wingless]

This article is stupid.

Assuming that Steam packaged games are modified other than to let Valve hold their DRM is stupid.

Calling a company a monopoly just because it holds market share is stupid.

Not realizing that Facebook and Google have risen to the top due to their rapid development of platforms that people have use for is stupid. Don't get me started on how Facebook is starting to screw that up, though.

 

Make a platform that has the audience in mind for ease of use and the developers in mind when it comes to distribution, and viola, success. It's not rocket science.

[Siphaed]

So I was over at the Escapist Magazine when on their forums I saw a link to an article giving 5 reasons why Steam may be dangerous to PC gaming.

 

Reason 1: Monopolies stifle distribution innovation

 

In a free market' date=' innovation and improvements are encouraged by competition. The problem occurs when one company is so far-and-away ahead that no-one else can catch up. Think of Google. Think of Facebook. And now we should be thinking of Steam in the same way.

 

[b']Reason 2: Monopolies stifle creative innovation[/b]

 

I keep hearing that is getting harder and harder to get onto Steam, and if you don’t, then your game won’t sell. The PC has always been an open platform on which it is easy to distribute games. If Steam becomes a de facto monopoly, Valve decides which games we see. A bit too competitive to Half-Life? No distribution. We don’t like Match-3 games? No distribution. We’re not sure that anyone will want a game based on farming? No distribution.

 

Reason 3: The little guys don’t get a look in

 

Helping the little guys is hard. When you’re big, and profitable, and important, it’s easy to prioritise the big publishers over the little guys. The little guys are already struggling on the console (although PSN provides one route to market), but the PC has been their lifeblood. A megalithic monopoly could rationally decide that it is no longer cost-effective to support the little guys.

 

Reason 4: Steam has all the pricing power

 

Retailers won’t work with indies: it’s not worth their while and, more importantly, indies don’t give them marketing support.

 

What if that becomes true of Steam? Valve is in a position to say “your game won’t sell without us. We want a bigger cut, or upfront marketing commitment, or some form of guarantee.â€Â

 

Reason 5: Valve doesn’t need to promote the platform

 

For all their weaknesses, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo spend a lot of money promoting and improving their platforms. Steam doesn’t improve the PC as a gaming device. I am a lot more comfortable about oligopolies when there is something in it for the consumer (like subsidised home consoles, for example).

 

Here is the full article in you want to read the other few bits: Five reasons why Steam will destroy the PC games industry | Games Brief

 

1) Monopolize? Steam isn't the only option and there are certainly enough to go around. Direct2Drive, Impulse are a few that I can think of that do really, really well. Hell, sometimes their sales are so much better than Steam that it's almost stupid not to go with them.

 

2) Again, there are others that are there that will distribute with or without the need of Steam. Besides the two mentioned in my first point, there is Amazon.com, NewEgg.com, Walmart.com, and Gamestop.com for retailer hard-copy distribution. And once again, many of those have sale prices or even standard prices of games that are far cheaper than the Steam version.

 

3) Steam is one of the biggest supporters of Indie developers around, so I don't know where they're getting the assumption that Valve might up and decidedly drop support for them. I mean, hell, the guys who created Counter-Strike Source for them were originally modders/Indies.

 

4) Yes, just because companies like Activision are greedily obsessed with money it surely must mean that all developers are the same. (/sarcasm). If Valve were really wanting money all the time, they'd have charged $30-40 per each of the individual games of the collective Orange Box instead of bundling them up for a very cheap price; they would have pumped out game after game after game every 6months-1 year for every one of their IP's just as other developers have. No, nothing shows in the contrary as the article portrays.

 

5) Weakness? Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo charge each developer a "licensing fee" on their consoles to distribute on them (that's why they're $60 instead of the PC $50). Because of this, they get a lot of money through the sale of all the games on their consoles (used games are questionable), and so they advertise for it too to push the sales which gets them profits. The PC has no place where they can force a licensing fee on any developer because it's such an open competative market (AMD vs Intel, ATI vs nVidia, and so on). Even if Steam charges for developers, they charge the standard retailer distribution price that places like Amazon.com, Walmart, GameStop, and may others also charge. So, what is there to promote other than that they're a store?

 

 

 

This article is too full of flaws, assumptions, speculations, and just generalizations that don't even come close to fitting the usual methods of Valve.

[mccaincracker]

I think steam would help sell games and people can discover games they have never even heard of..

[n1ckkkkk]

One problem Siph your essay is to long to read to whatever you were argueing about is invalid

[Clams]

One problem Siph your essay is to long to read to whatever you were argueing about is invalid

^this no one reads your novels

[Anomo]

I'm kind of on the fence when it comes to steam. Yes I will admit it is very easy to use and saves lots of time. But then again if they pull another L4D2 stunt and fail (People were boycotting L4D2, and steam had invested lots of money in selling the game), ALL our games bought on steam will NOT work anymore unless someone cracks them.

[lordps3]

what happened with L4D2?