@banishedsoul1 said:

http://gamersyndrome.com/2009/video-games/steam-has-70-percent-of-digital-market-share/ had 70% in 2009 google it your self

Thank you for that link. It seems that article (and most other articles for that matter) measure the digital market in terms of the amount of revenue generated through digital sales. This however still doesn't make them the end all be all as far as PC is concerned. Physical copies of PC games are still making money for large PC titles, and there are still titles and services out there that do not employ steam in a significant way. They also do not mention if micro transactions were being counted for.

The loyalty to steam as a service is because they have done right to the consumer base so far. Now consider the recent possibility that people were entertaining recently about there not being a steam summer sale. People at that point were already losing loyalty to the the steam platform because of the lack of sales. Steam is at 70% not due to the blind fervent loyalty as you implied, but because they run a good business. Good business tend to look at the long-term and tend not to royally crew the customer the way you said in the first post.

EDIT: Also, try not to make up numbers next time. 70 does not equal 80 ;)

Steam is not a monopoly, as there is more than 0 competition.

Steam simply has market control.

@Fattony12000 said:

Steam does not have a monopoly on PC games.

Steam is pretty cool.

Valve are pretty cool.

People think they are cool.

If they stop being cool then people will not buy games from them.

Steam is digital rights management, but a very fair and reliable and good form of digital rights management.

THIS!

Btw what's your point banishedsoul1? Steam is not a monopoly, There is amazon, Origin, GOG, D2D and Impulse (Gamestop) just to name a few that offer digital PC games sales. If you don't like Steam then don't buy from them. There is no indication that what Valve is doing with Steam is in any way or form hurting the PC community or business, I would argue that the opposite is the case.

@ajamafalous said:

You aren't really aware of Valve's track record, are you? There's a reason people trust them and are so loyal.

The thing is though, and I'm a Valve fanboy, that Newell and his peers are not going to be around forever. And what happens if (sadly, I think "when" is more appropriate) a Kotick-look-alike takes over the wheel? Bad stuff. Bad stuff indeed.

Hey, OP. At least four of your co-workers began their campaigns around the world all at the same time. The management in charge of the shilling department should try staggered forum thread drops.

@SomeJerk said:

Hey, OP. At least four of your co-workers began their campaigns around the world all at the same time. The management in charge of the shilling department should try staggered forum thread drops.

My thoughts exactly.

@Fattony12000 said:

Steam does not have a monopoly on PC games.

Steam is pretty cool.

Valve are pretty cool.

People think they are cool.

If they stop being cool then people will not buy games from them.

Steam is digital rights management, but a very fair and reliable and good form of digital rights management.

Truth.

@banishedsoul1 said:

@Fattony12000 said:

Steam does not have a monopoly on PC games.

Steam is pretty cool.

Valve are pretty cool.

People think they are cool.

If they stop being cool then people will not buy games from them.

Steam is digital rights management, but a very fair and reliable and good form of digital rights management.

Yes steam does have a monopoly they have pretty much no competition.

The definition of "monopoly" isn't "pretty much the only supplier", it's "the only supplier". A small group of people isn't "pretty much one person" just because there aren't a large amount of people in the group, even if one of them is seven feet tall and the rest are babies.

@banishedsoul1 said:

I remember when BF3 came out people were screaming " no steam no buy". Let me get this straight, you wont buy a game you have been waiting for because you cant use your favorite store? That is just insane and fanboyish.

It had nothing to do with steam being peoples "favourite store" it's not like both origin and steam are identical but people prefer steam out of some misplaced loyalty. People wanted it on steam because of the functionality it provides and because EA's terms of service were kind of suspicious. (I still bought it on Origin but these are the reasons if I hadn't). I can agree that monopolies are dangerous but I think as more and more companies start going the digital distribution route the last thing valve is going to want is to push customers away. I think the only way steam keeps as big a market share as they have is provide a friendlier, more convenient, more functional and more reasonably priced service than the competition that is continuing to establish itself.

EDIT: Ah just noticed @Fattony12000 's comment. I knew monopoly was the wrong word when there are other digital distributors but I didn't know the correct term. Thanks!

The only reason that would ever get me worried would be Valve going public with steam. They made it perfectly clear in the past that they value customers and that they try to think long term. Do they slip up once in a while? Yeah, sure, but the overall experience with steam is a good to awesome one. If they went public they would have to answer to shareholders, that usually ends in very short sighted actions to make as much money as fast as possible.

As others said: There is a very good reason people like and trust valve ... they EARNED that trust from us. And I highly doubt they will ever change to the worse.

It isn't a monopoly.

It is a private company and so is controlled by the owners (AFAIK currently Gabe has a majority stake).

The flat management structure of engineers provides a model of self-management which seems to create results.

Trust in that ownership and the corporate management of the company is what Valve sells.

They also have the best digital distribution network for games for both distribution and purchase of titles.

They provide the best visibility and statistical data / sales advice in the industry to their publisher/developer partners.

They also happen to make really great games.

And over the past decade they have earned that trust from gamers.

There are no boxes, no DVDs of data that are guaranteed to be accessed offline. This is the digital distribution system. We often have to auth online just to install a PC game, all online is managed via a cd key or DRM code tied to our account, some games even track installs and give you a limited number. DRM is a reality of the platform (something that can easily go too far, forcing some to avoid certain games) and Steam offers as little or as much as you (the dev/publisher) like. This isn't as progressive as GOG.com but the Steam powered DRM isn't limited install and is auth on install (with a local token giving offline play for X weeks, depending how well the offline mode is working at present). Back when EA was charging customers extra to unlock the right to redownload their digital purchases, Valve was saying downloads forever on Steam. When EA are forever turning off servers to disable functionality in their games, Valve have made a few missteps (eg WON transition) but are generally doing ok with it now. Because you're putting your trust in the cloud, digital stores need to court the consumer and show they are worthy of that trust. Otherwise you're paying money and may end up with nothing to show for it (if you buy a game with online auth for installation and they switch off that auth server you effectively have no way of installing the thing you purchased through the official process, SimCity may be a great game next year but do I trust EA to keep the server on for 10 years when they have stated the game must auth online at the start of every play session? I'm not really interested in renting SimCity, especially not at retail prices).

The big thing where Steam wins: critical mass. If Valve was to vanish tomorrow and left nothing behind to help gamers who had relied on Steam then the amount of free community work that would go into hacking the last client and organising data blobs for all games sold on the service would be immense. Piracy would suddenly become a much larger issue as those who legally had a claim to all these games they purchased would be forced to build into the illegal networks for game distribution and hackers would be building pirateSteam to try and make it all easy.

Steam is too big to fail. Valve have always shown a level of customer care well beyond all of the publicly traded companies out there. Hell, they're exceptional in the pool of private companies as far as working in a visibly 'do no evil' way. That's why they're doing really well. On a digital service where trust is everything because you're buying access to an unlock code for 0s and 1s in the cloud, the guys who work well with publishers to show why they should fight with prices to get their games to everyone who wants to play them (even the ones who don't have the money for $60 releases) or may want to one day play them (this is where sales work: buy now for cheap; play later) and also show customers they are a good best with a history of good decisions are going to grab a big slice of the market. As Valve say, piracy is a service issue. Steam is all about service.

Amazon

They already stole money from my Steam Sale Stash™

Although it has been said many times, I'd like to reiterate Valve is far from a monopoly. There are other digital distribution services out there and while they might not be as widely used or as popular as Steam, they still make some sort of business. (Someone even brought up Amazon earlier and how they even ran their own sale lately.)

I'd also argue that the PC retail market has merely shifted over to digital retail services in general (and it isn't solely Steam's fault that this happened).

Oh and Steam sales are still great. Amazon gave me some pretty good deals recently, too, but I feel like overall Steam is still where the cool sales are at.

There are also worse offenders for DRM out there.

well steam is a happy place. valve is very customer oriented. they help people out when they need help. they make the customers happy about stuff. it has been said that valve would make steam DRM free if say they went out of business.

Don't forget that Valve has piracy to contend with too. Even if they eventually controlled 99% of the market, they could easily lose their customers to piracy if they did anything too rash.

Steam doesn't do anything that couldn't be copied by another company so I don't really see that they have a monopoly, it's just that no other entity has put in a sincere effort to match them.

XBLA and PSN are much closer to a monopoly than Steam ever will be.

Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but how much of a cut does Valve make per sale? Do they have to negotiate the sale prices with the publisher or can they sell them at whatever price they see fit?

Steam hasn't monopolized the market.

I only buy games of steam in sales, if theres a game I want day 1. Skyrim, Diablo and Battlefield 3 I but the box.

Brought Bioshock 2 for 5 bucks last night find out I can't use controller and will probably never play it again.

I doubt this is any danger outside the US and the UK. Ridiculous pricing prevents it.

I have most of my games on Steam, but only like 10 out of my 126 games are non-discounted Steam games, and all of those are 10-15 euro titles. I don't know about other Europeans but I buy from Amazon US, Green man gaming (80% of my purchases), G2play, Gamesplanet and in absolute worst case, retail. Almost everything is Steam-codes anyway, and I'd rather pay 20-35 euro then 50 euro for new games.

for a monopoly.... steam is pretty consumer friendly

Monopoly isn't always a bad thing, one purpose that it serves is to increase efficiency by centralizing a demand (such as game management). Companies can save money by not needing to build distribution infrastructures from the ground up, and it's more expedient for the end user as well.

Also, monopolies are guided by the same laws of business and economics as anything else. If Valve started banning people for no reason, how would this be good business for them? And if they raised prices, people could always resort to pirating. Many pirates became avid legitimate customers through Steam because the cheap cost bundled with the convenience of its platform outcompeted the free, but much less convenient (or safe) pirating option. Regardless of whether an economic environment is a monopoly, people will always buy only what they are both willing and able to buy.

The chances of Steam assuming such a position is unlikely anyway. It may own a large share of the PC gaming audience, but only because it's doing such an outstanding job. It's competing with every traditional online retailer like Amazon, brick and mortar, other gaming networks like Gamefly and Origin, pirates, as well as with consoles in a broader sense. It will continue to do well as long as it treats its customers right, but competition in this space is extremely stiff and any slipup from them or any innovation from a competitor can easily change things up. The whole notion that Steam will "take over" PC gaming and abuse PC gamers is silly.

you guys are missing the point. Just because they started off good does not mean they always will be. They have very little reason to keep giving you great deals in the future if no one can take sales from them.

I like Steam well enough, but I still buy new games off eBay, and choose GOG.com almost every time over Steam just because of their DRM stance. In this way, I'm trying to do my part to help the other venues stay open.

Steam monopoly? Not sure how this could happen exactly. More big publishers will have a service like EA's Origin in the future when it becomes feasible for them to do so. The thing gamers should consider is Valve's shaky history when it comes to security and what would happen should they decide to shut Steam for good.

You also have to consider other current services as others have already mentioned. Steam just does DD really well, but they're far from a monopoly,

Just putting it out there, but PC is the platform with, by far, the most competition.

Steam does not have any market place for very popular classes of games like seen on New Grounds (light games) or GoG (retro). Personally I think people overlook GoG too often.

Steam isn't a monopoly. There are other digital stores including Amazon (who are fucking HUGE and in some ways actually dwarf Steam), Origin (who are about to sell non EA products), D2D, Desura and OnLive, let alone all the other smaller vendors and larger upcoming vendors. And that, of course, also ignores all the portable, MMO and browser based digital online game sales all of which are competing for Steam's dollar.

God, this fucking stupid topic won't die.

The economics of a monopoly aren't as cut and dry as you would think. In any case, I would think that the market for digital game distribution would be more oligopolistically competitive with Steam, Origin, D2D, etc all being competitors. Of course, it isn't exactly a typical four firm oligopoly either, but you get the idea.

@banishedsoul1: I agree with you. Its part of my anti-one console argument. PC is that one console and one store has pushed ahead of the others. People talk about track records, but Valve is a company, not a person. At one point the people running the joint will go away (just a couple months ago some guy in Seattle killed a bunch of people at a coffee shop. What if Gabe Newell (I don't know if I spelled that right) was at that Coffee shop). And Valve doesn't have low prices to help out the customers. Valve has tested and proven that digital is not physical, and found out that prices can be more fluid to spark sales, thats all. Other services haven't figured this out too much, but some have.

With that said the Steam loyality can also come from the Xbox PS3 argument too. I've had plenty of people buy games when they own both systems solely because all their friends are on one of the systems. Steam had almost no competition for long enough that "everyone" is on Steam. Impulse (now GameStop) was a decent competitor but had no social system. Steam is Xbox Live of PC. I have Steam on right now just in case someone wants to talk to me. I'm not playing any games on it though, and during the heartbeat I had a Windows Phone I left Xbox Live on (boy, do those phones suck).

Steam has nothing close to a monopoly on the PC. There are still weird games/mods being discovered on PC that you can't find on Steam. Minecraft, DayZ, Slender, Katawa Shojo(or however you spell it) were or are all small, independent projects that were only popularized by people finding them and taking about them. How many times has that happened on a console? I agree, Steam is becoming a bigger and bigger part of PC gaming but it doesn't have a monopoly, don't be silly.

Want to know what a real monopoly is? PSN Store.

I remember hating steam when it came out, so many problems, especially with half life and its various iterations. Now its a cheap way of me seeing lots of different kinds of games from all parts of the PC market and trying them out. As a consumer I have the right to buy from wherever I please as I vote with my wallet and my demands at the time. I don't need to search through my harddrive or <start> menu bar for games any more, i just click steam and find games easier (I don't need to shift through lots of other programs in the process). (Or DOS prompts).

Yesterday I tried to play Anno 2070, but the ubisoft server was down, thus I couldn't play it. There are far worse DRM software out there than steam.

Game, in the UK, nearly died and tesco is pretty much the common place to get games now and they only really sell the large AAA to AA titles. When WoW came out orgrionally I bought a boxed copy, as I did up to lich king. But Cata I bought on the blizzard store. Why would I que up at midnight outside a store for a game when I can download it off the blizzard website and use it as soon as the servers go live?

What is the possibility of steam going down? Considering the fan base for half life, team fortress, counterstrike and portal, I can't see valve turning off steam when that is the way people use their games, not just the others they sell.

Remember the cake is a lie.

Here, take this.

@banishedsoul1 said:

@Imsorrymsjackson said:

@mdslac said:

Where did you get that 80% figure?

He made it up.

http://gamersyndrome.com/2009/video-games/steam-has-70-percent-of-digital-market-share/ had 70% in 2009 google it your self

Sorry, so he lied about the exact figure.

Steam has helped to save PC gaming. If they start messing stuff up, people will go back to playing their consoles more exclusively. I stopped playing PC games over 10 years ago, and was brought back because of Steam.

@Bwast: No where close? you got to be kidding me! No one comes any where near steams market share. Its like comparing Ubuntus market share to windows its not even close.

@banishedsoul1: Why start a debate if you're just going to stick your fingers in your ears and yell your point over and over when other people raise alternate points or disagree with you? take their points on board and deal with them individually whilst providing evidence to back up your claims and you'll have a point worth discussing.

@banishedsoul1 said:

@Bwast: No where close? you got to be kidding me! No one comes any where near steams market share. Its like comparing Ubuntus market share to windows its not even close.

He's right. You're continuing to mistake market control with monopoly, despite the tonnes of people in this thread that have pointed out the difference.

Steam has helped to destroy the PC retail market in stores. That mandatory Steam requirement for every major retail game on the market (and I mean EVERY, as in 100%, not 70% or 80%) is the main reason I've avoided buying any new games for the last few years now. I've been playing PC games for over 30 years now, but have essentially been forced out of the hobby because of Steam.

Looking at the title I initially thought this was about a steam version of the Monopoly board game that was found to be dangerous for your PC. I am now disappointed.