Valve / Steam Dominance Over Digital Distribution

[Gimpymoo]

First off, I am a big believer of the Steam platform (to the extent that 99.99% of my games are purchased through the platform). The 0.01% are either games purchased elsewhere which give me a steam redeemable key or Indie games which cannot be purchased via the service.

I do however feel that MAYBE they might be getting too big, although this is nothing against Valve, they do seem a rather responsible company in my opinion which is refreshing compared to the many other multi million pound businesses in this industry.

If they are not allready, how long before Valve become the "Gatekeepers" to digital distribution on the PC platform? Again, at the moment, this is not a bad thing as the service they offer is a valued one.

However, every now and then you will hear from Indie developers making average to great games not having their works approved by Valve because their product would not fit in with their service which considering they sell Farm Frenzy does make you wonder what their "service" is.

Braid was refused by Valve originally. After it made money on the consoles, they welcomed it with open arms. Did they not expect it to sell as many as Farm Frenzy?

As I have said, I believe Steam is a great service although does the size it is becoming concern anyone else, even if just a little?

As it stands, Valve is a privately owned company and for the most part seem trustworthy.

 

[Aedus]

Valve is fine, the thing with prices is they don't actually dictate what prices to sell games at, it's all done by the publishers, so there can't really be a monopoly which some people worry about.

Steam stops a LOT of piracy issues which developers have, lots of Indie publishers get a bone thrown to them even if not all. Only bad thing is, Valve owns your account, for any reason what-so-ever they decide to close it, you've lost all your games, literally. They can close an account for whatever reason they choose, which is quite a scary thought.

 

[Calneon]

As long as Gabe is at the helm I think we're fine. I have a lot of respect for that guy. I love Steam but won't buy a game on it unless it's cheaper than any alternative (Dead Space 2 for £20 retail compared to £30 for example, I buy retail).

It is quite scary how much power they have though.

 

[HangTime]

Although the concept doesn't really sit easily with me (especially tying hundreds of pounds worth of purchases to a single online login - at least UK savings accounts are protected up to £50k), one of the good things is that in the long term at least they will be kept honest due to the threat of competition. Digital distribution can be (and is) undertaken by other groups so should they start to abuse their position too much publishers may be able to take their wares elsewhere.

 

[Evilsod]

The thing about digital distribution is 1 of the priamry benefits of it is having all your games in 1 place.

If i suddenly went to Impulse and bought Supreme Commander then over to D2D and got something else, i wouldn't have all my games in 1 place anymore.

 

[Tony343]

I must admit the majority of my games are on Steam, but still look through gamesplanet, direct2drive, GamersGate and simmarket to see what else is about.

Assassin's Creed was the last thing I bought boxed. Saw it going cheap for a fiver. Convenience is all

 

[Kenai]

Valve is fine, the thing with prices is they don't actually dictate what prices to sell games at, it's all done by the publishers, so there can't really be a monopoly which some people worry about.

Of course there can, it is irrelevant whether it is Valve or publishers setting the prices, if Steam was in a dominant enough position that there was little to no competition from other retail or download services any more, they could very easily be a monopoly. You would only have one place to go to get your games and as such Valve/publishers could be setting whatever prices they liked.

 

[Evilsod]

You mean like Activision already do?

 

[slade]

I bought MoH on steam (like a lot of people) and want to get rid of it .... but i cant cos it's locked to stream.... that i dont like!

 

[twist3d0n3]

i'd be quite happy for one 'portal' for digital distribution. it makes it simple and means you don't have to fart around with loads of sites. eventually, i'm sure they'll get too big for their boots (like gabe is with his pants year on year), but ultimately it's a great system, ok it has a few flaws with bugs etc, but it's great.

i'd rather valve did it that EA

 

[Tweaker]

I dont think we can ever get away from Steam, even if we said no to using it, L4D 1/2, CSS, Portal, TF2, Half Life and DOD are all made by Valve, and by extension, exclusively sold through Steam. There are also games that are only popular because of Steam, some games that you wouldnt think twice at in a store because its a no name company you do buy on Steam. I had hours of fun playing peggle, only because i got a free trial through Steam and then bought the full version.

 

[trigger-happy]

IMO i like steam, its the best service I have experienced. I use EA DLM just to get games not on steam like battlefield 2142. But the only complaint about steam I have is that they removed the store page for Homefront (im in UK)

 

[EdwardTeach]

Valve do seem to be a reasonably well run and principled company.

I do agree however that the potential monopoly situation that iszdeveloping is quite concerning. We are at early days in digital distribution. It is concievable that within 5yrs there will be no more boxed pc games. Steam is already very dominant in the online distribution sector and I can see them becoming more so. It is arguably a better service than what the likes of direct2drive and green man gaming offer, so I can see steam continuing to grow at the sake of their competitors. As has been mentioned, there is a multiplier effect, where once you have a few steam games it is convenient to have all you games there. As such I don't think it would be outlandish to imagine a situation where 80%+ of all pc game sales are via steam. That would put them in a massively dominant position and allow plenty of scope for abuse.

 

[Gimpymoo]

removed the store page for Homefront (im in UK)

That is probably owing to the likes of Game refusing to give the game shelf space across ALL formats in the UK if the PC SKU was sold on Steam for the first few weeks of release. That is the sort of "bully" tactics they throw around.

The UK appears to be the only nation not to have a store page for it so I blame Game or one of the bigger etailers. Has to be down to a distribution deal made with THQ.

 

[gazzab]

If any of the so called 'competition' were actually any good and provided decent, integrated solutions then we wouldn't need to worry so much about Steam having a monopoly. As it is though, they've got an excellent integrated games store/launch client along with Steamworks & cloud features and an integrated online community, as well as the largest digital games catalogue out there.

If Impulse, D2D etc. are gonna have any chance of succeeding they really need to up their game and sort out the usability of their sites and systems. For a company that designs GUIs & productivity programs, Stardock's Impulse store is shocking. Has anyone seen the Games for Windows Marketplace recently? If they priced their games competitively, increased their games catalogue and implemented GFWL properly they'd easily be able to compete... they won't though, MS clearly don't care about PC gamers.

Who knows, OnLive and similar game streaming services could one day spell the end for Steam then we lose all our games forever

 

[knowledge123]

I don't mind because Steam does well by it's customers; good sales and (for the most part) good support. I buy games from a lot of different platforms, and that doesn't matter to me as I have shortcuts for the games all in one folder, except for Steam games as they are on an external drive. You don't have to launch Impulse games via their software, same with D2D, gamersgate, etc etc. I go wherever the sales are.

 

[Ravenger]

It's up to Steam's competitors to actually, you know, compete. At the moment most of the other digital download systems (with the notable exception of Impulse and GOG) saddle the user with limited activations DRM, and don't provide any decent features like hassle free downloading, installing and updating and community features as Steam does.

As much as I'm a massive fan of Steam, there are aspects I don't like - the inability to return or sell on a game once you've locked it to your account (makes it impossible to get rid of games that are rubbish or don't work), and the tendency of Steam to disable your entire account at the drop of a hat if they think something dodgy might be happening. Their support response times could be better too.

The thought of my 100+ games on Steam being taken away without any recourse to get them back makes me reluctant to buy any full-price games on Steam any more. I think it's one area where we could do with more consumer protection.

 

[EdwardTeach]

Yeah steam customer service should deffinately be improved. They need to hire more staff maybe.

 

[Kenai]

I've noticed a couple of people now mention Valve just disabling accounts for no reason.

I can't think of any instances of this actually happening, i'm not sure where this is coming from.

 

[Evilsod]

Tbh the only reason i have ever heard of regarding disabled accounts is down to Paypal chargebacks being done automatically and paypal refusing responsibility. 1 of the reasons i NEVER use Paypal to buy on steam, not that i really use it anyway.

Homefront doesn't look that great anyway... looks like its trying desperately to mimic BF while keeping the gameplay identical to CoD and the buy system to basically render teamwork obsolete.