Is Valve's Steam Anti-Competitive? 286
Absolut187 writes "Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford says Steam's domination of digital distribution is 'dangerous,' and exploits small developers. 'Steam helps us as customers, but it's also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that's not totally fair. ... Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service it's providing. ... There's so much conflict of interest there that it's horrid.' Pitchford's comments came as part of an interview with Maximum PC, and he thinks Valve should spin off Steam to its own company. Is he right? Is there a better answer?"
Update: 10/10 at 02:00 GMT by SS: Randy has clarified his remarks in a comment here at Slashdot. He makes it clear that he likes Steam a lot, and for several reasons, but thinks stronger competition would benefit the industry as a whole.
Re:so do something about it (Score:4, Informative)
Re:so do something about it (Score:5, Informative)
There's nothing wrong with complaining about monopolies.
No, and I'm usually the one up on a soapbox railing against 'em. But Steam isn't a monopoly. There needs to be a special barrier to entry for a company or industry to be one, and I just don't see it. There's no legal bar, like with government-granted monopolies or Google books. There's no incredible infrastructure needed, just reasonable bandwidth and servers. There's not a "desktop" barrier in which users only benefit from one similar product. There's not even an "I wanted to be the car" barrier that caused so much consternation in my youth. Nobody's accusing 'em of coercion. Popularity alone doesn't a monopoly make.
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Informative)
Well with digital distribution you cut out the publisher/distributor, and you can either turn that cost into profit or cut ti out of the cost of the game.
And of course since it costs mere pennies to distribute, once you make up the cost of producing a game you can set the price point wherever you want and it's pure profit.
Expensive (Score:1, Informative)
I find Steam quite expensive to be honest. I pay the same price (and sometimes more) than for a boxed version. Whenever i can, i rather use Gamer's Gate.
Re:Monopoly? (Score:1, Informative)
You can put it on Impulse, GameTap, or make it a direct download on your site. You can port it to console and put it on WiiWare, XBox Live, or PSN. Seriously, there's a lot of alternatives here, and its hard for me to think of Steam as a monopoly.
Agreed. Steam has the Valve titles plus a smattering of nice indies. But they're hardly a monopoly. Direct2Drive anyone? Just about every mainstream title is available now as a digital download from D2D except the Valve titles and Steam exclusives. If anything D2D should be the specimen under this pointless microscope.
Steam flaws (Score:4, Informative)
I'm seeing a lot of comments discussing various flaws of Steam, but nothing which I recognize as anti-competitiveness. Now I'm not terribly well informed on what constitutes anti-competitive practices, so I did what any random Joe Slashdot on the street would do, which is look it up on WP.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices [wikipedia.org]
Looking at the list of typical anti-competitive practices, I see none which I can imagine applying to Valve's Steam, so I'd imagine that their high popularity with publishers given their high cut of the price is simply due to a lack of good competition rather than Valve pushing all their competitors in online game distribution off the market.
If Steam wasn't ultimately providing a profitable service, I'm sure publishers would simply stick with the physical retail market.
Comment from the source (Score:5, Informative)
Counterpoints (Score:3, Informative)
Counterpoint from John Gibson [gamasutra.com]
Counterpoint from Derek Smart [shacknews.com]
Thoughts from a game dev (Score:4, Informative)
As someone who has an upcoming indie game [wolfire.com] appearing on Steam, here are my thoughts.
First of all, there is no shortage of competition [wolfire.com] for Steam. Steam is definitely the biggest, but they are not doing anything anti-competitve.
Unlike the console market, it is not uncommon to see a game sold on Steam, D2D, Impulse, and the 15+ other contendors simultaneously, from day one, in addition to being sold by the creator directly. In fact, even earlier than day one, due to the trend of preorders.
If Steam pressured developers into exclusive deals (which they could easily do, due to their size), then sure, I would be kind of pissed. The fact of the matter is that Valve isn't doing that -- they are simply acting like a big, friendly store where developers can put their game for sale. They have been great dudes so far.
Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:5, Informative)
Your argument fails for the fact that it was the developers choice to use Steam to activate the game. There are tons of games that are on steam and are also available for retail and do not require steam in any way shape or form to run.
Re:And there are alternatives (Score:5, Informative)
I agree, Steam isn't a monopoly, and there are are better (in my opinion) alternatives that have some of the exact same games.
I've bought from Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive specifically as well as a few other self distributors. So far, Impulse is my favorite, especially for items that they will sell you a box/cd and the download for a few bucks more. Direct2Drive is fine, but you have to pay extra to make sure you can redownload it later. I understand to some extent, you have to pay to get replacement cd's from pretty much anyone, if you can find someone to help you do so. Steam is okay except its constant requirement to talk to servers and that I can't transfer a game to another account, which aren't problems with Impulse.
Clearly there is competition here, Steam has some shitty policies, feel free to bitch about them and shop elsewhere, Steam will either fix it, or have some other reason they own the marketplace or they simply won't own the marketplace, like now.
Steam, Impulse and Direct2Drive are just examples of the Targets, Walmarts and Kmarts of the Internet, just retail stores, although they haven't worked out the details as well as the brick and mortor counterparts.
You can bitch about them about the same way as you can bitch about BestBuy and Walmarts practices, but calling them a monopoly is just silly.
Being silly is a valid slashdot headline/summary however.
Re:And there are alternatives (Score:1, Informative)
Other concession of Impulse: unlike other DRM'd services, they list what kind of DRM is on a game. At least they let you know what you're in for. I hope publishers give up on the shit soon. I'm really sick of having to pick online distribution services for games based on which DRM package is the least evil.
Seriously, this is truly the age of the company FIGHTING the consumer and calling it "service".
Re:Expensive (Score:3, Informative)
It's not at all uncommon for newly-released (and thus not-on-sale) games to be available cheaper at traditional retailers, as you can usually find at least one that is running a sale on the brand new game.
The most notable recent example I can think of is Left 4 Dead (a Valve-made game, even!) which was available at some major retail chain (I forget which) for $40 at launch, vs. the Steam price of $50. Buy it at the store, put in your code et viola, legit Steam copy of the game for $40. Buy it from Steam (and therefore Valve) directly, pay $10 more. Weird.
I pretty much only buy Steam games when they're on sale, these days. I still don't get why they aren't undercutting normal retail prices by 5-10%, what with the much, much lower distribution costs they have. Their specials, though--especially the multi-title bundles--are fantastic.
Re:Expensive (Score:3, Informative)
You must not be European, at the least, then.
Ever since the product pricing in Steam adopted the traditional "USD = EUR! bend over, lol" method of currency conversion, Steam games have been bloody expensive for Europeans.
No, it's not just taxes. Highest tax in Europe is some ridiculous 25% in Sweden, Denmark and Hungary (most are around the 19% mark). Now check the going rate for EUR/USD: 1.47501.
It really is very often much cheaper to just buy retail in Europe.
Re:And there are alternatives (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Well.. (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft launched Games On Demand [xbox.com] (Downloadable versions of full Xbox/Xbox 360 games you could buy in stores) a few months ago, so I don't expect that they'd put any games on sale through it quite yet.
Having said that, the Xbox 360 titles on it are usually $19.99-$29.99, cheaper than you find them in stores. They also have the old Xbox original titles on it for $15 or so.
Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:1, Informative)
That is entirely up to the developer of the game, not Steam or Valve (unless it was Valve who made the game of course). For example, take Call of Duty 4 or Fallout 3. You can get these games on any console and it will not have Steam. You can get both these games on PC *without* Steam. You just also are able to download them and buy them through Steam. It is entirely up to whomever is creating the game and wants it published to decide how to distribute it, and it is entirely up to the consumer to decided which version s/he wants to buy. Grow up.