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Comments: 286 +- Games: Is Valve's Steam Anti-Competitive? on Friday October 09, @07:07PM
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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.
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...should we be outraged? (Score:5, Insightful)
And there are alternatives (Score:5, Insightful)
He might have a point if Valve really had a monopoly. If they because the only way to do digital distribution, ok maybe a problem. However, that's not the case. My personal favourite for digital games is Stardock's Impulse (impulsedriven.com). Same idea basic as Steam. What I like about it is it is better on DRM. They don't apply their own DRM to all games, so some have none at all. Others use Impulse GOO, which is kinda like Steamworks but you don't have to be logged in or run the client, others use 3rd party DRM like on Steam.
Yet another option is Direct2Drive. I'm not such a fan of this one, but it works. I've bought a couple of titles from it.
So if a publisher/developer doesn't like Steam, well then don't use them, use one of the others. Nobody is making you use Steam. Or, for that matter, you could always use Steam but offer a better deal to the others if you like them better. Have your game for $50 on Steam and $40 on Impulse. That way you still get sales from Steam, but you can point customers to the platform you like better.
The other funny thing about the whining is that though the digital distributors take a cut, it is way less than retail. Retail is about a 50% markup. So if you buy a game at Target for $50 the publisher sees $25. Digital distributors don't take nearly that large a cut (it is more like 20%).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This does give me an interesting idea: image a program that is the digital distribution clone of Trillian or Pidgin. Instead of having to download tons of different distribution programs, visit 50 bajillion websites to download stuff, it would be nice to have them all merged in
Re:And there are alternatives (Score:4, Insightful)
The only AD banner Valve has ever added to a game in Steam are the ADS in Counterstrike (the original) which was released near a decade ago now. I don't see ANYTHING nefarious in that given Valve STILL supports the game and I seriously doubt it's sales numbers in the past five years would have been enough to justify that to anyone in Accounting.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It did kind of get annoying though for a while when it was all ads for L4D, and its like "I bought the game a month ago, stop showing me ads for it."
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious if steam's distribution agreement would even allow you to put it on other digital platforms for less.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually it does, it provides an easier way to meet the mass market than the alternative, which is the main games distribution companies like EA. You want a conflict of interest, try doing business with them and releasing a game at Christmas when their flagship titles are coming out.
I know Steam has its detractors as they do not allow resale of titles, but it also has its benefits.
Parent
Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a pretty weak argument for someone with a modern connection. It took me about 30 min to install the orange box (about 4.8gb) on my home connection. If you account for time spent looking for the original disk, it's about neck and neck for the physical install vs. the online download these days. If you're buying a new game (if you're me, that's about 90% of all games played) then it's usually preloaded onto your computer until release date. That means it's faster, in that you don't have to drive to gamestop, or swing by there on your way home from work, and run through a messy installer. You just click on it, and it runs, first time and ready to go.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
That's a pretty weak argument for someone with a modern connection. It took me about 30 min to install the orange box (about 4.8gb) on my home connection.
As someone who moves around a lot, it would've taken me two months. I have a 3 Gb/month data cap.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:4, Insightful)
Steam began as a way to distribute Valve software. It worked, other people wanted in. End of story. No antitrust. There actually ARE several companies with a front end similar to Steam, but they all came later, and haven't had as many or as big of titles as Valve has had to wedge their foot in the door.
More competition would be great, obviously. Lack of competition (which isn't precisely true, anyway) is not antitrust, it's that nobody came up with something like Steam before Valve (at least not in a way that was successful). Not a matter of monopoly, just a matter of being the biggest kid on the block. A bit like iTunes, except at its head is a big ol' fat guy rather than the hipster deity.
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Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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Re:...should we be outraged? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
so do something about it (Score:4, Insightful)
Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that's not totally fair
So start a competitor with policies you consider to be fair.
And stop whining, btw.
Re:so do something about it (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
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.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
That analogy doesn't make any sense. If all cars were made by one company, they would be a monopoly, for the reasons you cite.
are our brains leaking out of our heads? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:are our brains leaking out of our heads? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's one other thing that's revived PC gaming for me, and digital distribution does it by default. Apart from games I bought on Steam or from GOG, only one of them doesn't force me to insert the %^&*ing CD in order to play. This is despite the fact that games load just about nothing from CD these days because it's too slow!
Parent
Voluntary = exploitative? (Score:4, Insightful)
How on earth is a voluntary service exploitative?
In the same way I guess that a story exploits people who voluntarily buy from them.
Is there something I'm missing here?
valve has done something right the rest havn't (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfair competition? (Score:4, Insightful)
Has Valve somehow managed to erect barriers to entry into the market, or in any way block competitors from starting a competing service? Is there in fact anything unethical or unfair going on?
Valve pioneered this area. Now they are reaping the rewards. Anyone who doesn't like it is welcome to start up their own, competing service.
But hey, he's entitled to complain about it if it makes him feel better. That's less work that trying to compete with Valve.
steveha
Re:Unfair competition? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure and LOL, they were the first carrying titles like Counter-Strike and Half-life, pretty much forcing people to install Steam in order to play these highly desired games. NOBODY would install Steam without some good game already in. You can try to start a competing company with no such games, good luck.
Parent
Use Impulse Instead (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Use Impulse Instead (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure nobody has ever released a buggy game on Steam, right? Or in retail for that matter?
What a silly argument.
Parent
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)
Re:Comment from the source (Score:4, Funny)
As a guy who reads, trusts and respects slashdot and the community here
You lost me.
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Re:Comment from the source (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Comment from the source (Score:4, Insightful)
As a guy who reads, trusts and respects slashdot and the community here,
That is where you are going wrong, we are in fact 90% self righteous troll, fortunately I'm part of the 10% that responds to logic and completely agree that it would be better for everybody involved if steam/valve split. If they do not they will have to take great care to not end up running afoul of anti-trust laws as they are a major part of several markets distribution,PC FPS (particularly at a pro level),engine licensor.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can respect that you are coming from the perspective of a competitor, and commenting on how you would feel better about the distribution channel if it wasn't directly conjoined with one of your biggest competitors. I can really understand that concept.
As a customer, I hope Steam *never* separates from Valve. I trust them, as well as I can trust any corporation, as they have in the past demonstrated that they *really* want my cash, and are willing to prove it. They do it in a variety of ways,
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
why so many "not a monopoly" posts? (Score:4, Interesting)
Wow it looks like if a company is not MS or google then nobody should even question the conflict of interests they have here on slashdot!? The guy has some good points, agree/disagree but give me a break on all the "they have competitors"/"build your own nobody is stopping you!" posts, I mean most of those posts are just repeating previous ones, of 109 posts (most of them "they have competitors",etc) only 1 has any real analysis/content!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I was bitching about the shear number of crap post, even giving you credit for a some sort of content in your post (as a reply completely OT though) out of 209 there are still less than a dozen posts with any content the rest are just going on about drm/not a monopoly/how much they love steam.
In reply to your points,
The issue is that monopolies are only bad when customers wind up with a sub-par product,
I do agree however I feel it would be better if steam/valve split before they did anything to make them bad. For example without any external regulation, most of the hedge funds in London volunt
Steam is the best thing since sliced bread (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, for customers of Steam (read : anyone who might has a game he wants to market) it might be. But for customers of those customers (read : those who buy those games) its far from that.
I recently bought a copy of Fear 2. Alas, when I tried to install it I got a "Fear.dll missing" error-message, maybe because my game-machine is simple not connected to the 'Net ?
And pardon me, but there is, for me, absolutily no way I'm going to put money down for a DVD contaning some software I can't even use, everytime I want to install it (and maybe even more often ?), without contacting some far-away server from whom I can beg to please give me the content I allready payed for. Especially not when I'm known to enjoy games of yester-decade as much (or maybe even more) as the current games -- It would (most likely) be impossible for me to re-install games of a few years old onto my machine (and not because of hardware incompatibilities). Either the game will not be supported by Steam anymore (licence-to-play expired ?), I would have to prove I'm the first buyer probably by sending the origional bill to them, or even Steam has ceased to exist, leaving me with a "bought" game that has become worthless without me even knowing when it happens/has happened (throw a standard dice, divide by 2 or even 3 and add 2 to 3 years. That is, if you're lucky, as it could happen next week).
Oh yeah, I recently (last week) bought Fear I (the origional, first version) too (I allready played part of it on a friends computer). Too bad that it suddenly cried that there "is an update available", a message which won't go away (pops up every time I want to continue playing).
The funny thing is that an update will invalidate any saved-games you allready have. To add to this monkey business the site where the update should be gotten from is non-existant anymore. If this company can't even support its own product a few years (or, in my case, a week after I bought it (from a store) ) I allready have bad feelings about an external party like Steam ....
a rebuttal (Score:4, Insightful)
First, saying that steam is a money grab is as asinine as saying that physical media publishing is a money grab. Of course it is. It no more exploits small developers than 2K Games, Ubisoft, EA, or any other software publisher does. Which is to say, yes they all do. Attacking Valve specifically because Gabe and Doug had the foresight and vision to get a foothold in the digital distribution market before it became popular is just plain whiny. Valve's domination over the digital distribution realm is not due to anti-competitive behavior. It's due to a superior service which adapted to the market long before traditional publishers' white haired executives realized they were losing sales to steam. By then, the best option was to publish under steam. Does steam take a larger share than they should? Probably not, given the service they provide. Using physical media presented problems for consumers. Publishers, already wary of online piracy saw digital distribution as counter-intuitive. Valve presented steam as both an answer to piracy and a solution to issues with physical media. But for Valve it was much more than that. By publishing their own games, they effectively avoided issues with traditional publishers. Consumers wanted to get their games online. Traditional publishers wouldn't provide them. Blaming Valve for steam's popularity is both a compliment and ludicrous. The consumers wanted the service.
Second, there is plenty of competition out there for digital distribution. None of it provides quite the same value as steam. Traditional publishers tried their own flavor of digital distribution. Some were very difficult to use and offered only one download of the game. None offered the community features that steam did at the time. Steam continues to improve the service at no additional cost to either consumers or developers. Only Stardock is coming close to Valve. Stardock was offering community services long before their Impulse DD store launched. Other DD game stores are web-based and don't even come close to the services and value that steam provides. So forgive me if I don't share your disdain for steam.
I thought the idea was stupid when I first heard about steam in 2002. I didn't see the potential.
That being said, the only dangerous part is the faith we place in the service after investing thousands of dollars on games on steam. If steam shuts down or becomes defunct, our games go poof. Granted, we have the option to backup our games, though they only work if connecting to the steam service. So the dangerous part is also the most valuable part.
Re:Well.. (Score:5, Interesting)
It's worth noting that for Valve's exclusive games, when you buy bundle packs containing copies you already have, you get more copies which can be given to friends.
Unfortunately, the same doesn't apply for third-party games.
I can understand the publisher's desire to lock a game to every customer. It ensures every sale gives you profit. I also understand that in the case of Steam, that's giving us much lower prices. Unlike most other platforms, Steam is flooded with quality games that go on sale for between $5 to $15.
When's the last time you got an XBox360 game brand new for $10? You can take your rights of sale and shove them... somewhere. I'll lose at least that much money trying to sell a game I picked up new, so resale doesn't really concern me much. Plus, after I sell it and lose $10+, I don't have it anymore.
One thing I would like to see is Valve not allowing non-Steam DRM in games. I hate it when games have double-protection(like Universe At War), and then it doesn't work because of the non-Steam DRM.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you've signed an exclusive contract, then obviously you would be in breach of contract if you sold somewhere else. Duh.
That's actually you (the developer) creating an incentive for Valve to promote your software more than they would promote non-exclusive software. It's a business decision, and the company that has to live with it is the one that made the decision.
Re-selling is an entirely different beast. If you want to own a physical copy of a game you can sell to someone else, you should buy a physi
Re: (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.
Re:A system designed by greed... (Score:4, Funny)
Wow... who would imagine.
WOW isn't on steam.
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Re:Expensive (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (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 (
Re: (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: (Score:3, Insightful)
While I agree that Valve is hardly a monopoly, companies like Electronic Arts [steampowered.com], 2K Games [steampowered.com], UbiSoft [steampowered.com], Rockstar Games [steampowered.com], LucasArts [steampowered.com], and iD Software [steampowered.com] are hardly indies.