How can we keep monopolies from happening when only the first company to 'new thing X' can make money at it? In some cases there are two sources, such as with smartphones but that is only because of physical hardware. At any rate, this is terrible for everyone.
There is nothing that prevents Epic Games Store form competing with Steam other than Epic's gross incompetence, callous attitude towards their user base, and broken marketing strategies.
I feel there are enough complaints about Steam that, given a well managed platform, they could establish themselves in the market. =Smidge=
Except Steam was not the first nor will be the last to create an online game store. They have been the most successful. That is a large distinction you missed.
I don't know of any before Steam that offered games from other publishers. I know there were some that seemed to only sell their own games. I'm not positive though since I was perfectly fine going to the brick-and-mortar store and buying discount or used AA and AAA games when that was still allowed and not made verboten.
The problem with this argument is not all "first company at new thing X" can maintain their spots. Look at the graveyard with giants like RIM and Palm... For all steams problems (where's our Half Life Episodic Content?) they do one thing right - their gaming platform.
It's actually pretty rare that the first company to do X becomes the big successful one to do X.
Typically, the "innovators" make something pretty good, and then someone else comes along and makes a slightly better one that takes off because it doesn't have the foibles of the innovator.
For example, Apple wasn't the first smartphone, but Palm and RIM insisted on making devices that kept resembling their older devices. So they wouldn't do touch interfaces because their entire UIs were built around a stylus or
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Monopolies (Score:2)
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There is nothing that prevents Epic Games Store form competing with Steam other than Epic's gross incompetence, callous attitude towards their user base, and broken marketing strategies.
I feel there are enough complaints about Steam that, given a well managed platform, they could establish themselves in the market.
=Smidge=
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I don't know of any before Steam that offered games from other publishers. I know there were some that seemed to only sell their own games. I'm not positive though since I was perfectly fine going to the brick-and-mortar store and buying discount or used AA and AAA games when that was still allowed and not made verboten.
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I don't know of any before Steam that offered games from other publishers.
Steam initially offered only Valve games. Later they expanded to 3rd party games; there were concerns if Steam would treat non-Valve games fairly.
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It's actually pretty rare that the first company to do X becomes the big successful one to do X.
Typically, the "innovators" make something pretty good, and then someone else comes along and makes a slightly better one that takes off because it doesn't have the foibles of the innovator.
For example, Apple wasn't the first smartphone, but Palm and RIM insisted on making devices that kept resembling their older devices. So they wouldn't do touch interfaces because their entire UIs were built around a stylus or