Nothing like a legal drama. Today, we investigate the story behind Valve's recent change to the Steam Subscriber Agreement. The story goes far deeper than I thought.
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In 19 years I have never been burned by Valve, in the same period I have lost access to software (and hardware) from Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo and Epic. They are a money making business and will always act in their own interest but so far it seems like their own interests includes not stomping on customers (in my experience).
Exactly this. My steam account is 20 years old and I have effectively no complaints with Steam or Valve. Are they a profit-driven corporation who will thus still make profit-driven decisions? Sure. But Valve has never specifically done wrong by me, and in fact has a number of times gone against the trend to maintain their status as a comparative good guy.
Far as I'm concerned, Valve is one of the best, most trustworthy corporations I know.
Is the point not that they have a near monopoly in
the modern PC gaming space?
It's virtually a requirement for developers who release games on PC to release their game on Steam. From what I recall, developers must also follow requirements set out by Valve regarding what they are allowed to price their game on other platforms.
How is it "virtually a requirement"? Nothing is stopping any devs from selling their games elsewhere, but most of them see the advantages that steam brings to the consumers and don't bother trying to compete. If steam was buying up publishers and forcing exclusivity then that would absolutely be monopolistic behavior, but they are just beating the competition by being better.
They aren't just beating the competition by being better.
They're beating the competition because they don't allow developers to sell games cheaper than on Steam if they want to sell on Steam. And they have the market share to be able to make it financial suicide for a developer/publisher to not put their game on Steam.
"You can sell your game anywhere as long as it's cheapest here" smells a lot like a monopoly.
No monopoly, other storefront exist and Valve isn't performing aggressive anti-consumer actions to try and stifle them. Valve is simply offering the best product, so it is the most popularly, but the field is still very much open for any other good guy that wants to sweep in and make an honest living in the field.
Valve is not that good if you take your time to realize few things more, Valve is not that bad if you take time to realize few things more.
For example, you can't say that Ubisoft can be that bad if you take a look at the industrial grade artistic output (allow you travel and interact with artistically astonishing worlds).
But when you check side as business entity, you can see everything is set up to please share holders and people that don't even know "what's a minecraft?".
Valve knows how, when and why they mess with their customers. Ubisoft is just clueless about their gamer-customers because they known only theirs shareholders-customers.