Everything except making a store people wanted to use? Ethan Evans, who was previously Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon, has a short retrospective of trying to take on Steam.
I know that today in most English-speaking countries, competition is worshipped as an all-powerful god that solves every problem. But the reality is that competition is often detrimental to a lot of stakeholders in an industry. Competition optimizes for specific parameters in a downward spiral- that’s why every streaming service sucks, and is worse than Netflix was 10 years ago.
What would you hope to get out of a Steam competitor? I will guess that you are talking about price pressure. But Steam does not set the prices- publishers do. That’s why the same game is $69.99 whether you get it on Steam, the PlayStation Network, Xbox store, Epic Games Store, or buying physical copies from Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, or wherever else. In that way you could argue Steam already has tons of effective competition putting pressure on prices, just outside of the specific PC digital storefront space.
So maybe if Valve had more competition, Steam might be forced to reduce their fees to publishers, but there’s no reason to believe that cost savings would be passed on to consumers.
If anything, having competition just repeats the fixed costs, or in other words reduces the population of users that fixed costs are spread over, driving up the total and per-unit costs of the whole system.
Now I certainly am not saying anything so dumb as “In GabeN we trust” or “I have faith in Valve to conduct business fairly as a monopoly in the long-term”. But the solution is regulation, not competition.
The other notable place monopolies fail is servicing less profitable populations. Valve has so far done the opposite. Epic has outright refused to support Linux, while Valve has made their own free gaming Linux distro, with tons of work put into Proton for free to ensure compatibility. VR is a tiny niche, but Valve still put out one of the best VR systems kn the market. The “handheld” PC market was incredibly niche, but Valve released the Steam Deck and I would guess sold an order of magnitude or two more units than anything before or since in that space. I don’t really see any underserved niches asking for a competitor.
Yeah, people say this. And sometimes they say this even if the “other launcher” just pops up for a second, does a thing and automatically goes away, because that’s how Ubisoft’s one has worked for a while and people still complain about it A LOT.
But in any case, that’s a bug. I’ve encountered games that have gamebreaking bugs, second launcher or not, and with both EA and Steam. They both will give you a refund automatically, at the very least. That’s neither here nor there.
Yes, it’s a bug. You can find many reports on the internet, it’s existed for years and EA doesn’t care.
Oh, awesome, so I just have to accept that the second launcher prevents me from playing the game? I have to buy the DLC for a higher price in the EA store if I want to play them?
Awesome, who doesn’t want such a great second launcher! Please give me one in front of all my games, I’d hate being able to use Steam as my primary launcher!
Well, no, you found a bug in a poorly maintained game. You don’t have to accept anything, but if the customer support for both of the affected companies won’t help you fix it then the recourse is to get a refund.
But that is true regardless of whether the bug is on Steam, whatever EA is calling their authorization system these days or the game itself. It’s not a problem with the concept of a game featuring its own login flow, it’s a problem with the concept of not maintaining games properly. There are plenty of games in that same situation with no second launcher in them.
No, the bug is not in Titanfall 2, it’s in the EA app. Titanfall 2 doesn’t start, the EA app blocks it before that. It’s only the second launcher that’s problematic.
You’re just wrong here, because the problem is the second authentication flow which apparently isn’t implemented correctly.
Not that it would be any better if you’re correct, as it’s still EA selling a game that’s broken due to their second launcher, but that’s not the case here.
What I’m saying is a bug is a bug is a bug. It doesn’t matter which part is borked if it doesn’t let you play the game. The problem isn’t that the game has a launcher, the problem is the launcher is broken. If the broken part was the main menu you’d be just as boned.
And yes, they should fix it. And if they don’t you should get a refund.
None of which has any bearing on the conversation we’re actually having here. Because you’re not blocked by having a launcher, you’re blocked by having a broken one.
I want five game managers.
Maybe a sixth to manage those.
Competition in the PC market is a good thing. Otherwise it’s just another locked down console.
I know that today in most English-speaking countries, competition is worshipped as an all-powerful god that solves every problem. But the reality is that competition is often detrimental to a lot of stakeholders in an industry. Competition optimizes for specific parameters in a downward spiral- that’s why every streaming service sucks, and is worse than Netflix was 10 years ago.
What would you hope to get out of a Steam competitor? I will guess that you are talking about price pressure. But Steam does not set the prices- publishers do. That’s why the same game is $69.99 whether you get it on Steam, the PlayStation Network, Xbox store, Epic Games Store, or buying physical copies from Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, or wherever else. In that way you could argue Steam already has tons of effective competition putting pressure on prices, just outside of the specific PC digital storefront space.
So maybe if Valve had more competition, Steam might be forced to reduce their fees to publishers, but there’s no reason to believe that cost savings would be passed on to consumers.
If anything, having competition just repeats the fixed costs, or in other words reduces the population of users that fixed costs are spread over, driving up the total and per-unit costs of the whole system.
Now I certainly am not saying anything so dumb as “In GabeN we trust” or “I have faith in Valve to conduct business fairly as a monopoly in the long-term”. But the solution is regulation, not competition.
The other notable place monopolies fail is servicing less profitable populations. Valve has so far done the opposite. Epic has outright refused to support Linux, while Valve has made their own free gaming Linux distro, with tons of work put into Proton for free to ensure compatibility. VR is a tiny niche, but Valve still put out one of the best VR systems kn the market. The “handheld” PC market was incredibly niche, but Valve released the Steam Deck and I would guess sold an order of magnitude or two more units than anything before or since in that space. I don’t really see any underserved niches asking for a competitor.
I really hate it when I launch a game from Steam and another launcher pops up (looking at you, Funcom)
Yeah, people say this. And sometimes they say this even if the “other launcher” just pops up for a second, does a thing and automatically goes away, because that’s how Ubisoft’s one has worked for a while and people still complain about it A LOT.
I don’t get it.
The other launcher prevents me from playing games.
I bought Titanfall 2 on Origin shortly after release. A couple years later, it was very cheap on Steam with DLC included, so I bought it again.
I can’t start the Steam version, because the EA App tells me I didn’t buy the DLC.
I can’t be the first person with this issue, but EA doesn’t care. Their launcher prevents me from playing the games I bought because they don’t care.
Works for me in that exact same scenario.
But in any case, that’s a bug. I’ve encountered games that have gamebreaking bugs, second launcher or not, and with both EA and Steam. They both will give you a refund automatically, at the very least. That’s neither here nor there.
Yes, it’s a bug. You can find many reports on the internet, it’s existed for years and EA doesn’t care.
Oh, awesome, so I just have to accept that the second launcher prevents me from playing the game? I have to buy the DLC for a higher price in the EA store if I want to play them?
Awesome, who doesn’t want such a great second launcher! Please give me one in front of all my games, I’d hate being able to use Steam as my primary launcher!
Well, no, you found a bug in a poorly maintained game. You don’t have to accept anything, but if the customer support for both of the affected companies won’t help you fix it then the recourse is to get a refund.
But that is true regardless of whether the bug is on Steam, whatever EA is calling their authorization system these days or the game itself. It’s not a problem with the concept of a game featuring its own login flow, it’s a problem with the concept of not maintaining games properly. There are plenty of games in that same situation with no second launcher in them.
No, the bug is not in Titanfall 2, it’s in the EA app. Titanfall 2 doesn’t start, the EA app blocks it before that. It’s only the second launcher that’s problematic.
You’re just wrong here, because the problem is the second authentication flow which apparently isn’t implemented correctly.
Not that it would be any better if you’re correct, as it’s still EA selling a game that’s broken due to their second launcher, but that’s not the case here.
No, I understood that.
What I’m saying is a bug is a bug is a bug. It doesn’t matter which part is borked if it doesn’t let you play the game. The problem isn’t that the game has a launcher, the problem is the launcher is broken. If the broken part was the main menu you’d be just as boned.
And yes, they should fix it. And if they don’t you should get a refund.
None of which has any bearing on the conversation we’re actually having here. Because you’re not blocked by having a launcher, you’re blocked by having a broken one.