this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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I am not sympathetic at all to epic, let alone Tim Sweeney, but I do think people are very unwilling to talk about valve’s absolute dominance and how much the current ecosystem is heavily dependent on how magnanimous they are feeling.
We worry about companies that aren’t anywhere near as dominant as valve. Just because their interests align with ours today doesn’t mean they will tomorrow.
Do you know why steam is dominating? There are no better alternatives. They actively work on projects that benefit everyone, including their competition.
For the time being, there's nothing to be said other than other companies need to stop being so shitty.
Yea, steam actually earned their market share through being a solid storefront and game distribution center and not because of exclusive releases from third parties or shady practices beyond promoting games.
Sure, they are the only place for valve games, but that is because those are their games. Yes, some of their games have loot boxes and that is all terrible, but that is the games and not inherent to steam.
Did they tho? Steam was absolutely terrible in the beginning, the only reason people used it back in the early days is because you needed it for super popular valve games. It had nothing to do with them being a solid storefront or anything of sorts.
And then look what happened after steam of companies saying PC is dead and not wanting to invest in it. It's not like the market wasn't open for anyone to enter. All the other companies didn't care including Microsoft in their own platform. Even look at how barebones the launchers are compared to Steam and how all the companies didn't care about Linux.
It's not like these opportunities were never around and Steam just happened to get good will. Companies still are putting in the bare minimum and have more trouble or maybe disinterest in matching the features of Steam than a new company making a smartphone. How ridiculous is that. That companies making a smartphone did a better job of trying to be modern than a companies attempt at a launcher.
I have used it since a few days after release (Sept 13, 2003) because I was playing Counterstrike. It made updates and finding play servers so easy even though it did have a rough start with connectivity. Honestly, it was better than whatever we had to use prior even with the issues.
Once they sorted out the server issues and started adding non-valve games it became even more useful and we end up where we are now.
They are currently still on top because of being a solid storefront and the other things I listed.