Is Valve's Steam Anti-Competitive?

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.

Comments

...should we be outraged?

[maugle]

Steam gives you an easy way to reach customers, and takes a cut of the profit in return. You think they're taking too much, don't put your game on Steam. Where's the problem here?

Re:...should we be outraged?

[Lulfas]

You can play when you're not connected to their servers just fine. You don't pay per month, so the "rent" thing doesn't really apply. And once you download a game, you can make your own backups from within Steam just fine.

Re:...should we be outraged?

[TheKidWho]

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.

Re:...should we be outraged?

[Red Cape]

No physical media involved, it makes a copy of your folder so you can keep all your games/maps/etc. From there, you can move the backup anywhere. If your drive fails, well, you'll lose your personal game files if u didn't copy your backup somewhere else. But with Steam, you can download the entire game again unlimited times. The only restriction is that you can only be logged into Steam on one computer at a time. This is makes it hard to share accounts with people, which is expected. Personally, I think Steam is extremely useful. Like many others have said, if you don't like the distributor, distribute your game with someone else. Valve doesn't have a monopoly on online distribution, they just happen to be good at it.

Re:...should we be outraged?

[Mister Xiado]

So, you should be required to have internet access to purchase and play a singleplayer game that you purchased in a brick and mortar store? In ten years, every version of Quake and Doom that I own will still work. I won't be able to play Portal.

so do something about it

[magarity]

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

[Quothz]

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.

Re:are our brains leaking out of our heads?

[maugle]

Re: Digital distribution that's keeping PC gaming alive

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!

Re:Well..

[BikeHelmet]

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.

Use Impulse Instead

[DelitaTheFridge]

So Impulse (http://www.impulsedriven.com/) is like steam, but run by Stardock. Games you buy on impulse don't require it to be running ala games on steam. I don't know how their pricing is for game developers, but they sure seem nicer and friendlier than the big behemoth to me, and I'll always buy a given game on impulse over steam if they have it.

And there are alternatives

[Sycraft-fu]

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%).

Re:And there are alternatives

[BitZtream]

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.

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.

Re:Unfair competition?

[moon3]

Anyone who doesn't like it is welcome to start up their own, competing service.

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.

Comment from the source

[Randy Pitchford]

As a guy who reads, trusts and respects slashdot and the community here, I figured I'd take the time to clarify my position since my intent has been construed out of context. As a gamer, I *love* Valve's games. Hell, I've *made* some of Valve's games! As a customer, I love Steam. I like owning a credential that I can use from any terminal and I like the software. There are other things I like, too. As a businessman, I appreciate the access to Valve's customers that they are providing with Steam. I think there's value to that access. I'm really happy that the Brothers in Arms games are available on Steam and I think Steam customers are really going to dig Borderlands. I have been and hope to be a partner to Valve for many years. From an industry perspective of digital distribution on the PC, I think Steam is doing it the best right now. They're in front and they're really getting value out of their leadership position with digital distribution on the PC. From an industry perspective, I believe that Steam would be even better off if it were a separate company. Trust issues that result from conflict of interest could be mitigated if Steam were a separate company. Take that only as analysis. It doesn't matter how much I trust Valve or how trustworthy Valve actually is - it's just perception within segments of the publishing and development community that, I guess, no one is really talking about. I'm on record in this article saying how I personally trust Valve. I was attempting to comment on perception from some angles of the industry. I also believe that gamers and customers and anyone making games using 3rd party digital distribution systems would be greatly benefited if Steam had some viable competitors. Competition generally drives higher quality products and services at lower prices. I can't see how anyone could argue against that point. If we love Steam, we should hope that as competition appears that it prompts the Steam folks to go faster and better towards improving the service and the pricing. In spite of the implication made in the original source article, I do not want Microsoft to control digital distribution on PC, but believe they (and others) could enter the space if they wanted to and help the competitive landscape and even, perhaps, help to standardize the landscape a bit. I believe that because Valve is a game maker that generally "gets it" I think there's a lot of value to the position they have and I'm really excited about the risk they took and the foresight Valve showed in paving the way there. These are not mutually exclusive feelings and they are all honest and forthright.

Re:Comment from the source

[Megaweapon]

As a guy who reads, trusts and respects slashdot and the community here

You lost me.

Re:Comment from the source

[__aahurc460]

I really don't understand where you're coming from when you say there need to be other viable options of digital distribution services. There are. Most notably Direct2Drive. Now maybe D2D doesn't offer a "community" portion like Steam does, but who's stopping them? Honestly, the most viable option for them would be to buy out or cooperate with X-Fire and integrate its buddy messaging services with a D2D storefront and then add on some unique features. I made my Steam account on Sept 12, 2003. I hated it in beta and I hated it then. But Valve made a huge amount of changes. Many of them coming from community suggestions. About a year after launch it took on a new face and _really_ caught on. So let's face it. Valve came up with something truly original and molded it into exactly what the consumer wanted. Anyone else is free to do the same. But the question remains, who has ever done better than Valve in Valve's field of operations? Good luck.