First of all, yeah, price parity sucks…but also the only thing it changes is that simply being cheaper isn’t an option. From my PoV all it does is it forces competition to compete on features. Which they all fail to do.
Also, it is not just about making a better product. It is switching costs. Because our libraries and social circles are locked into a proprietary ecosystem, we aren’t choosing Steam every day. We are just stuck there.
Friend, steam literally alows you to load games outside of steam. You absolutely can still rely on steam friends when playing even pirated games. Steam literally allows you to do it. And having more than one store installed, while not comfy, isn’t a sin - we are choosing steam due to it’s services - controller support, linux support, inbuilt forums, friend network, robust review system, robust return policy, great user support, and probably even more that I don’t know about due to being more niche.
The solution is not for a competitor to build a “more perfect Steam,” that is impossible because Valve has a 20 year head start on our data. The solution is mandated interoperability.
Again, bull. Let’s look at competition, sans “We only sell our own games” stores.
Epic Store - Literally antithesis to all you wrote. They push free games for you to build your library, buy exclusives to remove the forced price, advertise themselves as much as they can to push through steam’s domination…but they don’t support anything aimed at consumers. They don’t give a diddly doo about you. Thus, they fail…better yet, managed to piss people off.
GOG store - They tried to innovate and find their niche and…they did it. Oh my, it’s like if you actually offer something it gets apprwciation from clients. It’s small compared to steam and doesn’t offer that much client-side, but with what they offer, they found themselves in stable position and with good public opinion.
Itch.io - Similiarily to GOG, they used a niche and created sctually somewhat rich ecosystem there. And again, similiarily to GOG, they achieved stability. Supporting both comments and forums and alloeing creators to be close to their community, they became great place to start up and test waters. But they lack friend networks (AFAIK), game invite integration and all that. Although it seems they are okay with their niche…also I believe that their shop actually did chomp that niche away from steam, so they prove that competition is possible.
And just to be clean - I am not against your interchangable library idea, although I am not really for it either. I just really disliked how you described steam as some monstrous entity holding people by ransom.
I appreciate the civil discussion, but I think you’re confusing “convenience” with “freedom.”
You mentioned adding non-Steam games, but that’s just a shortcut. You lose the “Join Game” buttons, the cloud saves, and the lobby invites. That is the definition of a social moat. You can leave, but you’re socially penalized for doing so.
As for competition, the fact that GOG and Itch.io have to hide in tiny niches just to survive proves my point. When the #1 player has 75%+ of the market, they don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be too big to leave.
My solution of mandated interoperability is exactly how we fixed the phone industry. You can switch carriers and keep your number. We should be able to switch launchers and keep our friends and games. If Steam is truly as perfect as you say, they should have nothing to fear from a system where users are actually free to leave. A benevolent gatekeeper who refuses to unlock the gate is still a gatekeeper.
You mentioned adding non-Steam games, but that’s just a shortcut.
And it’s exactly how I mentioned it. It’s simply a way to use some of steam features - for free - even if you use different shop. Their controller support, friend list, library access. A limited amount of access but nonetheless, yet again, something they provide that they don’t have to and other shops (except GOG I believe?) don’t support.
You lose the “Join Game” buttons, the cloud saves, and the lobby invites. That is the definition of a social moat. You can leave, but you’re socially penalized for doing so.
Cloud saves should be handled by whatever alternative you choose, and both join game and lobby invites should be ideally handled by game - that’s how it began, didn’t it? Steam simply offered option for games to extend it to friends chat out of the game. And hell, today even Discord of all things has something like this.
As for competition, the fact that GOG and Itch.io have to hide in tiny niches just to survive proves my point. When the #1 player has 75%+ of the market, they don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be too big to leave.
I admit, bad wording on my part. But while Itch relies on niche, in GOG’s case I meant their initiative of saving old games. Other than that, they are really competing as a full alternative. And…I just learned GOG does not publish it’s number, huh. But they are constantly growing from what I saw published, so evidently, you can throw gauntlet at Steam and do well. And I just learned that they aren’t really that far on feature parity, with library integration being something unique, huh. No wonder people on lemmy praise it xD
My solution of mandated interoperability is exactly how we fixed the phone industry. You can switch carriers and keep your number. We should be able to switch launchers and keep our friends and games. If Steam is truly as perfect as you say, they should have nothing to fear from a system where users are actually free to leave. A benevolent gatekeeper who refuses to unlock the gate is still a gatekeeper.
I just want to underline, again, that this is the first time I am facing that point and thus, have no opinion of my own yet formed, so I am not gonna say anything as it would simply be reductive. First reaction is mixed from me - number is one thing, forcing a store front to suddenly have to change contracts with game providers, clash with legal and all that to essentially allow you to carry over hundreds of products seems iffy. On the other hand, these are just copy keys at the end of the day so the only question is how easy would it be contract-wise? Dunno. And that’s why I am witholding forming an opinion as of now.
At the end I wanna mention only that our talk made me look up some stuff about both GOG - which I now appreciate a lot more, they really are closing in feature-wise to steam - and phone operators. The second one especially was a weird thing to discover. I was a kid when the number carry-over came to be and, honestly, believed it was some weird marketing strategy…fun to know it was one of early EU thingies.
It is awesome that you looked into the phone number carry over history! That is exactly the kind of forced change that everyone thought would be impossible or “iffy” until it became law. Now, we can’t imagine a world without it.
To your point about the difficulty: the reason it feels “iffy” is that we’ve let these stores build walled gardens. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is already solving this for other tech sectors. It mandates that gatekeepers provide APIs for Real-Time Data Portability.
If Valve was designated a gatekeeper, they wouldn’t have to hand out keys manually, they would just have to allow a secure, standardized way for you to prove to GOG or Epic that you own the game.
You are right that GOG is doing great work, but the reason their Library Integration is often buggy is that they are scraping data that Steam doesn’t want to share. My point is that we should not have to rely on GOG’s clever workarounds. We should have the legal right to our own data.
If we move from a world of stores to a world of protocols (like email or phone numbers), the best product wins because it is actually better, not because it is holding a $2,000 library hostage.
First of all, yeah, price parity sucks…but also the only thing it changes is that simply being cheaper isn’t an option. From my PoV all it does is it forces competition to compete on features. Which they all fail to do.
Friend, steam literally alows you to load games outside of steam. You absolutely can still rely on steam friends when playing even pirated games. Steam literally allows you to do it. And having more than one store installed, while not comfy, isn’t a sin - we are choosing steam due to it’s services - controller support, linux support, inbuilt forums, friend network, robust review system, robust return policy, great user support, and probably even more that I don’t know about due to being more niche.
Again, bull. Let’s look at competition, sans “We only sell our own games” stores.
And just to be clean - I am not against your interchangable library idea, although I am not really for it either. I just really disliked how you described steam as some monstrous entity holding people by ransom.
I appreciate the civil discussion, but I think you’re confusing “convenience” with “freedom.”
You mentioned adding non-Steam games, but that’s just a shortcut. You lose the “Join Game” buttons, the cloud saves, and the lobby invites. That is the definition of a social moat. You can leave, but you’re socially penalized for doing so.
As for competition, the fact that GOG and Itch.io have to hide in tiny niches just to survive proves my point. When the #1 player has 75%+ of the market, they don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be too big to leave.
My solution of mandated interoperability is exactly how we fixed the phone industry. You can switch carriers and keep your number. We should be able to switch launchers and keep our friends and games. If Steam is truly as perfect as you say, they should have nothing to fear from a system where users are actually free to leave. A benevolent gatekeeper who refuses to unlock the gate is still a gatekeeper.
And it’s exactly how I mentioned it. It’s simply a way to use some of steam features - for free - even if you use different shop. Their controller support, friend list, library access. A limited amount of access but nonetheless, yet again, something they provide that they don’t have to and other shops (except GOG I believe?) don’t support.
Cloud saves should be handled by whatever alternative you choose, and both join game and lobby invites should be ideally handled by game - that’s how it began, didn’t it? Steam simply offered option for games to extend it to friends chat out of the game. And hell, today even Discord of all things has something like this.
I admit, bad wording on my part. But while Itch relies on niche, in GOG’s case I meant their initiative of saving old games. Other than that, they are really competing as a full alternative. And…I just learned GOG does not publish it’s number, huh. But they are constantly growing from what I saw published, so evidently, you can throw gauntlet at Steam and do well. And I just learned that they aren’t really that far on feature parity, with library integration being something unique, huh. No wonder people on lemmy praise it xD
I just want to underline, again, that this is the first time I am facing that point and thus, have no opinion of my own yet formed, so I am not gonna say anything as it would simply be reductive. First reaction is mixed from me - number is one thing, forcing a store front to suddenly have to change contracts with game providers, clash with legal and all that to essentially allow you to carry over hundreds of products seems iffy. On the other hand, these are just copy keys at the end of the day so the only question is how easy would it be contract-wise? Dunno. And that’s why I am witholding forming an opinion as of now.
At the end I wanna mention only that our talk made me look up some stuff about both GOG - which I now appreciate a lot more, they really are closing in feature-wise to steam - and phone operators. The second one especially was a weird thing to discover. I was a kid when the number carry-over came to be and, honestly, believed it was some weird marketing strategy…fun to know it was one of early EU thingies.
It is awesome that you looked into the phone number carry over history! That is exactly the kind of forced change that everyone thought would be impossible or “iffy” until it became law. Now, we can’t imagine a world without it.
To your point about the difficulty: the reason it feels “iffy” is that we’ve let these stores build walled gardens. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is already solving this for other tech sectors. It mandates that gatekeepers provide APIs for Real-Time Data Portability.
If Valve was designated a gatekeeper, they wouldn’t have to hand out keys manually, they would just have to allow a secure, standardized way for you to prove to GOG or Epic that you own the game.
You are right that GOG is doing great work, but the reason their Library Integration is often buggy is that they are scraping data that Steam doesn’t want to share. My point is that we should not have to rely on GOG’s clever workarounds. We should have the legal right to our own data.
If we move from a world of stores to a world of protocols (like email or phone numbers), the best product wins because it is actually better, not because it is holding a $2,000 library hostage.