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Steam is a ticking time bomb
(www.spacebar.news)
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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2024
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Valve doesn't need to pay for exclusivity because it already dominates the market. There are many games that are effectively Steam exclusives because they are not available through other methods on PC. Half-Life 2 received a lot of criticism at launch for requiring Steam.
SteamOS is open source, but you need a license to use the Steam brand, and Valve doesn't allow that. One company tried to make a handheld console with SteamOS, but it can't be legally bundled with the hardware: https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/10/24033161/ayaneo-next-lite-steam-deck-competitor-steamos
Yes, that's the point of the article. If you need one specific person to stay alive for something to continue functioning well, you don't have a business, you have the British monarchy.
I am not aware of any stream agreement with game developers that prevents them from releasing their game using any other method. Your argument about streams “” monopoly “” is 100% due to market forces working as advertised. They offer a service that no other company either can or will match. And that is not the fault of steam and was not achieved by illegal means. There’s dissent even need to be a launcher at all! Game companies can just sell us the game alone without a launcher. What other companies want is market dominance, not a fair market place. Because the fair market place gave steam the current win
Whether or not the exclusivity deal is between the publisher and the store or just the publisher doesn’t make a difference for the consumer. There’s no functional difference between Counter Strike 2 requiring Steam and Fortnite requiring the Epic launcher except that gamers are used to Steam.
Yes there is. Because it gives the games companies the ability to sell however they like. What to make the game sellable privately? No problem. What to sell an apple version, go for it.
So what part of the open market covers preventing the consumers from being able to choose which launcher they prefer, if any? Valve didn’t do that. EGS did. You should blame the competitors for failing to meet market standards
When you are upset at Valve for not doing for apple what they did for Linux, who you are really mad at is Apple for having terrible… everything, and game developers who don’t want to put the needed effort in for such a modest return.
You are upset at everyone BUT Valve. Or at least you should be.
While they may be functionally Similar to the consumer, there is a massive difference between first-party and third-party exclusives, and another huge gap between exclusivity decided based on publisher choices and based upon storefront bribery. These differences are especially applicable to the topic of enshittification the driving element for this conversation which your response seems to have forgotten in this instance.