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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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Technology
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What a garbage article lol. The only two arguments I can pick out are 1. Old steam games haven't been updated to work on macOS and 2. Some games require 3rd party launchers. I think the author was just angry that his mac dropped support for a 20 year old game.
Agreed, shitty read. The 30% cut is crazy high though, and IMO the best point the article has. Steam DOES have a monopoly and that's inherently bad
Being popular does not make steam a monopoly... My son plays 80% steam games but has Epic launcher installed and plays rocket League regularly
There is nothing in Steam preventing or even making it hard for you to run PC games in any other way
having a market share like that is a form of monopoly. It's obviously different from absolute monopoly, but they wield too much power as is.
And to be fair, running games on linux without steam is definitely more tricky than without.
There are two requirements to be considered a monopoly, or fall under antitrust laws:
Steam meets point 1, it doesn't meet point 2. On the other hand, things like the Apple App Store, don't meet point 1, but meet point 2, which makes them more likely to fall under antitrust. Windows meets both points, which is why the US sued Microsoft for not letting people choose their browser.
Yeah, we only have to look at the FTC's lawsuit against Amazon to see what they consider an antitrust problem:
That isn't what we see from Valve - in fact it's the opposite, as Valve's strategy with Steam is simply to provide the best service and be the gold standard. The competition is almost always compared unfavorably to Steam, because gamers know how it feels to use a mature platform that isn't trying to abuse them.
Valve has even taken some steps that wind up increasing competition in adjacent markets, such as operating systems (Proton has contributed significantly to Linux popularity) and even handheld game devices (Steam Deck set off an arms race when electronics manufacturers realized Nintendo is asleep at the wheel). Steam is as pro-consumer as it gets, with the exception of GOG and possibly itch.
But I always assumed that, unless you are blocking competition, it's not legally a monopoly and harder to penalize (not that they actually penalize monopolies much in north America)
Other than making a good product and easier to run games on Linux, there is nothing preventing anyone to install other launchers or games on their own or game makers from selling through other launchers or independently, etc