I hate to promote Amazon Prime, but there's a game promotion to know about if you have it

[sweenish]

It's not that 'steam is good'. It is more that Steam did it first, and most people's bulk of libraries exist on Steam. There is..pretty much zero reason for other 'fronts'. It isn't even about Steam doing it best, but the bulk of the issues have been worked out. Multiple clients that only sell certain games is not the answer. If Steam required that you ONLY buy games from Steam, that would be one thing, but it doesn't. You can buy games from dozens of other venues and activate them on Steam and at times cheaper than Steam offers. That is a HUGE advantage. Therefore, none of these other fronts offer ANYTHING that is an advantage to Steam. This is coming from someone who was a very late adopter.

These other groups starting their own are simply trying to cash in on that success and ultimately, most will fail long before Steam does and/or will never reach the success or list of games available. The only reason GOG has been successful is due to the non DRM. None of these other companies want non DRM because they are more worried about the money - otherwise they'd just promote Steam.

I mean, you spend your first few sentences restating a point I already made about entrenchment.

Then you get wrong on the fact that these other key sites don't sell for the other platforms.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/assassins-creed-origins [uplay key only]
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/...ame-of-the-year-edition?hmb_source=search_bar [gog key only]
https://www.greenmangaming.com/games/battlefield-v-pc/ [origin only]

Similarly, you can search for those games on fanatical, razer, etc., and find that they all sell keys for all the platforms (although humble didn't seem to have any origin keys), and they can often sell for less than their respective platform. That argument is moot.

And these other companies all have their own launchers PRECISELY because they DON'T want to promote Steam.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Those are awesome examples to prove my point. There's a handful of games 'for other guys'. Congrats. Not sure exactly what point you are trying to make though. If you want 15 different front ends, go be you. I'll not be doing that. I'd go back to pirating rather than mess with it. As I stated I don't have a problem with competition, these guys aren't competition, I mean really Uplay? I will concede that if someone could give Steam a run it would be Amazon if they wanted to but the rest are just PITA for no reason other than they think they can get a slice.

EDIT: Regarding entrenchment, it's too little too late to even consider that an issue. They should have been into this game 10 years ago. There's a dozen 'bad' things you can predict might happen regarding Steam. The same things that have been said since it started. As it stands, most people 'entrenched' in Steam have a backlog a mile long. People are entrenched and adding other store fronts doesn't even begin to solve that issue, it just adds a new issue. (Let's consider the ME series for example). It is purely a money grab, and not even a good one.

I tire of the stale 'steam's a monopoly the sky is falling what if' arguments. It is simply fear mongering. However, what SHOULD be happening is making all games available on any storefront, and the consumer can choose where they want to buy them. Much like Netflix, Hulu and the 20 other streaming sites, it simply isn't going to happen. Everyone has to be 'the one'. Normal archaic greed of having to have the majority. Unfortunately for most, first to the plate typically rules the roost assuming no major issues.

 

[JTsyo]

Disclaimer: I haven't downloaded the Twitch Installer. I just grab the games to place them in the account.

From what I've read you just need the Installer to download the game. Then you get a DRM free version of the game and don't need to run Twitch to play it.

 

[SMOGZINN]

If Rimworld was on the list I would've signed up, been waiting for that game to go on discount but it never seems to. It didn't even budge during the steam sale.

The developer has said that he does not believe in sales and that Rimworld will never go on sale.

Winning on good sales is fine - but the 'same place' issue makes it that people will even pay a little more to get it on Steam, and have a big preference for Steam at the same price.

It inhibits competition and that drives up prices.

There are plenty of competition to Steam. I would guess that more than half the games I have on Steam I bought elsewhere. That is competition. What you seem to be forgetting is that the 'same place' issue is something that Valve uses to make Steam competitive. It is one of the draws of Steam. It adds value, and yes we probably pay a little bit more for that value. Steam is not just a store for games, it is also a service for distribution, game maintenance, storage, and community.

 

[sweenish]

Those are awesome examples to prove my point. There's a handful of games 'for other guys'. Congrats. Not sure exactly what point you are trying to make though. If you want 15 different front ends, go be you. I'll not be doing that. I'd go back to pirating rather than mess with it. As I stated I don't have a problem with competition, these guys aren't competition, I mean really Uplay? I will concede that if someone could give Steam a run it would be Amazon if they wanted to but the rest are just PITA for no reason other than they think they can get a slice.

EDIT: Regarding entrenchment, it's too little too late to even consider that an issue. They should have been into this game 10 years ago. There's a dozen 'bad' things you can predict might happen regarding Steam. The same things that have been said since it started. As it stands, most people 'entrenched' in Steam have a backlog a mile long. People are entrenched and adding other store fronts doesn't even begin to solve that issue, it just adds a new issue. (Let's consider the ME series for example). It is purely a money grab, and not even a good one.

I tire of the stale 'steam's a monopoly the sky is falling what if' arguments. It is simply fear mongering. However, what SHOULD be happening is making all games available on any storefront, and the consumer can choose where they want to buy them. Much like Netflix, Hulu and the 20 other streaming sites, it simply isn't going to happen. Everyone has to be 'the one'. Normal archaic greed of having to have the majority. Unfortunately for most, first to the plate typically rules the roost assuming no major issues.

Now you're just going off on tangents and not directly addressing points. You don't seem to keep a running memory of what it is you say in a thread.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I know exactly what I'm saying. It isn't a black and white subject. There are tons of little caveats that I'm touching on. Basically, to pin it down for you, I don't think Steam is perfect or infallible, but it is the best thing out there and I don't see anyone changing that any time soon. Unfortunately though, everyone thinks someone defending Steam is just a fanboy and don't see it's flaws (as you erroneously point out). That is why the beginning of everything I said was basically pointing out it isn't perfect. That being said, most people realize the majority of their games are on Steam after all this time. It is convenient and it works. I don't want 10 different front ends for games and am content with 2 (Steam and GoG). None of what I stated is directly against Amazon or Twitch, I have a whole other topic regarding those, but even throwing free games at me isn't really going to change my mind -- since they aren't really free in the first place. People keep saying 'competition competition' as if there isn't any. As has been mentioned multiple times, buying games elsewhere is competition - because Steam is DRM first, a storefront second. You don't need different front ends for that. Other companies starting their own 'storefronts' is a money and control move, it is not a benefit for consumers. End of story.

As you said, if you can't follow this, you don't get it. I'm not saying you are wrong, if you don't have an issue with it, fine, but I believe you are in the minority.

 

[Craig234]

The developer has said that he does not believe in sales and that Rimworld will never go on sale.

At least Humble Monthly subscribers can get it for 10% off.

 

[Craig234]

I know exactly what I'm saying. It isn't a black and white subject. There are tons of little caveats that I'm touching on. Basically, to pin it down for you, I don't think Steam is perfect or infallible, but it is the best thing out there and I don't see anyone changing that any time soon. Unfortunately though, everyone thinks someone defending Steam is just a fanboy and don't see it's flaws (as you erroneously point out). That is why the beginning of everything I said was basically pointing out it isn't perfect. That being said, most people realize the majority of their games are on Steam after all this time. It is convenient and it works. I don't want 10 different front ends for games and am content with 2 (Steam and GoG). None of what I stated is directly against Amazon or Twitch, I have a whole other topic regarding those, but even throwing free games at me isn't really going to change my mind -- since they aren't really free in the first place. People keep saying 'competition competition' as if there isn't any. As has been mentioned multiple times, buying games elsewhere is competition - because Steam is DRM first, a storefront second. You don't need different front ends for that. Other companies starting their own 'storefronts' is a money and control move, it is not a benefit for consumers. End of story.

As you said, if you can't follow this, you don't get it. I'm not saying you are wrong, if you don't have an issue with it, fine, but I believe you are in the minority.

I think you rightly corrected the incorrect arguments against your points, but you then incorrectly made arguments against the other side's points.

No one is saying there's NO competition. The point is that the desire for a centralized library creates an artificial competitive advantage unrelated to price, quality, features, etc.

 

[Craig234]

There are plenty of competition to Steam. I would guess that more than half the games I have on Steam I bought elsewhere. That is competition. What you seem to be forgetting is that the 'same place' issue is something that Valve uses to make Steam competitive. It is one of the draws of Steam. It adds value, and yes we probably pay a little bit more for that value. Steam is not just a store for games, it is also a service for distribution, game maintenance, storage, and community.

Except it's not something Steam does intentionally, it's not any advantage they created, it's simply an effect of the technology. As I said before, it's analogous to the leading operating system getting an extra advantage because more apps get ported to it, and people want apps.

That means the OS doesn't have to be better on price, quality, features or anything else as much because want to buy it just because it has the most apps because it's the leader. It might have had to compete on those things initially to become the leader, but once it is, it begins to get that 'has the most apps' advantage that inhibits competition on the legitimate features.

That's why ideally there would be 'open standards' to remove that inhibitor to competition - so an app can be developed once and run on any OS, a game bought anywhere can be put into one standard open standards library out of a choice of libraries that compete for that. Etc. Those things don't exist yet, and we simply have the inhibitor - and Windows and Steam do well.

 

[nakedfrog]

Disclaimer: I haven't downloaded the Twitch Installer. I just grab the games to place them in the account.

From what I've read you just need the Installer to download the game. Then you get a DRM free version of the game and don't need to run Twitch to play it.

I've only played one game I got from it so far, but every time I launched the game, it also launched Twitch.

 

[SMOGZINN]

I've only played one game I got from it so far, but every time I launched the game, it also launched Twitch.

Same here, but that might just be that the shortcut it creates just launches twitch alongside the game. I did notice Monday that it didn't care that I had no internet connection when I launched the game, so that is encouraging.

 

[MaxDepth]

M.A.M.E for the 21st century?

That's a neat idea but it would have two satisfy two key points for both sides before it would be acceptable.
1) For the product owner - need to validate purchased versus ripped and block all ripped versions. This is the major hot button for companies and they won't accept anything less.

2) For the end user - blocking unauthorized cheats. Sure, have sessions for anything goes, best cheat wins, but for the majority, anything not specifically spelled out is considered a cheat and will be blocked. And here, use the same unique identifier used to ensure a non-ripped game to block as well. So if you get blocked, basically either cry mercy and have the block removed or buy it again (transaction of sale could also be used to generate unique ID).

The problem is that they are trying to push yet another platform on us. It is going to become a problem keeping up with what you have where.

Someone needs to build a program that consolidates all the platforms into one package, shows what games you have across them all, can keep track of what you have installed, can launches the platform and can tell it to install or run the game when you click on it, and consolidates store pages showing the current price of different games on each platform.

Think of what happened with the IM wars in the naughts. We ended up with several platforms like Trillian that combined them all into one package. That needs to happen with the game platforms now.

 

[SMOGZINN]

M.A.M.E for the 21st century?

That's a neat idea but it would have two satisfy two key points for both sides before it would be acceptable.
1) For the product owner - need to validate purchased versus ripped and block all ripped versions. This is the major hot button for companies and they won't accept anything less.

2) For the end user - blocking unauthorized cheats. Sure, have sessions for anything goes, best cheat wins, but for the majority, anything not specifically spelled out is considered a cheat and will be blocked. And here, use the same unique identifier used to ensure a non-ripped game to block as well. So if you get blocked, basically either cry mercy and have the block removed or buy it again (transaction of sale could also be used to generate unique ID).

And just like that you end up with Steam again. Those two things together practically guarantees a Steam like service which will have the market power that people are complaining about.

 

[MaxDepth]

SMOGZINN -
I was thinking on the line of user dependent system. Basically it's just the concierge service that satisfies the two conditions. So less of Steam, which takes a cut, and more like Battle Eye. The key here is that a universal console and games become add-ons. Hmmm, sounds like MAME or even KODI (still want to call that XBMC..)

Steam makes money by making themselves the middleman. The console would be an agreed upon standard that would let users configure and use on their own.