Steam is a Monopoly Because People Like It More Than the Epic Games Store...?
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Let’s be real, the only reason anyone ever uses the epic store is for the free games and the only reason anyone uses the Xbox launcher is for gamepass.
Yep
True
I use it for the unreal engine. That’s my only reason. Other than that, I use steam.
Yes
i just grab the games and then don't play them.
If these kind of people don't like steam being a monopoly then they should push its competitors to do better.
Not steams fault that everything else is trash.
Steam is only a "monopoly" in terms of user base and that's because they offer the best launcher on pc. As you said, if the other pc launchers want to draw in some of that Steam user base maybe they should actually try to improve their own.
As the guy said, features like a 2 hour refund policy and allowing mods are just button presses away from being implemented. They're choosing not to.
I wouldn't say that every other pc store is trash cause gog is pretty good tbh
even then depending on what games you want to play you might want to open steam anyway for the vast array of controller support and configuration
steam is a platform so good you actually benefit from adding non steam games since you can find a massive library of user created controller configurations@@assassinoeusclide
@@assassinoeusclide i like gog for no drm bs, but the launcher? hell nah. gog is awesome. the launcher is garbage. at least compared to steam.
Imagine you own a burger shop, you make the best in town. But then a couple of competing owners show up trying to sell burgers, but some are raw, don’t give customers the right order. burn the burger ect. Now your competition know EXACTLY how you make your burgers & could easily copy it , but they are so lazy they keep f*****g up, and actively decide to keep doing what they’re doing. Then people start calling you a monopoly because you know how to satisfy your customers & they don’t.
There's also that one guy who makes decent burgers but he's on the edge of town and his burgers cost just as much as yours but they really don't compare. Hell, you're willing to serve his burgers at your restaurant with no extra cost but it's going to take time.
That's GOG.
@Eboreg2
And Itch is a collection of burger makers of various quality half of whom don't expect to turn a profit either because it's a passion project to make the best burger possible, or because their burger is tailored for a specific niche audience
@@Eboreg2and thanks to those store we get some old style burger too
And GameJolt has a bunch of people that make burgers inspired by other burger joints but just different enough with their own strange but funky alterations like the patty being made out of chicken with chips on it
I would like to think that the Steam Burgers aren’t even that amazing as well. They are just average burgers. If someone else showed up and did the same thing but slightly better they would have a decent shot at becoming the best and possibly the most popular in town.
Here's my question: Do monopolies invest time and money into creating a completely separate, controller friendly UI for their launcher? Do they invest time and money into software that allows games to run on Linux even without a native port? Do they continue to push driver updates and support for products they've long since discontinued (Steam controller and Steam link)?
If Valve is a monopoly, they sure aren't acting like it.
worst comment ever
@@josephclarence397worst reply ever
"not monopoly is when company does something i like"
@@josephclarence397steam is a monopoly however unlike the Rockefellers steam is actually making progress and being productive. Steam has created a small scale tablet and what a lot of people consider to be the best vr headset around. Epic ….sucks ass and has stifled games. Metro exodus a game I fucking love has been completely forgotten because you had to go through epic to play it.
@@thedude4840 I will point out Rockefeller was NEVER a monopoly and calling it one is actual government propaganda. At the time of its break up it was falling in market share and was in the 60% range. Even at its height it was not a monopoly and never actually acted like one.
Nothing like defending a TenCent investment from "monopolies"
You're confusing it with epic games
Whose the tencent investment, cause it definitely isn’t valve or steam
@@silverfishofdoom1312 I'm referring to epic has the tencent investment.
@@silverfishofdoom1312tencent (probably the biggest video game monopoly) invests in epic games, who is mad at a "monopoly" aka steam.
@@silverfishofdoom1312it’s Epic. I didn’t know this until I looked it up, makes it easier to avoid them like the plague now
I know Steam’s amount of users is far greater but aren't GOG, Humble, itch, etc still popular in their own right? It’s not like people think Steam is the only store. I feel like most people still use multiple options
I still to an extend disagree with that notion. Most pc gamers will just use steam by default and not think twice about kinda like windows vs linux. Now then again. I dont blame pc players for it. It is the better store. But it does now make it neigh impossible to truly break into the market.
Sony ponies think Steam is “the only store.” I’m constantly being tagged by em with Starfield slams (my biggest weakness 😐) because they refuse to believe Xbox has an launcher too and GamePass (which they think is the same or interchangeable terms)
I started challenging em to Mortal Kombat 1 on Steam. I don’t get tagged as often. 😏☝🏻
I don't. I don't count itch. Steam has more than what I need, plus I have Gamepass, and emulation, and a PlayStation 4 (working on getting rid of it for PS5)and Switch.
Im good.
@@VideoAcidLol ponies don't play games, they play Twitter. PS players are mostly casuals.
@@TheMahayanist exactly bruh
F'real, its not that steam is a monopoly
Its just that they're VERY SMART in how to utilize their store to its full potential and you know
*NOT FUCK WITH THEIR CUSTOMERS*
Facts
@@adknife2046 Its why I like GoG and tolerate the xbox store too
Though I mostly use it for PC game pass
@@TheRealClaylexGog is excellent
The problem is the catalog is poor it's sad ...
@@adknife2046 agreed
*plays csgo theme*
not fuck with their customers, just their wallets and gambling addictions
Worst part are the people complaining Steam is a monopoly without knowing what the term “monopoly” actually means.🤦♂️
And then they make arguments such as:
-steam bad cus DRM (which only works for launching games thru steam, you can keep the files of the game you refunded and run it directly. Unless the dev employed the DRM themselves)
- steam bad cus they could rise prices (they can't, devs set those)
- steam bad cus muh 30% cut (which is orders of magnitude lower than any and all other art and sport publishers/middlemen like book publishers, while in return offering the biggest consumerbase to the dev, as well as forums, cloud saves, workshop, etc etc etc)
You nailed it. Steam is in no way a monopoly. Steam does not control any individual game's entire market nor does it control the PC market at large. Steam is also not anti-competitive. Steam charges developers the same market-rate cut that other major marketplaces charge. The players and customers voted with their wallets. Steam has become the market leader because it has consistently provided its customers with a superior experience at every level.
@@Thrashman138 OMG, you are a breath of fresh air.
That guy's point about features unique to Steam was spot on. The user review system influences my buying habits frequently. It's part of why Amazon was so revolutionary at the beginning
Ehhh disagree…… steams reviews are very susceptible to group think and memes and the thumbs up/down thing can completely eliminate nuance but that’s just me. Amazons reviews are completely fucked these days because of botting. Critical drinkers books are all 4-5 star because of his fan base but actual reviews call them trash spy novels. You can’t trust the general public.
Honestly its odd that people never even touch on inbuilt controller customisation and support, big picture, the steam link streaming system etc.
SO. MUCH. GOOD. UNIQUE. STUFF!!! Even on top of all the things that are most often mentioned.
@@phyto892 there could be a whole video on all the neat features steam has
For it to be a monopoly, it would need to actively attempt to choke out competition. It didnt lift a FINGER against Epic, the customers just made their own choice.
Yeah, for steam to be called a monopoly, they would need to do the same things the epic store has been doing. This is one of the few cases where consumers actually are driving the market deapite dumb shenanigans from companies.
That is what is called a natural monopoly. The world will tend to favor what goes to its best convenience. As such, when you gain a monopoly without trying to get one, just by providing the better outcome for everybody, it is a natural monopoly. It contrast with the artificial monopoly where one acts to take down "opponents" in order to gain the majority of the market.
How can people call steam a monopoly when they never sign exclusive deals on games as far as I can remember.
@andreitaker3527 by definition, a monopoly is when a party/group is majority holder of a market. In the case of steam, it is on the pc gamestore "market." And they are in the position of natural monopoly: they went there when nobody was here, people tried to copy only to fail (i.e., games for Windows or something like that), and now that there is rivals, it is still ahead of the competition (I.e. the epic store cart) despite having lower means than the opposition (epic throwing millions on exclusivities and trying to destroy gaming on Linux by buying studios and cancelling Linux ports). Due to those factors, steam is a mastodon that weighs more than 60% of the market, leaving less than 40% to the others. As such, steam is considered in a situation of "monopoly"
@@thomasravard7127Oh really ? Then I think we need to introduce a terms "naturally good monopoly" because monopoly is always associated with majority control = bad.
I'm gonna give an example here on how other game launchers fail at the most basic things. I was trying to play the game Yakuza Kiwami 2 on PC. Since the game was available on Game Pass I just downloaded it there and tried to play it. But for some reason the game was fully in japanese, including menus and subtitles. There was no option anywhere to change the language. After a lot of googling what I got was this, just like on consoles, on the Game Pass app games are installed on the same language your OS is, and if that language isn't available the game defaults to it's original language. Since I live in Brazil, my OS is in Brazilian Portuguese, a language not supported by Yakuza Kiwami 2, so instead of letting me pick with language I want, it defaults to japanese. The only way to have english subtitles in that game is to change my entire OS language. I don't think I have to explain how inconvenient that is. So what did I do? Got the game on Steam, for a very low price, right click on the game, settings, language, english, confirm. DONE! Microsoft was incapable of giving me this option. The most simple, most logical things were completely absent on their Game Pass app. THIS is why people prefer Steam!
Valve is a private company, I'm much happier to give them money when I know there aren't investors for them to answer too, I know valve intends to just keep plugging away at quality products, because that's all they've ever done, and there's no investors to make happy at the end of the week.
All hail Lord Gaben and everyone at Valve.
So how does that explain how GOG is a better storefront than Epic Games store?
Just mentioned that my two stores are Steam and GOG
I can give a few reasons why gog is better than epic , it’s got an actual basket so you can buy multiple games , it is drm free so optimization on all games is just better than epic or steam in most cases for a long time the fallout 3 on gog was the only playable version on windows 10 . And the sales that happen in gog are almost as good as steam especially when it comes to witcher and cyberpunk sales . And lastly their support is excellent especially compared to epic . Did that answer that question?
@@Tax-ro2wg GOG is better than EGS because CDPR wants GOG to be a good launcher.
EG doesn't want the EGS to be a good store, they just want money without putting in the work for it.
@@Tax-ro2wg Doesn't CDPR own GOG? I like that they try to make older games playable, at least they did at first
GOG isn't really a better storefront in most of the ways that steam is, GOG has one thing going for it, and that's the fact that everything there is DRM free, as someone who cares about that a lot, I buy my PC games there, and stick to physical copies of console titles for everything infected by denuvo.
I’ve never used the Epic Game Store. I’ve never heard good things. I’ve never heard recommendations.
As a user of the Epic Games Store, let me assure you everything you've heard is true. It is terrible. Literally the only good thing I can say about it is that they give away a lot of free games, but even then I still ended up rebuying a lot of said games on Steam just so I wouldn't have to deal with Epic's launcher.
If Epic were to actually put some of the money and resources they spend on buying exclusives or suing big tech into their store then they might have something decent, but they still haven't done that. Hell it took them like what? 2-3 years just to add a shopping cart? And just the fact people defend it and justify it by saying Steam didn't have a lot of these features at launch either is idiotic. It is not 2003 anymore. Things like achievements and profiles should be common place now. And keep in mind this is coming from somebody who was initially optimistic for a potential Steam competitor. I don't think one company should control the market, and Gabe Newell himself even said that competition is good, but Epic clearly isn't the company who will provide Steam with healthy competition.
You’ve missed out on literally hundreds of free games. You don’t need to buy anything to take advantage of the weekly free games.
@AVeryUncreativeUsername The worst part for me are the exclusive games on EGS.
You can use Ark as an example. My friend got many issue to make their own server and needed to do some magic trickery to make it work on Epic(Because they given it for free at some point) but when they did it from Steam (which also given it for free at some point) well it just work, no magic trick needed. We all know that most Epic user are there because of Fornite and Free game which cost them money but for some reason keep doing it. At this point with all the free game, they could have fixed their damn interface but no better attract them with free game and timed exclusivity which the PC crowd is already adapted because console first than PC so it is laughable at this point.
The free games tends to be the only thing people mention
A monopoly makes it difficult or punishing to use alternative products. Steam is just the preferred product for a majority of people.
Epic should let their lower cut result in cheaper games and focus on actually making a compitent launcher. If everyone is just using Epic for the free games, obviously they're not going to make money.
I use steam and GOG, epic launcher is trash, and I don't want to give Tencent money
The problem is it's kind of hard to get any cheaper than Steam already is, and it's hard to have a feature that steam doesn't have. Keep in mind that Steam is also as popular as it is, because everyone is on there and everyone is invested in it. This is something that no one can ever compete against unless Steam makes a massive mistake somehow.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 OK, so what's the problem? Remember, it's not a monopoly because everyone uses one service, it's a monopoly if everyone HAS to use one service.
The problem with monopolies is that they can abuse their customers with raised prices and anti consumer practices because the customers have nowhere else to go. Steam can't do this because everyone can jump ship to GOG.
As for prices, steam takes a 30% cut. Epic takes something like 12%. That alone allows for a 18% drop in game prices while devs get the same amount.
@@existentialselkath1264 Well I brought all that stuff up to prove you wrong, because you were saying otherwise. It is impossible for anyone to compete with Steam, which still makes it in essence, a monopoly (extremely large oligarchy if you want to be exact).
Steam can abuse their customers with raised prices, anti consumer practices (which they already do with DRM). This is because everyone on steam has already invested hundreds of dollars for their games, you cannot just take them off of steam. Luckily steam doesn't raise their prices right now, but they could do it any time and millions will be unable to leave due to their investments. And people would still go on to steam simply because all their friends are on it, it has more games, and it has nearly the entire population of PC gamers on it. This is the same reason why it's so impossible to kill social media platforms, even though objectively better alternatives have already come and gone.
That may be true but the prices on EGS seem the same as the ones on steam to me, and sales on EGS don't happen often. A steam sale where most games are $5-15 happen every few months.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 if Steam started raising prices, of course people can move to other platforms. The games you bought on steam are stuck on steam, but that doesn't mean there's any reason to keep buying on steam.
Its like saying if your local supermarket raises prices you have to keep going to it because you've already got a fridge full of their food. You have a semblance of an argument but it isn't coherent.
The whole purpose of social media platforms is to be social. It requires friends and other people to use it. The social features of steam or any other launcher are a bonus everyone can already live without as they're more likely to already be talking to friends on 'real' social media than steam anyway.
It would only be a problem if you literally couldn't play with people on other platforms, but you can.
As for EGS having the same prices, that's precisely the problem. They have room to compete, they can sell a lot of games at lower prices than steam, but they don't want to. They'd much rather spend their money buying up exclusives which are an ACTUAL monopolistic practice that doesn't give consumers a choice but to use your platform.
Yes. I only buy games on:
- Steam, because it's good
- GOG, because it's DRM-free and in case of CDPR-games (like CP77), all the money goes to them
- directly from the studio (KSP, Rimworld, etc) when they weren't on Steam yet.
and even in those cases its useful to add those games as a shortcut onto steam because of the controller support
How dare you use steam instead of crappy epic games software that won't launch crashes and lags out.
Valve's such a monopoly that they even allow me to hack the Epic Games launcher to work on Linux, if I were to so choose.
Real galaxy brain stuff there, I tell you what.
I'd happily buy games from Epic if they supported Linux but while they try to fight Valve's "monopoly" they're supporting Microsoft's monopoly, such a fantastic company.
Also, I bought a RTX 2060 and got Control as a gift with the card because "rAy TrAcInG", upgraded to a 6900 XT and they took the game away from me. What a wonderful business practice.
I normally go by Monopoly bad/Competition good because history tells us that monopolies would be complacent with their success. Why improve, when people going to give me money anyways?
But Valve shown that they can be trusted, and they're literally keeping the door open for Epic and other competitor to follow suit, no unfair bs, no back-door dealings. If they is willing to move towards the door in the first place.
The one example I love to point out is Steam Proton. Sure Valve can just make their own games Linux playable and call it a day. BUT they went up, beyond, and infinitely by making a goal that every single game they sell works on Linux. Meanwhile, Epic's response to Linux support is "Just use Windows, loser. You don't deserve to play games.".
So, why am I supposed to cheer for Epic when I can't download, and run their client?
I completely forgot the epic games store exist
sadly i don't, because friends always tell me to get the newest freebee game on epic even tho i told em multiple times i will never download the launcher.
People said that steam had the advantage for being the first forgot that steam also had the disadvantage of facing problems first head on, that all the later company can learn from.
Anyone arguing Steam is a monopoly by their own logic is saying Sony is a monopoly 😂
Steam and Sony are both oligarchies, which isn't much better than monopolies.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987that's not what oligarchy means.
@@progste Oligarchy - a conceptual form of power structure in which power rests with a small number of people.
Who holds the power in the PC gaming industry? Pretty much just Steam, with very minor competition from GOG. Who holds the power in the console gaming industry? Sony, Nintendo, and Xbox.
By definition they are oligarchies at minimum.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 Oligarchy is a form of government.
None of those companies hold "power", they just have customers.
@@progste As the definition from wikipedia that I provided states, oligarchy is a concept that can be applied to different things. It takes 5 seconds to search this up, it can indeed refer to companies. Normally it does refer to governments, but that is not the only thing it can refer to.
You are saying that Steam has no power? It controls most of the entire PC gaming industry, it can enact massive change if it wanted to. And Sony has more influence and makes more money than entire countries, but apparently they have no 'power'? Political power is not the only form of power.
Like the terms "First world" and "Third World", the word "monopoly" in the eyes of peoople doesn't refer to exclusive supply, competition elimination, and other unethical strategies, but simply being a market leader or the most successful company. Note that the word "monopoly" only became any amount popular to use to describe Steam after Tim Sweeney and other(most likely paid) Epic Store shills began to market their storefront while disparaging Valve. Note how a lot of these criticisms of Steam are made ONLY by either Sony fanboys or EGS shills. Meanwhile, Epic itself engages in practices that are in line what what a monopoly would do, such as buying exclusivity rights. Sony fanboys don't even like EGS, they just use it as a front to hate on PC gaming in general.
Even funnier note about Sony fanboys is after the Helldivers drama they took Steam users not bending over to Sony as a personal insult it seems.
Epic won't even provide their launcher to us Linux users. If they don't want Steam to be a "monopoly," they should fix their own launcher instead of complaining about others.
As a Linux gamer, I can't help but agree
Epic problem is the mindset of the company. Imagine if epic makes a portable gaming device, u can bet that epic will lock it to their store/launcher. They rather spend money on being anti-competitive than consumer-friendly.
Steam literally said to stop piracy, treat your customers right and give them what they want. If you hate the pay cut or not Valve is actually investing that money back into the company!
I use my controller on PC. The main reason I prefer Steam is because of their controller customization options. I like to integrate Gyro controls and I can fine-tune it any way I want.
not to mention the fact you can browse already created controller configurations from the community and fine tune them to your liking
u can even use big picture to navigate steam with your controller. simply awesome.
People on twitter are in their parallel world because steam have so much features and their know how to make their platform good
Which is why i prefer steam than epic shit store which they made 3 years just for put their basket store
Steam have community
Workshop
Mod
VR
Big picture for controller people wants to put dualsense they can
And even after all i said it's not enough about their features that's incredible
This is why steam have the best platform ever on pc
steam did one thing i thought was nigh impossible for a tech company: they changed up their UI and almost everyone loved it
The phrase "Minimum Effort, Maximum Profit" sums up the mentality of Epic Games and other game companies pretty well. They prefer squeezing money out of customers instead of putting a real effort into making a quality product that people will buy.
And hence, fail "maximum profit."
Pretty sure Steam generates more profit than the EGS (both in terms of the storefront itself, discounting game specific in-game purchases).
I'd wager - but have no numbers to back it up - that this even holds true if normalized "per capita."
The part that really makes me laugh, Valve has like 300 employees, 70~ish of whom work on Steam, those few people can make a better store/launcher than thousands of employees at these other business due to poor leardership
Well, it is easier to say "it's monopoly!!! " Rather than think "why people like it".
Why can't both be true? People like steam and it is like a monopoly.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 *"People like monopolies and oligarchies."*
What? I know a lot of people. None like monopolies and oligarchies.
Monopolists and oligarchs do, but they're a _fraction_ of "people." And most people don't even _know_ any monopolist or oligarch personally, even less so being one.
@@cy-one I think I thought I was replying to someone else and mistyped part of the comment, I updated it now to what I originally wanted to say.
@@xx_amongus_xx6987 Steam is a market leader, a monopoly would mean that Steam is actively taking steps to hurt their competition to stay on top, which isn't true as far as i know. The competition is just weak.
@@ne0nmancer Well looking online, I don't see any definitions that necessarily require what you are talking about. Most of them say the only thing that is necessary is just for a company to own most of the market and not have competition. Steam doesn't have any competition and unfortunately never will, because no one will ever be able to compete with them. It's just like no one is able to feasibly compete with TH-cam.
Valve has worked to make the PC ecosystem better. Things like the steamdeck, proton, vr, cloudsaves, showing you games based on what they think you will like instead of who pays them more, etc. They are a genuinely good player in the market.
They do screwup and I remember how bad it was with greenlight and the sheer mountains of garbage that came through that. However, you can see the good intention behind it and when it did not work out they changed it.
In the end they keep pushing forward and trying to make the system better and I don't see any of these other companies doing that. Gaming on Linux is VASTLY more workable now because of valve. Valve is probably the primary reason that PC gaming even survived in the first place.
My favorite thing about EGS failing is that the whole notion of EGS starting up was to provide players with choice but also cheaper games. But if the game is on both EGS and Steam the EGS copy will not be cheaper. And if it’s on sale on Steam it will most likely be full price on EGS.
To be fair, Steam does include minimum pricing clauses in at least some of its contracts which prevents the developers/publishers from selling them cheaper on another platform, which makes it hard for other platforms to compete on pricing.
Entirely false, you don't know what you're talking about.
The only time you are not allowed to sell your game at a different price elsewhere is if you are selling STEAM KEYS.
The developer can generate as many steam keys as they like for *FREE.*
The 30% cut steam takes is only if the gamer buys the game on steam; If you sell them a key you get to keep 100% of the money.
The catch is that if you're selling that steam key elsewhere it cannot be lower than the price of just buying it on steam itself.
This basically means you end up having to create your own launcher that steam connects to, similar to something like the origin launcher if you want to get around the restrictions. @@yautl1
@@yautl1that totally fine. What they restrict is selling steam key cheaper in other platform since valve doesn't take a cut in key sale
In Sweden we have a monopoly on Alcohol. What happens in that case is sense there is no competition they have a large sortiment of rare and exclusive drinks that otherwise would not be profitable to buy, sense they are not popular drinks.
For example, just yesterday I had a Can of Blueberry Cider and a bottle of some strange combination of banana and peach.
These options would not appear, at all, if the market was open sense normally no one buys these and it would simply not be profitable. Every shop would be selling Jack Daniels, and whatever is the most popular beer in the area.
I compare this to Steam's Monopoly on the game distribution market for PC. It allows us to find and see these gems of indie games no one would normally find in a competitive distribution market. I'm sure we all know that Epic has a few indie games on their store, but no one actually buys them because the Epic game store is not popular.
not to mention how trying to play games with other launches on the Steam Deck often doesnt work, cause EA and Ubisoft keep putting out updates to their launchers that keep causing it to break under Proton .-.
So Valve are constantly playing the good guy and updating Proton Experimental to try to fix each update that breaks them
Plus being the first company in a long time to pay more than lip service to right-to-repair (perhaps for more selfish reasons involving less overhead due to offshoring all the repairs but eh)
epic games still dont have features that steam has had for a decade+
yeah they have given me thousands of dollars worth of games and i still hate epic games because it's basically useless, slow, and you still can't move a game to a different drive without uninstalling and completely reinstalling it so dumb
2:43 That list is maybe like 25% of the features
Just to name a few:
- Cloud saves
- Steam Input
- VR support
- Chat (discord might be better but it's still good)
- Achievements
- Badges
- Profile Customization
- A good overlay (not the best, though)
- running in the background at almost 0 resource cost
- incredible deals
- off-site keys with even better prices
- off-site bundles with genuinely crazy value
- frequent sales (like midweek madness)
- wish-list notifications
Ah yes, the most anti-competitive practice of them all: actually producing a superior product
The reality is that Steam was never a monopoly. There has never been anything anywhere that has said developers are required to put their game on a distribution platform like Steam. They could easily use individual websites for developers and games instead of Steam or Epic. Like is said in the video, Steam genuinely works on making their platform and products better for the users with the money they make on them. Epic is ok… but if I had to make a choice, Steam is always the safer bet.
I use Steam primarily because it makes gaming on Linux miles easier. But, even when I use Windows, it's leagues better than anything else. Yeah, I love GOG and its mission; I give it money when I feel so inclined. Steam is just a superior storefront, launcher, and ecosystem. The integration with my Deck is seamless, too. Let's see anyone else match what Valve has done.
Steam not being afraid of user reviews and user forums makes me feel like they care more about the consumer, rather than a store that wants to hide that stuff.
If Steam was an actual monopoly then websites like Fanatical, Humble Bundle or even G2A wouldn't exist selling keys for less than the price the game is on Steam
i guess companies arent allowed to make genuinely good products for fear of becoming a monopoly
Competition is amazing. Really, really amazing. It drives innovation.
But if the competitor isn't "competing", then it doesn't matter if there's 1000 competitors, if all 1000 aren't competing and offering something that the other isn't, nobody's gonna go there.
People love to say "Battle Royals are super popular", but there's only what, 4 viable BRs out there? A BR didn't save Battlefield 5, didn't save hyperscape, didn't save the dozens of failed Battle Royals. Fortnite, Apex, COD Warzone and PUBG are the best in that category, and unless a BR comes out that offers something unique to entire players to play it, everyone's just gonna go back to what's familiar.
And excuse me if I'm not rushing to use the EGS outside of Fortnite at the moment... when Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeny abandoned the platform around 2008, declaring it dead and long live the consoles. Then Valve swooped in, found out how to save the PC Platform, and kaboom, the PCs now really, really big.
Edit: 7 Days later yes but...
Something people forget. Being a monopoly is not illegal. So even if by definition Steam's a monopoly, that doesn't mean anything. What is illegal is using your monopoly to cripple competition or control a market and not allow competition. Steam allows plenty of competition. The reason people stick with Steam is 2 folds. 1 - Momentum. 2 - No competition offers what Steam does to the consumers.
Epic's big push is "for the developers", but me, a consumer, I won't sacrifice my convenience for the convenience of developers.
Amazing comment - I believe you got to the root causes of the issues the Epic Games Store has been facing perfectly, which this video failed miserably.
I wanted to like the epic games store. But they took over a year to implement something as essential as a wish list and still lack all community features such as user ratings that steam has had for ages now
The competitors to steam only see steam as a store front. Steam is not a storefront. It is a game hub. Though it contains a store, it also contains great community features. Dev enabled community driven mods. Greatly customizable user profiles. A great friends list that let's you fairly easily find people, see what your friends are playing, and join them. Even adding games that ether aren't on steam or you bought somewhere else to your library, you might not get the community features, but it still let's your friends see the game you are playing along with the steam overlay working so you can still easily talk to your friends even if none of you bought it from steam originally.
The only thing the other people are trying to do is make the store, and don't even glance at the other features because the other features don't involve a transaction where the user gives them money.
Preach!
Steam community feature is goated, I lost count how many their forum helps me with game I have an issue with.
Steam being forced to compete with Epic has actually prompted Valve to add new features to Steam and overhaul its user interface.
I LOVE the controller support and customization that is built into the Steam overlay, which includes community presets for specific games that can help you fix problems like the weird 8-directional movement in the Dark Souls 2 PC port. Meanwhile, on EGS, you can't even change the location where a game is installed without uninstalling it entirely or moving the files yourself and tricking the launcher into thinking you downloaded it again.
*"Meanwhile, on EGS, you can't even change the location where a game is installed without uninstalling it entirely or moving the files yourself and tricking the launcher into thinking you downloaded it again."*
... the f?
@cy-one
Me having a D (Games) \: on a random m.2 drive.
@@Demopans5990 Same. Well, both C and D, C is a bit faster than D, but not to the degree that it'd make a difference really :D
Epic is the biggest crybaby in AAA gaming.
epic had all the opportunity to make an actual competitor and decided to be petty and anti-consumer instead.
I go to who ever is gonna save me money. Steam features are fine for those who make use of them. But if GOG has the same game for $5 less, guess what?
Epic has a shitty interface and software runs slow and sluggish they need features to really make me want to use it more...Epic needs to step up in software and features.
reason gog isnt used like ti should is cuz of the DRM free system 99% of publishers force DRM on their games so putting it on GOG forces them to remove DRM
The closest Launcher to Steam is GoG Galaxy, and it works as a front-end of other launchers but i still use Steam the most
How can anyone be anti abortion when Fortnite kids exist
Valve and steam are goated in comparison to other gaming companies
Saying Steam is a monopoly is like saying LIDL in the neighboring city is a monopoly, because it's clean, is in a good location and isn't overpriced compared to the Tesco in the outskirts of the city that smells like literal shit at the cart holders with pavement falling apart and literal piss stains visible at the door with prices atleast 10-15% more than LIDL's.
Like, yeah, of course the better is going to be more liked, but my example isn't perfect since Tesco's been around in the city for over twice as long. So it would be an example on how to fucking be a good competitor. Epic sitting on their ass giving out free games every few weeks pretty much noone heard of won't make it magically good. Whining on Twatter about "Steam monopoly" while Epic was the one causing a shitstorm with making Metro Exodus release on Epic first through an exclusivity deal AFTER people have preordered and were promised Steam keys. That's behaviour yoU'd expect from monopolies, not giving a shit about other companies and just doing your own thing isn't a monopoly.
Love your take on this just remember that most of this discussion is taking place "stateside" and the only way I know that I know you are across the pond is your reference to Tesco - most USA folks have no idea what LIDL even stands for as most all of those stores are in a handful of states on the east coast.
I largely agree that epic has behaved in ways that are damaging long term. Exclusivity that is paid for is garbage on any platform
That said I do want to push back on one point, it is not as simple as ‘one update’ to add in all the features you want. Steam has over a decade of development under its belt. To catch up to that incremental and consistent building up of feature is not trivial for any dev team no matter how much money is thrown at it. That takes time. Look at how badly Apple Maps failed at launch and how long it took to catch up (and still hasn’t) and that was developed by quite literally one of the richest companies with very strong dev talent
Agree with your point, but also want to say: this is kinda how the market rewards innovators and risk-takers. I don't know why anyone expects a leg up. Toppling a market leader is hard and always has been in established markets. (I'm not saying you're making this argument, btw, I just see it a lot.)
Whenever this topic comes up it's like people forget that PC gaming did actually exist before Steam, but publishers hated it because of piracy, and consumers would run into endless trouble trying to get the shit they paid for to work properly, install any patches (manually), deal with some buggy ass DRM software, etc. etc. It was a terrible experience and the market reflected that by being a lot smaller than consoles. What Valve understood, and has always been quite vocal about, is that the reason people weren't buying PC games was because the SERVICE was terrible. Pirating was EASIER than buying games. And so with Steam the entire business model has always, always been about providing a service that cannot be matched by pirates. It's honestly insane that stores like Epic don't understand this, because it explains almost everything. Epic is giving away free games? Cool. So are the pirates, and they always have been - I don't even need to use your stupid launcher then. Why would I STILL rather BUY it on Steam? Because the Steam experience is that much better.
I fall back on the Dan Olson argument. If your platform is lacking features of the competition I have no interest in your new platform.
@@NabsterHaxThe point is that it might work for Epic, but it screws the actual game developers in the long run. For example, been a big X-Com fan, I was hyped for the release of Phoenix Point, when Epic got them and made it exclusive for one year. Epic didn't earned my trust like Steam did over the year and was involved in some shady scandals at the time, so I didn't feel like give it a chance. And since the developer betrayed the community for the extra cash, I voted with my wallet and decided not to play it.
Was my money worth as much as what epic gave them? No idea, but that was a relatively niche genre, and a close-knit community. So if I felt betrayed, a lot of potential buyers probably felt the same, and those were sales they never got, even after it was available on Steam.
And that was back in the day when I was nice and naive, these days I flat out refuse to buy any PC game exclusive to any store on principle alone.
If I see my competition has features people like, and I'm a multi-billion dollar company hoping to compete, then I'd simply release WITH the features I wanted to compete with. It's not like they were forced to make a store or it was rushed, they had it planned out. Epic planned out and made the bet that people were too stupid to actual be able to think beyond: "Competition good, Steam bad, here's a free game." And it failed. Turns out, people DO like the features on Steam, and they did not like Epic having data breeches immediately, violating their system privacy, having no return policy or consumer protection, having no features, and fragmenting the ecosystem for zero benefit to the consumer.
I also love how Epic responded when it came to thinks like community and controller support: "Add our game to Steam via the library function." Basically outsourcing their actual user support to Steam because Steam allows that, lol.
Again: Epic knew what they were launching into, and they CHOSE ... and it was a choice, 100% a choice.. to enter into that market with a trash basic store. I don't care if Steam had 40000 years, Epic SAW those features, had the money to duplicate/innovate, and said Screw it. That's on them. If they can't respect their customers enough to give any effort, then anyone who goes to their store deserves the abuse they get.
11:10 GOG will never reach feature parity, but for good reason. Them being fully anti-DRM and focusing on being just a storefront + library is simply more limiting than Steam's goal of being the end-all be-all of PC gaming software
Sony dominance = Good ; Steam dominance = Bad. I do not understand.
Here is my simple defense of steam. I HATED buying physical games and all I got where Steam Keys. I HATED the idea of having to install a 3rd party launcher which had nothing to do with the game and forced me to log into their service that had nothing to do with the developer or publisher of the game. Then just like early Netflix steam started to grow on me. Having all my games under one launcher, that launcher having well rounded functions/services, and the fact that steam unlike others will offer HEAVY discounts on games 2 and 3+ years old where others at most will give you a 15 MAYBE 20% off deal IF your lucky made it where Steam is my go to. Where I hardly if ever start my PS4 up, and if I am thinking of getting a game my first question is "Is it on Steam and can I run it" and not "Is it coming to Playstation".
Steams success is due to one phrase that undersells it imo "If you want to beat piracy you have to offer a better and easier to use service than the pirate". Really Gabe undersold Steam with that. Why? Cause that doesnt just beat the pirates, thats what beats your competitors. Why does Steam win over EGS? Cause EGS has worse services, a worse experience and from what I know their discounting is nothing like steams. So again Steam wins simply cause it offers the most and is the best in its class.
I've tried EPIC years ago. download speed was and is horrendous. Buying games in cluncky the broser itself is slower than steam. they're literally far inferior to steam in every regard and aspect. And the they keep doing the anti-freemarket by buying up exclusive.
I remember getting excited when ANNO 1800 was announce and is on steam but I hate pre-order so I'm gonna wait till release and see general reception. They enter a fucking EPIC exclusive and the game from steam. this shit pissed me off. They ubisoft said they have no plan to return to steam. so 2 yeasr went by and I'm like " okay they definitely not gonna be on steam" but I'm not gonna give EPIC my money so I bit the bullet and buy it on Ubisoftstore instead, not that it's better than EPIC I just hate EPIC more. not even a year later the game went on steam......
From that point on.
I promise to myself if the game isn't on steam then I'm not gonna buy it, ever. you can come from the future and assutre me that the game is still not on steam a decade later I still not gonna buy it. you get to fuck me only once.
I only used Steam since all of the games that I have purchased are on that platform. I have some games from GOG but I can download those games directly instead of just having another launcher in my PC. I never used Epic Games Store. I didn't have games to play over there aside from Forknife which is a free game. For me at least, I want to play games on a different OS aside from Windows. It's not like we want Valve to have a monopoly in the market, we want a good service like Valve does.
GOG is the actual best place to buy PC games because there is no DRM unlike Steam. No need to check in online for any reason. You actually own your games from GOG. If a game isn’t available on GOG only then will I buy it on Steam.
Completely agree!
People seem to be confusing Steam being a market leader with it being a monopoly.
There're 2 things that are infinite, human stupidity and the universe....... 🤔 and I'm not sure about the universe
I've been using Steam for a decade now, but I experimented with the GOG Galaxy launcher for a bit (around 5 years ago, I want to say) because you could launch your Steam games (and other launchers) through it. It worked well enough, but I didn't have enough games that used non-Steam launchers (or enough games on GOG that I wanted) for me to stick with it. But if I had to switch launchers for whatever reason, I'd go with Galaxy.
The lack of a shopping cart killed any curiosity I had about EGS when it launched (I tend to buy games in batches during sales) and everything they've done since has just convinced me to never touch their product.
Epic: Buys exclusive
People: YARRR, time to plunder from some sites.
Steam is also just an amazing social platform, where people can connect and talk about games with ease.
Not sure why everyone is opposed to Monopoly. Sure, it can be a boring game. But it separates normal people from the abysmal losers who flip the board over.
reasons to use steam:
-inventories
-levels
-profiles
-community hub
-workshop
-good interface
-good policies
-reviews
-ammount of games
-safety
--basic fucking features
-pribably even more
Reasons to use epic:
-fortnite (not really)
"Competetor" is an exxaguration.
While I know this video was from 8 months ago, I do find it hilarious that people are still making videos today that are saying pretty much the same exact things from 5 years ago. And this isn't intended as a slight... The fact that the counter to EGS has remained so consistent actually makes me very happy.
I'll note that any public traffic about Epic seems to have at least one weirdly staunch defender in the replies. I ran into it myself 5 years ago on TH-cam, Twitter, and Reddit... But the guy highlighted in this video as well as some person in the comments of a PCGamer article. They absolutely have to be unpaid interns with a checklist of argument points.
I just hate Epicgames for making other games exclusive to their stupid market, fcking desperate trying to pay game devs to get a game exclusive only to epic is so fcking trash
Well the problem with all the services is that for best user experience they need to be monopoly, pc was simply blessed by the monopoly being steam who cares at least slightly. If everyone tries carving out their kingdom with licenses the piracy becomes more convienient ontop of being cheaper.
I will reiterate… simping for the epic games store is simping for the plain white bread equivalent of game launchers
One of the features that was missing from the list is great support for gamepads. I had to play a game I got on the Epic store (a big mistake) on steam to get my controllers to work properly.
Talking about 1:51, you could still use the same template of "the other daaayy~" if you wanted to. Just say "month" instead of "day."
Gog is a little janky but the only competitor to valve I would consider using.
You do great work! I'd love to make videos that are inspired by people like you, but I always worry that my opinion isn't very valuable as often I feel like I am not informed enough or that I am going to make a fool of myself. Any tips for confidence? Weird question I know, I just felt like asking it.
Steam sells all games, only exclusives are their own games. Even SteamDeck has no exclusives and its not Steam only, it lets you install and play whatever and wherever you want, like a true PC gaming mentality.
Epic games gets exclusives on PC! and then cries out loud that Steam has a monopoly? stfu.
Steam was always Open and always had GREAT Discounts making them single handedly fight the console marketshare and push the PC platform forward, above and beyond. For many Steam is the reason they prefer PC to Consoles in the first place, because of the such low prices and great deals. AND you don't have to pay more to play online or sketchy subscriptions pastas.
Steam saved PC in the past and it is still the living Soul of the PC gaming.
Good video. I'll add that one thing I find really annoying about Epic is their constant exclusivity and buyouts, and none of that money generated by exclusives going towards improving the platform. They just do it to prevent Steam from having access to them. And I'd wager that in certain cases, developers end up losing more money via a gated exclusive vs it being available on multiple platforms at the same time. A PC in general IS itself a platform. There is no need to artificially gate games to a particular service unless that one company is abusive. Imagine having to install multiple stores on a console. It would never happen because the idea itself is ridiculous. That's exactly how it feels like to someone on PC.
Lol..... You're pretty aware. More aware than most. That's what makes the content good. Not that you say shocking or absurd things but that you literally just say basic stuff. ...! LOL
For Romeo to say that Steam isn't a better experience must mean he has never used these services. I don't worship Valve or anything yet I'm in the camp of I prefer Steam. The only other thing I use is PC Game Pass and that has games that randomly crash for no reason. I literally never have games on Steam crash. Like ever. On Xbox app I do.
I have three launchers on my pc: Steam (the only launcher i use now a days), minecraft launcher (F microsoft) and the rockstar launcher (because they forced me to download it with rdr2 which is fine because i love that game.)
Just steam's controller support makes it better than any other pc store front. You can literally use any shit controller and steam will make it work. They also have a great fps counter that no other store has and it has not once failed me. I have an Nvidia gpu and even its fps counter sometimes doesn't work on some games, but steam's always works. Steam also has a server not that far from where I'm at and the download speed of games are always super fast. They also support and fund open source software like vulkan. Gabe is our Gandalf and Tim is like gollum. If I dropped the soap I feel like Gabe would protect my asshole while tim would fuck me.
This is almost as stupid as people crying Xbox is a Monopoly because they've started trying to complete with the PlayStation juggernaut that's controlled the market for generations.
This dude talking about all this nonsense and I'm sitting here going "what other platform allows me to buy over 75% of the games I own on sale for a fraction of the price within the first year of release? Oh yeah that's right. None but Steam!"
I really don’t get these people that defend epic saying steam a monopoly, don’t they realise epic want to be that monopoly. It just pc gamer won’t let them, we don’t like the lazy, if epic won’t put in the work we won’t touch there platform.
Here is the thing I have been using epic since 2020 i was like ok they will add features slowly slowly and the launcher will get better. Nothing happened they have added achievements a few months ago . Rn i buy games from steam and mostly play on steam and the epic games launcher is basically there for the free games
It's not a monopoly, since they don't do scummy shit to take opportunity from the customers. However I do believe we should always be welcoming of competitors and applaud them when they bring something new to the table. Simply on those merits alone, it will encourage companies to try to do other stuff to get customers under their wing. Competition has that potential of making things better for the customers.
It's not an artificial monopoly, the argument could be made (albeit a bit shaky) that it is a natural monopoly.
But the thing is, natural monopoly aren't bad. They're created when a service is so much better that the market decides to makes it a monopoly. The second the service is no longer better or tries to abuse their status as a monopoly, it crumbles.
Also, if you consider piracy (which you should because it's probably the biggest factor as to why steam couldn't do scummy things even if they wanted to) steam is very far from being a monopoly
I hate Epic Games and everything that they made!
EXCEPT for one thing!
Unreal Engine is the single best game engine out there and it's made by Epic Games.
One thing tho... And i may be wrong... But I feel Steams UI, features etc got even better when Epic showed up. Steam was getting comfortable I think being the leader and basically the only store. Since Epic, i feel Steam introduced the Point Shop, more personalization, and these quarterly events. It was already good, but definitely got better. Competition is always good for players. Epic just needs to get good lol
yes, but only if valve fucked over their user, which rarely happens, but epic is the one fucking over users with exclusivity deal, bribing us with tencent funded free games
I always forget how good Steam is until I have to use other launchers, because I just genuinely don’t have many problems, if any at all, with Steam, it’s just second nature to use it for all my gaming needs. But as soon as I need to go on Epic for free games, or Blizzard’s launcher for their games, it’s so apparent how bad they are in comparison
Microsoft has it right... Day one on Steam and thier storefront has a $10 subscription
As i remember steam create and improve their platform to combat piracy resulting in domination on the game market
i buy games everywhere and use gog galaxy as universal launcher. a lot of this drama could be circumvented if there was less borders between launchers, which steam is also guilty of contributing to. in a future web3 landscape, ideally these borders should be lessened
Western viewers may not realize but gamers all around the world especially poor countries kind of like EGS for offering a lot of free games and the convenience of playing without risking privacy or security through piracy. a 20$ game might be cheap but disposable income is not so common. Also some countries discourage or downright forbid the use of online payment through international currencies...
As a PC gamer that primarily uses Steam, I don't mind using GoG and I even kinda like Uplay (Call it whatever you want, Ubisoft, it's still just Uplay to me) with it's weekly challenges and what not.
Epic's extremely anti competitive practices and lack of features totally put me off of the platform. I don't even have an EGS account because I don't trust Epic with any of my info.
Same here, I like that Ubisoft has points thingy, you can get soundtracks, wallpapers and cool in game stuff for other games no matter where you earned the reward points. Would be nice to see something similar in Steam.
@@StReborn311 While I don't use Ubisoft anymore (only really played AC4BF, The Division 1/2 and some Anno on there, if I remember correctly), the point thing was nice. Would love it on Steam.
Two Words " Linux Support" Name 1 other store that supports Linux!