I really wish people would stop calling successful companies “monopolies”. Mono = 1. As in a single company operating in a market.
Most often it involves anti-competitive practices also, which Steam has absolutely none of.
The competition just sucks. All of them. Which this article articulates beautifully.
If by “broken up” you mean you’d like to see another company actually make an attempt to compete with them by providing value to their customers instead of trying to exploit them like cash cows while simultaneously locking them into their shitty launcher, I absolutely agree.
Why? All those features already exist as separate companies. Discord for chat, Nexus for workshop, like 5000 places run their own marketplace etc.
How would it be better for everyone if you have to set up 5 separate things? That’s currently the issue with Epic’s launcher that it does nothing other than let you buy games so it doesn’t provide the value Steam does.
Oh, you can already do that with Discord with the in-game overlay and anyone else is free to implement stuff like that too. If you mean that there should be a open source alternative for the Steam client then you can check out Lutris, it can be used to launch steam games.
What evidence? If you prefer alternatives, then those are available
It’s clear why people prefer Steam: it has good features. But the other launchers should complete by making better features not forcing Steam to remove features.
Obviously the unpopular opinion with the neckbeards, but I agree with you. I don’t understand the blind love for Steam. I mean it’s an effective platform I guess, definitely the better one for sure, but they all are pretty unnecessary. Steam definitely is pretty monopolistic. But whatever, everyone also enjoys paying $1200 for video cards from the same two suppliers, that were a quarter of that price not more than 6 or 7 years ago.
why?
Monopolies
As the comment section points out; it’s impossible to compete with steam because they have so many adjacent perks
And all software should only ever do one thing, otherwise it’s bloat
I really wish people would stop calling successful companies “monopolies”. Mono = 1. As in a single company operating in a market.
Most often it involves anti-competitive practices also, which Steam has absolutely none of.
The competition just sucks. All of them. Which this article articulates beautifully.
If by “broken up” you mean you’d like to see another company actually make an attempt to compete with them by providing value to their customers instead of trying to exploit them like cash cows while simultaneously locking them into their shitty launcher, I absolutely agree.
By broken up I’d like to see the community, workshop, chat system, achievements, and marketplace all be separate companies
That would be better for everyone
Why? All those features already exist as separate companies. Discord for chat, Nexus for workshop, like 5000 places run their own marketplace etc.
How would it be better for everyone if you have to set up 5 separate things? That’s currently the issue with Epic’s launcher that it does nothing other than let you buy games so it doesn’t provide the value Steam does.
Because then they would plug and play with whatever service you use
Oh, you can already do that with Discord with the in-game overlay and anyone else is free to implement stuff like that too. If you mean that there should be a open source alternative for the Steam client then you can check out Lutris, it can be used to launch steam games.
More evidence that there is no reason for steam to have these features
What evidence? If you prefer alternatives, then those are available
It’s clear why people prefer Steam: it has good features. But the other launchers should complete by making better features not forcing Steam to remove features.
Except what steam does isn’t considered bloat to a large swath of users.
Or developers
I’m not sure I agree, but thank you for explaining
Obviously the unpopular opinion with the neckbeards, but I agree with you. I don’t understand the blind love for Steam. I mean it’s an effective platform I guess, definitely the better one for sure, but they all are pretty unnecessary. Steam definitely is pretty monopolistic. But whatever, everyone also enjoys paying $1200 for video cards from the same two suppliers, that were a quarter of that price not more than 6 or 7 years ago.
Can you articulate how Steam is a monopoly?