Who else got significant market power? People on here are saying your game dead unless you are on Steam
Good job being the last to learn what the rest of the room learned years ago. Steam day one is all I ask.
Monopoly: the exclusive possession or control of a commodity, good, service, or trade thereof
Again, you're going to have to explain how Steam is a monopoly when they aren't preventing any third party from selling anywhere they want on PC or anywhere else? Steam being popular because people choose to go there does not make it a monopoly. Several of the biggest games on PC aren't on Steam at all
Epic creating a store and competing is fine.
But the reason Steam became so strong over such a long period is that 1) they were first (obviously) and 2) they've been very much "pro gamer" in most of their policies as compared to everyone else in terms of helping people build libraries and enabling people to play in countries where the major console makers didn't operate for a long period of time.
It's good that Epic is providing competition as is Origin or Ubisoft Connect or Battle.net.
Steam happens to have the bulk of gamers tied to their libraries there; the reality is a game that's not selling on Steam won't be selling to the majority of the PC gaming market. That's the risk of taking the Epic exclusive route.
It's a huge risk to SE to take the moneyhat *on the first game of a trilogy* and delay the game arriving on Steam. Steam players had less than 2 years with Remake before Rebirth launched, so that's just delayed sales that can become never sales which hurts momentum. The last thing a trilogy of games can afford is lost momentum in the first game...
Damn, didn't even realize it was already on Steam running discounts. I've checked out and apparently Steam doesn't think I'll be interested. Good lookin out my friend.
Any other situation the FTC would be looking at it and wanting to know what is breaking the market. I mean hell look at them targeting Microsoft for having a portion of the console market or Apple and their part in the cell phone market. Steam just hasn't been scrutinized nearly as much.
Yeah it was pretty unceremoniously dumped on Steam with basically 0 marketing. Another issue with their PC releases.
This has probably already been answered, but I wonder if this comes into conflict with the deal Square-Enix had made with Epic games with their mainline FF games getting a release exclusivity?
Something to consider with Switch 2 and general attitude of third parties towards Nintendo platforms is the difficulty of competing against Nintendo's first party titles. Whether or not it's a warranted idea, third parties see Nintendo platforms as a place where Nintendo succeeds first, and others pick up the scraps, especially if you're not working directly with them with a publishing deal or exclusive marketing deal.
Switch 2 will see good third party support, but the idea that it will all of a sudden become the main platform for a lot of these publishers is too hasty. There will be trepidation on jumping to a platform that has to rebuild and prove the owners of Switch 1 are converting the successor, and actually buying third party games. Especially for Nintendo who have historically struggled with this transition.
That's the whole point of these multiplatform initiatives. Do not put your eggs in one basket. Scaling your game down to weaker hardware, although people don't want to admit it, does have an affect on sales. People naturally gravitate towards products that are big, flashy, pushing boundaries, and are technically ambitious.
I think it's true many think that way, but the reality is you make your userbase. If you see a pool of 140 million people and don't see potential customers then you're awful at your job. We see stuff like Monster Hunter or Minecraft thrive on Nintendo, you just need to make something good. Unfortunately, most companies give the system super late ports that are often half assed, and are rewarded accordingly. If developers start treating Switch 2 like a main platform, maybe they'll be paid up.
This is especially true for any company that has a Japanese base, not supporting Switch in Japan is just baffling.
There were a bunch of Switch exclusives that I would love to see on PC. I hope they start caring more about their older Dragon Quest games and put those out everywhere too. They're just leaving money on the table.
I understand the need to have FF7remake games and FF16 as exclusives to Playstation at first, Sony seems to have thrown a lot of money at them which helped with development costs.
But keeping exclusivity for more than 3/6 months is overkill during these troubled times.
PC version of 16 should have launched already by now.
FF7 remake should launch on Xbox by now.
Unless the deals are more than we know.
But keeping exclusivity for more than 3/6 months is overkill during these troubled times.
PC version of 16 should have launched already by now.
FF7 remake should launch on Xbox by now.
Unless the deals are more than we know.
Yeah I wouldn't expect them to go all in on Switch 2 as their only platform either. But SE need to have their costs reigned in, and honestly their competition in the JRPG space are not putting out lookers that can't run on the Switch 2. Like I said I think they need to lock in their fidelity target to something that looks decent and scales well rather than chasing the premium edge of AAA.
The big thing that's unsustainable is SE chasing these high production value metrics that Sony first party studios are able to achieve. It's a money sink and they don't have a platform to push like Sony does to back up their investment. It's also riskier in many ways. Just look at the discourse around FFVII Rebirth's graphical quality. People hyper-focus on rough edges like some odd poor textures or IQ in a game that is so far beyond its contemporaries in the JRPG space. FFXVI and FFXV both have great graphics but are severely compromised in scope and content as a result.
It's not the PS1 days and SE can't just keep throwing money at shinier graphics and hope to rebuild their user base.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there was ever any announced deal about this? I think EGS has always operated on a per-game basis. In particular I think SE only did that for FFVII Remake and Kingdom Hearts. FFVII eventually made it over to Steam, but KH remains EGS exclusive. Some people speculate that for KH in particular it is actually Disney pushing them to keep it on EGS.
Apple was accused of using their market power to do stuff like imposing outrageous contractual obligations, withholding necessary access points from developers, and undermining apps from competitors on their phones and others (such as throttling iMessage compatibility with Android) among other things.
Justice Department Sues Apple for Monopolizing Smartphone Markets
The Justice Department, joined by 16 other state and district attorneys general, filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against Apple for monopolization or attempted monopolization of smartphone markets in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
Microsoft has been accessed of similar anticompetitive practices, and both of them violated the Sherman Antitrust Act and it's been documented as such. Those violations are much more numerous and span many years so there's lots of different articles a quick search away.
Steam has not been doing anything of that sort. They aren't doing things like artificially lowering prices, using their tech to make other storefronts worse, or buying up exclusive deals to force people to go there (hi EGS). If anything it's the opposite by making so many user friendly moves for both devs and customers like free steam key generation and compatibility updates/fixes on hardware that are free to the customer.
The idea is for people to go where they want. Steam hasn't been getting in the way of that practice at all. The "Steam monopoly" thing's been a red herring/strawman fallacy and has been for awhile. If they are doing something they shouldn't and a judge agrees, it hasn't been brought up in a court of law yet.
Because it is the best place to play, not because Valve pays publishers to exclusively release on Steam.
That isn't a monopoly.
Scrutinized for what? They even allow publishers to generate Steam keys to sell on third party websites, in which case Valve doesn't get any cut. Valve has issues, but that's more in how they manage the community side.. not the store itself.
i love steam but this is a big mark against them for monopoly power. if users choose steam because of the superior features and trust, thats fine, but if they choose because they want to keep their gaming library in one place, thats kind of unfair to competition. myself I quite like having all my stuff in one place, theres almost no chance I go with EGS even if EGS had every steam feature
theres no solution to this though lol, unless the govt forces them to allow transferring of licenses or something, its basically impossible
at the end of the day though egs is offering developers 100% of revenue for 6 months, 20-25% is a lot to give up to release on steam. can you say for sure they would sell enough extra on steam to make up the difference. i woudl argue yea probably but , its still an interesting decision
I really wish people would put the Steam monopoly nonsense behind them so we could focus on how a significant amount of their community forums are unmoderated trash with some of the worst gamergate/nazi sht you can imagine and they should be called out/raked across the coals for it a lot more than they are (especially by the gaming enthusiast press).
But nope, let's do the song and dance routine and try to pretend EGS isn't still a steaming pile after 5+ years and how it's Valve's fault no one shops there for some reason as if the average consumer even remembers the EGS exists.
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Yeah I'm not sure how you break up Steam's hold over the market. Epic is trying everything but finding out what earlier challengers like Origin and Ubisoft Connect (formerly uplay) found out before them, it's really hard when gamers are so tied to digital libraries. And transferring licenses is basically never going to work. Sticky digital libraries is a huge problem for anybody trying to break into the market.
Basically this is a part of the problem Xbox has with consoles (and both PS5/Xbox will have compared to Nintendo), people with digital libraries are tied to platforms. PS4/Xbox1 generation has been accounting for 60-65% of PS5/Xbox X/S consoles, so obviously they're mostly picking the one with their libraries (advantage PS).
Somebody with 100 Nintendo games on Switch is already going to have a huge investment into Switch 2. And that's likely to grow as Nintendo is unlikely to ever cut off older libraries as they did before Switch. Now they have users tied to them firmly, why give up that advantage?
As far as Epic exclusives go, the problem seems to be that long-term damage from lost sales on Steam (delayed buys often become never buys) is perhaps permanently damaging. Yes there's likely a payment that can overcome that, but shrinking the long-term user base just hurts.
(And doing it for 7 Remake when they had to sell 7 Rebirth and 7 Part 3 after just seems like an even more questionable decision in hindsight).
You understand I was referring to Microsoft's purchase of Activision that was delayed for a long time due to the FTC trying to stop it from the concern that Microsoft would make up to much of the market for consoles but ignoring that Steam is far more than 50% of the PC market.
But no it's sunshine and roses that Steam makes or breaks PC games.
Steam isn't making or breaking PC games. You are confusing with where the audience is with it being forced to be there.
You'd have to specify the anti-competitive behavior you believe Steam is engaged in. Simply having a dominant position is not illegal, abusing a dominant position is. Steam users demanding Steam versions of PC games is not that.
Square basically panicked announced the switch version before the switch even had a name, then it still took over a year for the switch version to come out because Square stated they needed a newer version of UE4 and they basically had to remake the game from scratch.
Nintendo didn't pay for anything as far as we know, which is why when S got ported, it was the same cause it was essentially a different version of the game, and it was obviously ported cause it was cheaper to do that than spend Resources combining 2 versions
Steam isn't making or breaking PC gaming. People are free to go to other stores if they want.
I don't know why it's so hard to understand that no one (Valve included) is forcing Steam users to be there. They want to be there. They choose to be there. That's the whole point.
Valve is even making it easy for users to go to other websites and claim keys and Valve takes the hit, ask any Humble Bundle buyer. A lot of users on here also buy from GOG, itch and so on. Steam isn't stopping that at all.
If a big company really wants to compete with Valve, they can start(!) with a solid store, and work their way up from there using the store as a foundation. But it requires effort and investment and the usual suspects who can put in the effort and invest...have not. I'm not really sure why because they have the resources and Steam is right there for them to copy and then perhaps compete with directly or even surpass, but the fact remains that they haven't.
a portion? Lmao they bought the biggest publisher going with the biggest deal of course that got scrutinized.
Not to get SE off the hook (with my own conjecture) as they have shown to make dumb decisions just fine on their own but Disney does have arrangements with Epic outside of the context of KH3 (not sure if that's what got them in the door with Disney or if they've been partners before KH3's engine pivot) but Disney does mention Epic games every now and then when talking about their partners and strategies for the future if I'm remembering correctly.
Now could just be red meat to say it in front of investors because Epic means Fortnite to said investors or if the exclusivity deal was part of some larger overall deal since Epic does work with Disney on their movies in some fashion. Wouldn't be outside the realm of possiblity given they own a ubiquitous game engine that could be used for any number of Disney initiatives so working closely with them to the point of store exclusivity does at the very least look a little less odd.
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I bought Ghosts of Tsushima today and I did not grab it from Steam's storefront...
Not sure what people are on about by calling it a monopoly when they are not preventing any competitors from doing what they want to do nor do they stop other stores from selling Steam keys.
What do people want Valve to do? Stop developing/remove features that makes the platform popular?
Even if I could move my games to whatever other platform there is on the PC ecosystem... I wouldn't. None of them offer anything close to what is available on Steam.
Not sure what people are on about by calling it a monopoly when they are not preventing any competitors from doing what they want to do nor do they stop other stores from selling Steam keys.
What do people want Valve to do? Stop developing/remove features that makes the platform popular?
Even if I could move my games to whatever other platform there is on the PC ecosystem... I wouldn't. None of them offer anything close to what is available on Steam.
If Valve spent 70 billion to acquire one of the largest publishers, the FTC should've taken a look at that.
One fix that people have to make to get their point across without just being wrong and years in people still prefer to call steam a monopoly :,).
You can just say steam is a extremely dominant market force in pc gaming. Done. Gets the point across that most people making games probably can't afford to not release on it without trying to make the useless argument that it's a monopoly.
You can just say steam is a extremely dominant market force in pc gaming. Done. Gets the point across that most people making games probably can't afford to not release on it without trying to make the useless argument that it's a monopoly.
People calling Steam a monopoly just can't be taken seriously overall.
Going back on topic, I hope this strategy change means no more weird inconsistent port situations. Like how The Last Remnant was delisted on Steam for the PS4 remaster that's also on mobile for whatever reason, but not on any of the platforms the original game was. Or the FF Pixel Remasters only being on mobile and PC at first, then coming to consoles with exclusive additions two years later, and taking almost another year to bring those additions to the original PC/mobile versions. Like, why in hell are they even doing that in the first place?
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The Steam monopoly stuff seems to always get perpetuated as a derail, or platform warring stuff.
It's one of the few places that doesn't even sell ad space, doesn't make exclusivity deals, and openly competes with so many other platforms, supportive of lots of business models.
Also people always neglect how much key sales matter. They get 0% on them. A third of the Helldivers 2 reviews are from Sony's generated keys - all of which Valve got nothing for. There still isn't a platform with anywhere near the amount of features and services for players or devs, and for now they have the trust on both sides. All that and Steam isn't even the biggest service on PC for gaming, and some of the largest games aren't even on Steam and still have consistent success. But yes..... monopoly... somehow.
Anyway, with Square Enix issues are unrelated.
Having a business model around restricting access, shock horror, restricts access. Tons of competing games taking more than ever also means having more of the same isn't always a great move. There's also a mix of interest in console being a bit flat, and longer running games retaining customers at a time players are perhaps cutting on spending or less interested in buying as many new games at higher prices.
Steam's data is pretty interesting as Square Enix games are the only ones from JP studios to not show the kind of growth in concurrent users for their games in line with how Steam itself has grown. Pretty much its because it's ports are usually poor and so late people have moved on or not caught in the zeitgeist.
Going multiplatform at least makes them a bit more competitive and accessible. There's probably more than just that to do though.
It's one of the few places that doesn't even sell ad space, doesn't make exclusivity deals, and openly competes with so many other platforms, supportive of lots of business models.
Also people always neglect how much key sales matter. They get 0% on them. A third of the Helldivers 2 reviews are from Sony's generated keys - all of which Valve got nothing for. There still isn't a platform with anywhere near the amount of features and services for players or devs, and for now they have the trust on both sides. All that and Steam isn't even the biggest service on PC for gaming, and some of the largest games aren't even on Steam and still have consistent success. But yes..... monopoly... somehow.
Anyway, with Square Enix issues are unrelated.
Having a business model around restricting access, shock horror, restricts access. Tons of competing games taking more than ever also means having more of the same isn't always a great move. There's also a mix of interest in console being a bit flat, and longer running games retaining customers at a time players are perhaps cutting on spending or less interested in buying as many new games at higher prices.
Steam's data is pretty interesting as Square Enix games are the only ones from JP studios to not show the kind of growth in concurrent users for their games in line with how Steam itself has grown. Pretty much its because it's ports are usually poor and so late people have moved on or not caught in the zeitgeist.
Going multiplatform at least makes them a bit more competitive and accessible. There's probably more than just that to do though.
I suppose rather Remake 3 will ever be on Switch 2 will determine how ambitious it'll end up being. Of course, it could end up being a cloud game for Switch 2 if it really does try to push the PS5 to it's limits...it would be a very Square thing to do to put two games in a cart but the rest on the cloud. XD
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I'm sorry but that is their own fucking fault. 3rd parties more or less made that bed by treating it as an after thought in comparison to other platforms. Fucking indie devs have more balls releasing games that are competing with their main titles than these big publishers.
You completely forgot why they transitioned to multiplatform releases. They transitionepd because Sony FUCKED up and cut their market in half by releasing an expensive console. People who weren't interested due to costs went to Xbox since it offered a more compelling console at the time, and since 3rd party devs completely expected PS3 to crush everyone, they were caught off guard by everything as a result.
Developing for PS4 made sense, it was the indisputed leader of the market. However, right now the Switch is the leader, and yet it wasn't the main focus for a lot of devs because????? Fuck the market???
I think that essentially what this means is Square has decided whatever money they get from Sony or Epic for exclusivity-----may likely be made anyway, by not granting exclusivity and instead releasing on multiple platforms. Its higher risk, but potentially at least the same return and maybe more return.
More return could come from long term, lifetime sales of having their games available anywhere they choose to. and also crossover purchases, as people discover other Square games, after purchasing one.
That's assuming there are no more exclusivity deals. However, it could simply mean shorter deals.
More return could come from long term, lifetime sales of having their games available anywhere they choose to. and also crossover purchases, as people discover other Square games, after purchasing one.
That's assuming there are no more exclusivity deals. However, it could simply mean shorter deals.
If their 2025-2029 lineup is FF7 Remake Part 3, FFXVII, NieR 3, Kingdom Hearts 4, DQ:XII, I can't think of a better lineup in Square Enix's entire history. That's SquareSoft levels of greatness..
It all comes down to delivering these games at top quality, and release timing consistency. If they can pull that off, and release them all on PC day 1, a Capcom-like turn around is very much possible IMO.
It all comes down to delivering these games at top quality, and release timing consistency. If they can pull that off, and release them all on PC day 1, a Capcom-like turn around is very much possible IMO.
Following the market leader made a lot more sense 2 generations ago, but things have really shifted. Everyone is looking to answer how to maximize profits and not be at whims based on the ups and downs of the console market. Nintendo might be up now, but they might not be next gen. They're also in a quiet period right now at the end of a gen, where building a game on their aging HW and most Switch users are probably not as active on the system right now.
Building a strong PC presence as a publisher is one way.
I'm not sure I believe this at all anymore. Maybe with the Nintendo of old, but we routinely see Switch versions of Indie games and non-AAA games outsell their PlayStation and Xbox versions (many examples from Square-Enix themselves such as Voice of Cards, DioField, Tactics Ogre, Star Ocean, etc.), and even late or "impossible" ports pull respectable numbers (GTA Trilogy, Hogwarts Legacy, EA FC).