Dave Perry Cautions Against the Looming Threat of Steam

[ZiggyE]

The only reason I use Steam is for TF2. I've lost count over the times I've had to get a backup from someone else because steam has given me an unnecessary 8gb update. This has happened for awhile and still hasn't been fixed.

^^ My little off topic complaint about Steam.

To be honest, I hate it. If it wasn't for TF2 REQUIRING Steam to play, and other games aswell, then I wouldn't use it.

I am worried that it is turning into a monopoly. And it's happening gradually so no one will notice. And the Valve fanboys will convince themsevles that Valve can do no evil.

Honestly, Valve really hit a homerun when they decided to go with the 'we are gamers too' marketing technique.

 

[V8 Ninja]

Call me a fanboy but I'd feel more comfortable with Valve having control over a platform that Microsoft, or Apple for that matter.

I agree. Valve is a games developer, not some monolithic company that makes their own products while having a monopoly over the particular part of a industry that helps their products. If Valve started making consoles, I would begin to worry. As it is now, I completely support Valve.

 

[zombays]

Steam has the potential to turn into an iTunes-like institution, except for one big difference. Valve isn't run by a megalomaniac like Jobs.

I don't mind Steam, it's convenient, has great sales, Steamworks isn't intrusive, all-in-all I don't mind Steam being a big player. They became that way by being good to their customers.

This. Instead, valve is run by Gabe Newell AKA awesome.

 

[Signa]

It is a fair warning, and hopefully Valve hears it as takes it as a message to never change.

Though as some one pointed out, the nature of having power is to maintain that power is a damn good argument for why Valve is heading for the dark side. Thankfully, in the technology world, having "power" usually doesn't mean it's controllable. Some one CAN still make a better service than Steam and kick Valve's ass when they fall. Look how MS isn't top of their game anymore because they stopped trying and even tried to maintain power only to fail. Anyone else see that video as to why Open Office is "bad"?

 

[Stormwaltz]

(leaving)

 

[Harbinger_]

You mean developers are doing with Steam what you want them to do with Gaikai?

Steams dominance really isn't negatively affecting the market right now. Despite having competition only in the strictest of terms, Steam continues to evolve and offer new features. I should also point out Steam doesn't actually have that many exclusives, if a consumer doesn't want to use Steam for whatever reason they can find a lot of those same games elsewhere.

Maybe down the line Steam's monopoly will hurt the industry, but it certainly isn't right now.

Very true and not only that but alot of developers managed to get their games available to a wider audience thanks to Steam.

 

[RMoD]

Yes, Steam's becoming a behemoth. The difference between it and iTunes? Steam has helpful support. Steam gives the money earned by selling a game to the developer and doesn't take too much off the top. Steam actually CARES when something happens to a game you own.

ITunes? They don't give a crap at all.

 

[The Random One]

Everyone says Steam will devour the world but no one mans up and delivers a worthy competitor. Although now it's too late; if a new platform identical to Steam were to be launched today, it still would fail because Steam already has so much stuff on it.

Personally I don't care for Steam, but if we're going to have a monopoly it's better to be by such a well run company.

 

[ZiggyE]

Yes, Steam's becoming a behemoth. The difference between it and iTunes? Steam has helpful support. Steam gives the money earned by selling a game to the developer and doesn't take too much off the top. Steam actually CARES when something happens to a game you own.

ITunes? They don't give a crap at all.

BAH! I just snorted my milk all over my keyboard. Or would have, if I was drinking milk.

That's clearly a response in ignorance. As someone who uses both iTunes and Steam, I find iTunes customer service to be much better. Also, iTunes, for me, doesn't constantly crash or throw unnecessary updates or advertising at me, like Steam does. And Steam doesn't care about a game I own.

Three times now I've had to submit a reply to Steam's customer support about unnecessarily large updates for TF2 (in excess of 8 gbs). Three times I have received the same reply (after about five days wait at the least) and that is to reinstall. After explicitly saying reinstalling only fixes the problem temporarily, they still say reinstall.

That isn't helpful, it's infuriating. Whereas I have found iTunes support to be decent. Not the best, but still helpful, unlike Steam.

EDIT: And just to further justify my point that Steam is bad, right now, while preparing to install Poker Night at the Inventory, Steam crashed, and now it is stuck on 'Download Paused'. If I click resume, it still says "Download Paused." while giving me the option to pause a paused download :S Never had this issue with iTunes.

 

[MazeMinion]

It's run by Valve, so I trust it. Valve has yet to disappoint me, and has yet to screw me over.

They even gave my bro a refund on Saints Row 2.

I'd rather have Valve running Steam than the greedy Microsoft.

 

[Jake Martinez]

His comments are ENTIRELY self serving.

Game makers have nothing to lose/fear from Steam, or other digital distribution platforms. It's game PUBLISHERS who are the ones that are going to get boned.

Look at it this way, there are four components that make up a successful game release:

1) Financing
2) Development
3) Marketing
4) Distribution

The game publishers right now handle stops 1, 3 and 4. Steam (on the PC at least) is eating away at 4. Now if you are developing on the PC and lets say you have your own bankroll, then you can easily handle stops 1 and potentially stop 3, but lets pretend for a moment that the "one stop shop" of the game publisher breaks up even more....

Imagine a world where as a game developer you can go to multiple investment bankers for bankroll on a project instead of just a game publisher because you know that you can outsource marketing to a specific company and distribution to a digital provider. When that becomes the environment of the industry, then what role does the game publisher still play? They no longer are the only game (no pun intended) in town for developers, who can go to various vendors for things like finance and distribution.

Ultimately this is GOOD for game developers (makers) no matter which way you slice it. Also, I do believe that game publishers will continue to be around for a long time due to the console market still being mostly retail based, and even after that they still have the ability to fill the financing and marketing roles in this chain (They'll have both the cash and expertise in both areas), but they are afraid of the same thing every other company is afraid of - losing their hold on their market (ergo having to compete).

We have this great philosophy in America for instance that competition is good, but let me tell you, there isn't a single business person that is established who believe this. They all want to maintain and grow their stranglehold on their markets and competition just makes it more expensive for them to do so and eats their profits up. Interesting flip on the situation, but entirely true.

 

[rainbowunicorns]

I agree that Steam has ever increasing potential to do wrong to consumers and developers; however, it is thus far only potential.

For the consumer, they provide incredible sales on games, and unlimited downloads/installs for any game not otherwise protected by the publisher's DRM. I have had only one problem with them, when I purchased Titan Quest, which they resolved for me in ~2 days.

For the developer, they advertise new games to people that might never even know they existed. I wasn't aware of Trine, but then it was on Steam's front page, had good reviews, and looked like fun, so I bought it; how much of a cut the developer gets from Steam vs. a brick and mortar purchase, I don't know; what I do know is that they would have got exactly zero dollars had Steam not advertised the game.

Since I don't watch TV with commercials and the only place I read reviews/previews of new games is this site, I am simply unaware of most games being released. Steam is the one place I check frequently for new releases, and in particular sales (which often make me buy a game I hadn't even heard of if it has good enough reviews, or purchase a game I would have given a pass otherwise).

So yes, it could be a force for evil one day, but right now it is very much a force for good.

 

[wammnebu]

barring the fact that he is from a lesser company and is just b&m-ing he is right, he is warning the developers about a monopoly in retail, in which valve has the potential to screw developers as much as gamespot does.

Trading one demon for another

 

[Double A]

Monopolies are usually good for consumers, because the monopoly company got where they did with good business practices and selling stuff cheaper than the competition. And if the monopoly is being a dick about everything and charging more than they did when they had competition, very soon a new company will show up, offering the same deal for less.

However, just because of that, I still won't use Steam because I prefer having a hard copy of my games.

 

[Mikaze]

I used to hate Steam, but the rest of the industry has worked so hard to make their respective systems so much worse via stupid DRM, always online schemes, activations, installs limit, etc, that Valve seems now like the only sane publisher out there.

Don't stream also have activations, anyways stream itself is a DRM...

It is, yes, but it's a (relatively) unintrusive form of DRM that ALSO offers a wide range of community services and a store which has weekly sales, and even when things aren't on sale they're generally cheaper on Steam than they are in stores in Australia.

 

[Ken Sapp]

While he does have a good point we can also look at Steam/Valve's record so far and be fairly comfortable for the time being. Steam got to where they are now by doing things right and paying attention to their customers(I can't speak as a developer). I say this as someone who avoided Steam until early this year. My only complaints since I started to use the service has been that not all games I currently own as discs(that Steam also sells) can be added to my account and that when they do massive bundle releases there is no discount for bundled games that you already have in your library(or the ability to give a key to a friend for everyone you now have a second license for).

I will keep an eye out for aggressive monopolistic behavior but as long as their monopoly continues to built upon doing right by their customers I will continue enjoy their service.

 

[AceAngel]

I think the more important question, which many people like me are asking is: who is Dave Perry?

 

[Rednog]

Let's just all face the facts, we all know that steam is eventually going to create a place similar to the matrix and plug us all in. I for one welcome our new mute, crowbar wielding overlords.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

Dave Perry Cautions Against the Looming Threat of Steam

iTunes [http://www.gaikai.com/]-like behemoth and that someday, game makers could regret "giving away their customers" to Valve's digital platform.

When Steam debuted back in 2003, it was little more than a way to ensure that nobody could play Valve [http://www.amazon.com/Half-Life-2-Pc/dp/B00006I02Z/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1290454560&sr=8-2] may wield an awful lot of power over other developers.

"When you outsource your digital strategy you are giving away your customers. Like iTunes, Steam has made it so easy and they have lots of users. So if you give them your product then you will start receiving checks from them. And that's very convenient," he told MCV [http://www.mcvuk.com/news/41926/Perry-warns-of-Steam-danger?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+mcvuk%2FoXMK+%28MCV%3A+games+industry+news%29]. "But now people are starting to think about their own digital future. How long do you wait before you take control of your own digital strategy? Would you say, 'Here, take my digital customers, and I'll see you later?'"

"Like with iTunes, at some point it is going to be too late. Just try and negotiate your royalty rates now with Steve Jobs," he continued. "At some point I think the same thing is going to happen with Steam. Steam is growing and it is growing fast, and they are making it easier and easier. But it'll be interesting to hear what the publishers do."

Now let's be fair: Perry is the big brain behind Gaikai, a different type of online gaming platform that will nonetheless be competing, to some extent, with Steam. That fact alone makes it easy to dismiss his remarks as self-serving, but does he have a point? It's impossible to argue that Valve doesn't dominate the digital PC market while other platforms battle it out for the scraps. But is a concentration of resources an inherently bad thing? And how many customers are small studios really giving away when they're coming up with them mainly thanks to Steam in the first place? I don't see Perry's comments as entirely self-serving but I'm not convinced that the situation is quite as dire as he portrays it, either.


Permalink

You guys KEEP pushing this OMG STEAM IS THE DEVIL ON HIS WAY story about how Valve will one day be our evil corporate overlords, and we always have the same goddamn arguments on the forums. What it boils down to is Steam is a great service, it's cheap, effective, conveneient, and dependible, and until someone makes something that can compete with that no amount of BITCHING will change it's upward growth. If these assholes don't like it then they can make their own Digital Platform. Lead, Follow, or GTFO.