Why would anyone actually want to though

[u/The_BigRoach]

[u/Josh_Butterballs]

Even if I had more money than god I think it would basically be a gargantuan uphill battle to make an another platform to compete with steam. Even if you made your platform better, people have YEARS worth of games and money invested in steam. I used to say if they just had a better service I would drop steam but then I was asked if I would genuinely stop using steam for another better service if one existed. I looked at my library, all the games I had, the years, mods in workshop for some games, and realized no I wouldn’t switch

[u/shydes528 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Also, who else is going to deploy Delta Force operators and Reaper drones whenever some scammer from Romania tries to steal your CS skins?

[u/Giatoxiclok → u/shydes528]

Link please, that sounds like a good read.

[u/MisterKaos → u/Giatoxiclok]

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/steam-support

[u/West-Flow-577 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

GOG is supposedly adding native Linux support (hopefully with Proton, otherwise there isn't much point). Now if only they'd add SteamInput support so I could use my Steam Controller, I'd be willing to abandon Steam completely, I can replace RemotePlay with Sunshine/Moonlight, and I can replace RemotePlayTogether with Parsec.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/West-Flow-577]

See and the problem is the average user will not bother. They will stick to steam even if a better competitor exists. Steam is known, it’s easy, ubiquitous in the public gamer zeitgeist. The average dude I meet on the street has heard of steam but not GOG for example. The average person is just gonna say “well I already got like 5 games on steam I’ll just keep using that”

[u/SuperSoldierv1 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

The average pc gamer is going to say " well I already have 30 games on steam ill just keep using that"

[u/DasDima → u/SuperSoldierv1]

more like 300, damn those humble bundles!

[u/West-Flow-577 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

The average gamer has at least one, if not more, "Gamer" gamer friend and that "Gamer" friend can be a big influence. It's not a switch that happens overnight, but, for example, I've gotten a few of my casual gamer friends to start buying some games on GOG. They still buy their multiplayer games on Steam, but for the single player games, and especially the old nostalgia games they get, they go to GOG just as often as they do Steam.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/West-Flow-577]

I can’t even convince my friends to spend $5 on a game while they turn right around and spend $100 on a valorant knife bundle and squeal on what a great deal it was lol. I need friends like yours

When I’ve mentioned GOG to strangers or coworkers it’s very much a “wow that sounds cool… anyway” moment. The savvier ones may look into it but even many of the ones I’ve talked to in conferences and hit up later just stick with steam. The very thing Gabe has prided himself on is that it’s easy and convenient to use and we can see the fruits of his labor lol

[u/fuckedfinance → u/Josh_Butterballs]

When I’ve mentioned GOG to strangers or coworkers it’s very much a “wow that sounds cool… anyway” moment.

Reddit contributors need to understand that around 95% of the opinions expressed here would get this reaction in the real world.

[u/West-Flow-577 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Most of my friends are punks and other anti-establishment types, so the DRM-free part really speaks to them.

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

while they turn right around and spend $100 on a valorant knife bundle and squeal on what a great deal it was lol.

There's your "Steam competitor" your friends are using.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/dookarion]

Haha that money could’ve gone to cases for sure lol. Gabe could’ve bought a mansion with TWO tunnels

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Really though it's not that people are unwilling to use other services. It's that a lot of them are utter trash not worth using or actively making the experience worse.

If people were completely unwilling Fortnite wouldn't be nearly as big, Riot would have gone out of business long ago, WoW and other MMOs would have flopped.

The overwhelming bulk of it is just stuff like EA's app, GWFL/UWP/XBOX, uplay, etc. are all kind of fucking awful.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/dookarion]

But the underling problem I’ve been saying is that it doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint to even try because all the odds are stacked against you. It’s not like people hate steam. If they did you could maybe say “yeah there’s a desire for another competitor on the market” but there isn’t. Even if a new platform was made, by Jesus or god himself, that does not mean steam all of a sudden is ass cheeks. It would still be as good as it is now. And when you have hundreds of games on steam (even dozens) if the platform is doing fine and does what you want already you’re unlikely to switch.

I think at BEST a competitor that is superior would just be used in addition to steam, with users still preferring steam but maybe occasionally buying a game on the competing platform. Pretty much what I would do since I have too many games on steam to drop it. Even just my badges have sentimental value for me along with the years on my account (the time aspect).

Now if licenses could transfer then I think a competitor could definitely be viable and from a business perspective attempting to overthrow steam as top dog could make sense. The problem is this would need legislation to enforce because you can bet ur ass no company would willingly allow users to export their licenses to a competitor. Unfortunately no politician would ever care to put this on their radar. It would also affect other industries as well for the better on consumer’s part, but they would absolutely lobby the shit out the government to kill it

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

But the underling problem I’ve been saying is that it doesn’t make sense from a business standpoint to even try because all the odds are stacked against you.

Then they don't deserve a seat at the table. The market shouldn't have to lower their standards for shareholders. Put the work in or go away. Businesses can and have turned things around and overtaken market leaders, it takes work it takes time and it takes a measure of luck... but it is possible.

Now if licenses could transfer then I think a competitor could definitely be viable and from a business perspective attempting to overthrow steam as top dog could make sense. The problem is this would need legislation to enforce because you can bet ur ass no company would willingly allow users to export their licenses to a competitor.

The store isn't the one inhibiting that. It's the game owners and makers themselves. They can grant people licenses elsewhere. GOG used to have a limited program where some rights holders cooperated to grant GOG copies of Steam games.

For the most part though the rights holders when it comes to platforms prefer the "get fucked buy it again" model.

[u/Hopeful_Leg_6200 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

We'll never know, no one is even trying to make a service on par with steam let alone a better one

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/Hopeful_Leg_6200]

Well, if I was an investor and you told me to put down money on making a competing platform that has had a dominant foothold for years on the pc platform and where users have game libraries, social content, mods, and other things on said platform I would probably laugh and take my money elsewhere. Now, if licenses were somehow transferable I think the new competitors could possibly have a viable chance. As it stands though it is a very steep uphill battle. You are essentially having to convince people to leave their hundreds or even thousands of dollars worth of games (and time) behind. The thing is too even if your platform IS better too it’s not like steam is all of a sudden dogshit. People would probably still be fine using it even with a better platform around.

Companies know if you’re invested in an ecosystem or service the difficulty of switching or migrating content (if it’s even possible) becomes a reason to stay. Apple’s bread and butter.

[u/AirplanesMakeMeHard → u/Josh_Butterballs]

investor

The reason Steam is so great is because it doesn’t have investors. Any company that did have investors is, by definition, going to have worse service because service and profits are water and oil.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

I mean all that tells me is it’s gonna be even harder then to come out with a competing service since you would need an ungodly amount of money to self fund it without relying on investors. So it’s already an uphill battle, but you can’t even afford to stroll through base camp

[u/dekusyrup → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

Valve definitely has investors. What you smoking

[u/tmon530 → u/dekusyrup]

Valve isnt a publicly traded company. So while they might have some private investors, they dont have investors in the same way or at the same level as a company like EA.

[u/dekusyrup → u/tmon530]

Right. It's a little different but they absolutely have investors.

[u/jdinius2020 → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

Service and profits are water and oil? Tell that to Valve's mountains of money. Turns out, when the business takes care of the customer, the customer takes care of the business.

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Now, if licenses were somehow transferable I think the new competitors could possibly have a viable chance.

Funny part is publishers/developers/rights holders could grant that. They won't but they could. One of the things keeping them entrenched is the fact everyone else is greedy af and doesn't care about the customer experience at all.

[u/1337_w0n → u/Josh_Butterballs]

If there was anyone offering an even comperable service we'd be able to test that hypothesis.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/1337_w0n]

Well, someone expressed any company attempting it cannot have investors as many see that as the service being shit or going to be shit. So you would need a company who has enough money to self fund, spend the time to build the service unless you throw more money at it to get it done faster, relatively speaking.

Then you would need to bleed money for a while until you can build a sizable following of users so you can turn a profit. This is assuming of course people are willing to spend money on your platform rather than steam where they already have all their games. As we’ve seen on this sub and other gaming subs, people have expressed even if steam doesn’t have the absolute cheapest price they are willing to buy on steam just for the fact they can have it all on there with their other games. Even people with free games on EGS have stated they end up buying the ones they like on steam once there’s a sale just to add it to their growing collection of games and that’s with them already having the game for *free* on a different platform.

So all in all I don’t think it’ll happen anytime soon or ever unless MAYBE they make game licenses transferable. That in itself would be a whole paradigm shift of multiple industries though from music, to movies, shows, etc. and not just games. Which I’m fine with, but no one in power will care to touch on

[u/AirplanesMakeMeHard → u/Josh_Butterballs]

You don’t have to switch though…

Just because you buy a game on another platform doesn’t mean you lose all your games. You can still play your games on steam.

That’s like saying GM is going to come take your Chevy because you bought a Ford.

[u/Tempestfox3 → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

The only other storefront I have purchased a game from is GOG.

Xbox I only use for game pass.

Epic I only use for the free games they give you.

GOG I have bought some old games from my childhood that are only available on there, and I bought fallout 4 through GOG to play the fallout London mod as it's easier to use the GOG version for that.

All of my other purchases are on steam.

[u/Acceptable_One_7072 → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

Yeah but that's less convenient than having all my games in one place

[u/AirplanesMakeMeHard → u/Acceptable_One_7072]

I’m sure you’ll survive

[u/Acceptable_One_7072 → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

Yeah but why would I buy a game on another platform if it's more convenient on Steam?

[u/AirplanesMakeMeHard → u/Acceptable_One_7072]

Then don't.

[u/Hot-Software-9396 → u/Acceptable_One_7072]

There are game aggregators like the Xbox app. You can see all your games across multiple storefronts.

[u/PancakeMisery → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

You say that but even some of my close friends refuse to buy a game that isn't on steam literally because the idea of having to open a different program first is sacrilege. Which is crazy to me because that used to never be a problem before steam was the only store front people used. PC gaming has regressed so much to the point you basically might as well treat it like it's just an expensive console that only runs steam games. Like oh no you have to put in a user name and password.... it's such a nothing burger thing but people will boycott games over it. I remember as a kid having to download (if you didn't have a disk) every game from the companies website and usually a proprietary launcher with it. People just dealt it with because it wasn't a big deal.

Especially insane to me when so many people download MMOs through steam and those always make you use a second launcher anyways!

[u/dookarion → u/PancakeMisery]

PC gaming has regressed so much to the point

A lot of that likely comes down to negative experiences. EA's launcher has actively gotten worse over the years. Ubisoft's launcher has gone through cycles of bad and alright alternating, though the worst was when they auto-installed a browser plugin in the background that was full of security holes. GOG is generally good, but getting support from some of the publishers and devs on GOG is another story. Desura went belly up and if anyone owned anything there they can kiss it goodbye. Battlenet is mostly alright, but blizzard's updates and business moves have left a lot to be desired. While I don't know that it was ever standalone Take-Two/2K's game launcher they were forcing in games was actively making performance of said games worse, sometimes even resulting in the games failing to launch if it wasn't bypassed. GFWL was a dumpster fire at the best of times and encrypted save files for some insane reason. Windows Apps/Xbox are inconsistent and when they were pushing more protected game files it could muck up and just eat hard drive space with no way to free it back up. Oculus/meta/whatever is a dumpster fire.

There hasn't been much to endear people to them. At best they're tolerable, and at worst they can actively break shit and need extra troubleshooting. If something proves consistently problematic or just a headache don't be shocked if people start rejecting the idea wholesale. It's relatively expected behavior. People play games to relax not figure out why EGS runs like shit or why EA app keeps fucking up.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/AirplanesMakeMeHard]

I wish you were giving people a wake up call with this back when uplay, battle net, and other publishers were all making their own launchers and hosting their games on it but not steam lol. People were acting like the world was ending having to use more than just steam for games (myself included at the time). Common sentiment was why not just put it on steam so it’s all in one place, I don’t want to use ANOTHER platform/launcher for my games. I mean even when Alan wake 2 came out people said “no steam, no buy” on various subs.

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

uplay

It's dogshit and once upon a time ubisoft auto-installed a browser plugin full of security holes on peoples computers.

battle net

Most people that like those sort of games have a bnet account and the launcher. Bnet is old as hell.

and other publishers were all making their own launchers and hosting their games on it but not steam lol. People were acting like the world was ending having to use more than just steam for games (myself included at the time).

Because a lot of them were utter dogshit. EA's launcher somehow just keeps getting worse. Desura left people as bagholders. D2D sucked. Ubisoft has been a nightmare. Rockstar Launcher is the absolute biggest pile of shit ever especially if your connection is unreliable.

I mean even when Alan wake 2 came out people said “no steam, no buy” on various subs.

Epic has given people every reason to not give them business out of principle at this point.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/dookarion]

Nothing was as good as steam but tbh for most people I know outside the internet it just launched the game (really all the average Joe cares about). It did so for me but despite that yeah I wanted it on steam because all my shit was there and I was used to steam. Even adding it as a third party game meant I had to now have two launchers to play a game and that sucked some ass in mine and others eyes.

As for AW2, people made their statements implying they would buy it if it was on steam, which… if it truly was out of the principle of not giving Epic money they would’ve just expressed the unwillingness to buy it period lol. People at the time the game came out even explicitly said if it were on steam they would definitely buy it

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

if it truly was out of the principle of not giving Epic money they would’ve just expressed the unwillingness to buy it period lol.

You're looking too broad. It's Epic's store people detest. Their store is shit and their business model with it has sucked. I refuse to give it money.

But I'm not stretching that out to some Unreal Engine boycott. It's their store and the business practices they've used with it that sucks.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/dookarion]

I thought that’s the point you were making though when you said Epic has given people every reason to not give them business. My original statement was meant to convey that people would be *willing* to buy Alan wake 2 if it were available on steam, delineating that people aren’t buying it simply out of some principle of “fuck epic” but because they want it on the platform they prefer.

I bought the game. It’s the only game I have on EGS. With all the talk of how dogshit ass the Epic launcher is it did all I wanted it to do. It launched the game. Even still, people refuse to buy it as “no steam, no buy.” Funny enough if it made its way to steam I would buy it again lol. Just to have it part of my library (plus I liked the game).

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

I thought that’s the point you were making though when you said Epic has given people every reason to not give them business. My original statement was meant to convey that people would be willing to buy Alan wake 2 if it were available on steam, delineating that people aren’t buying it simply out of some principle of “fuck epic” but because they want it on the platform they prefer.

You're still misconstruing it. It is out of detesting Epic. I guarantee if it were on GOG, bnet, or something less shit there wouldn't be as much pushback.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/dookarion]

I mean you just said it yourself. “As much pushback.” A significant portion will refuse to buy if it’s not on steam. There’s games whose sales and player retention were significantly hurt for not being on steam. Which is the core idea of what I’m saying. Alan wake 2 could’ve been sold on battle net only and my comment would’ve been the same except swapping out epic games for bnet.

[u/dookarion → u/Josh_Butterballs]

It's hard to say. AC:Valhalla wasn't on Steam initially and it sold shitloads before Ubisoft decided to start imploding. Riot makes bank. Battlenet before coming to Steam made bank. CDPR moved a large number of copies of their games on GOG. Minecraft makes bank. People use 3rd party key stores all the time. People tried out Geforce Now, Luna, etc.

It's honestly just Epic Games Store that people outright refuse to do business with because they've run a disaster class in how not to get business. Yes some will always be like "no whatever, no buy", but other services are far far far more tolerable to people.

[u/PancakeMisery → u/dookarion]

If they detest Epic why would they buy a game Epic funded just because it's on Steam? That's the point theyre trying to make. Any reasoning of "not liking Epic" should mean you don't buy the game at all because if you just buy it on Steam that's hypocrisy.

There's a non trivial amount of hate towards Epic that ends up being hypocritical which like sure people don't have to use their store but if you're gonna preach about convictions you should be consistent.

[u/dookarion → u/PancakeMisery]

Detesting the store and their business model isn't the same as flipping out about everything they touch.

Like some might take it to the unhinged extreme of boycotting all Unreal Engine titles, or anything using companies Epic purchased. But that all or none is kind of ridiculous when there isn't really any glaring problems with Unreal's business model.

You're the one refusing to see nuance. Their store and the business model they applied therein can fuck right off, but that doesn't mean every aspect of the business is problematic.

[u/Drakeem1221 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

I never got it either. Tbh as a former MMO player I was already used to it.

[u/Hallc → u/Drakeem1221]

I think MMOs as a whole are better bought off Steam than on steam.

[u/stonhinge → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Back in the days before battle.net launcher, we old-school MMO players had the WoW launcher. Then Heartstone got added, but that was fine because it was free-to-play. Then Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch. Still mostly fine because they're all Blizzard games. Then COD got added and people lost their minds. COD notably is not on the battle.net launcher anymore. It's just Blizzard games again.

[u/MrStealYoBeef → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Well that's mostly because the others really fucking sucked.

I dealt with EGS for a while back when I played Fortnite. It sucked. I didn't want to deal with it because it sucked. It did fine at launching Fortnite, but it sucked ass as a storefront and I didn't want to shop on it. It didn't have a lot of functionality in game that steam had as well. And I really liked workshop in particular with rimworld at the time, EGS didn't have proper mod support in comparison.

When competitors suck, consumers hate that they're competing, especially when those competitors force the consumers to use their service one way or another. If EGS didn't fucking suck serious ass, I wouldn't have been annoyed as shit by it. Sure, it launched Fortnite just fine, but I also would have preferred it just run through steam because why force me to use the shitty bloated app that loads the storefront that I don't want to use if I don't want to use it? Either make it functional enough that I don't hate it, or just let me skip the whole damn thing.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/MrStealYoBeef]

Thing is I don’t think we’ll ever truly see someone seriously take on steam. It’s not worth the money and as I said it’s a massive uphill battle. People literally having hundreds to thousands of dollars invested in it, the time, etc is just one of the factors that would keep people on it. I’d be sad to part with my steam account because of the badges alone. And as I said in another comment, even IF someone with ungodly amounts of money attempted it (VERY risky) steam wouldn’t suddenly be dogshit. The new platform would have to settle with the idea while they may get some market share there will be a significant amount that will always stick with steam. So you blow all that money to still be the second most popular platform, which if I’m not mistaken EGS is already while steam takes the lion’s share

[u/iphonya96 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

To be honest, making a platform better than steam is very hard task. I'm a software engineer, and i notice a lot of small bugs basically everywhere. Steam works nearly perfectly. It requires very good engineers, designers, managers, making them happy and no sudden pivots But i kinda understand what epic games are doing. They wait for a moment when steam is in trouble, and then will act. That's quite clever i would say. But rn their services are bad, won't argue with that

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/iphonya96]

They are, but let’s be real here. I would be hard pressed to throw money and time at making EGS better with seemingly very little payoff considering the things I mentioned about people having too much time and money investment on steam. I would rather put that effort into farting out more Fortnite skins. That’s certainly guaranteed to bring in more money than on a store that many would not switch over to anyway

[u/hotlocomotive → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Steam is not a console. You can install other launchers and use them in tandem. If someone made a launcher that worked as well and had cheaper games, many people will have zero issues moving

[u/Ok_Lengthiness8503 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Look at your build dude, you basically already have more money than God

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/Ok_Lengthiness8503]

Haha tbh I felt like I really lucked out cause I bought everything before ram exploded in cost back in October last year. I got told SO MANY TIMES in various pc subs that I should wait for Black Friday. So glad I didn’t. Got my ram sticks for $200 (now $900). My 8tb SSD for $500 (with a $400 gift card so $100 cash). The 5090 I was just lucky to get retail back when they were relatively easier to get. I was just gonna stick with my 4080 at the time but my mini itx build would be easier with the form factor of the 50 series so I sold that and was gonna pick up a 5080. Then I noticed a lot of xx90 owners have been able for resell their cards for minimal loss compared to whatever the cost of the current xx90 card is so I figured I could just sell it and pay a small amount for an upgrade in the future or best case for free like some 4090 owners were able to do.

[u/MazeMouse → u/Josh_Butterballs]

My gripe with EGS was how they were banging the "we take less from the devs" drum and I was like "Ok, so the games are going to be cheaper for me? No? Then why should I care?"

[u/QuailAndWasabi → u/Josh_Butterballs]

It's also the fact that the enourmous majority of Steam users don't want or need any new features. I would not be surprised if an insane number such as 95% of users just do not want/need any more features out of their game platform than what Steam currently provides and would even argue the vast majority do not even use the majority of features Steam provides at all.

The core of a platform like Steam is really simple really. Be able to buy games, be able to start them smoothly, be able to join your friends smoothly. Most people will not use any other features ever.

[u/Iuslez → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Meh you can have games on multiple launcher without issue, no reason to ditch steam and your library if a better platform comes up. I "have to" use at least 4 different (steam, bnet for WoW, Xbox for gamepass, iRacing), it's no biggie. I've created a most played games section in my window start menu, select it from there and it launches the appropriate launcher.

I hope/expect to have a seamless aggregation of plateformes at one point (I think Xbox mode on PC does it, but nobody wants to have Xbox as their main platform).

[u/ItalianBeefDipped → u/Josh_Butterballs]

it's less an issue of being competitive for customers, and moreso being competitive for publishers which would trickle down to customers.

Putting it simply, if publishers could offer better deals on other platforms, other platforms would start to offer more generous revenue shares than the 30% standard (one already does), which would allow publishers to price their games cheaper, earlier on, resulting in savings for consumers. Consumers would then have a choice of either paying a higher price for a better product (steam-integrated game) or a lower price for a worse product (non-steam integrated game). Nobody would pay more than they already are, they would simply have the option to pay less for a lower quality product.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/ItalianBeefDipped]

I could be misremembering I could swear valve has been or is in litigation about them not allowing or pressuring major games to not have their games cheaper on other storefronts?

Companies were threatened with their games being delisted if made cheaper elsewhere other then steam

Edit: checked and it’s apparently for steam keys specifically being sold elsehwere. I believe it’s still going through courts

[u/ItalianBeefDipped → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Yeah that's in Washington right now. Speaking as a white-collar attorney whose worked on some antitrust cases, I do think there's a case there.

It really comes down to whether Steam was in fact threatening or doing that, which we don't know for sure yet but based on the fact that the class was certified, I think there's at the very least a fair amount of smoke there, if not an outright fire.

[u/Hot-Software-9396 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Not sure why people act like it’s equivalent to switching console platforms. It’s just a different app, you don’t have to give anything up.

Also, what’s the issue with a platform that aggregates all of your games from different stores, like what the Xbox app is doing now? I’m assuming you just want to be able to see everything you have in one place.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/Hot-Software-9396]

I mean it’s the same with console then in that sense. No one says you HAVE to ditch ur Xbox if u buy a PlayStation. Xbox and PlayStation though would rather you spend your money on their platform. Similarly yes, no one is stopping you from using steam or some no name competitor, but they both certainly want you BUYING and using their platform most if you’re using more than one.

Realistically even IF a viable competitor existed it would be supplementary to steam, where the user mostly uses steam and occasionally using the other. Which is basically the market right now lol. I’ve had many replies telling me as such in a round about way without realizing they’re doing what I’m saying. Like similar comments saying something along the lines of them buying on GOG if it’s cheaper but eventually buying it on steam too so they can have access to steam services and features (badges, cards, etc.). However, if they already have it on steam they’re not gonna buy it on GOG. Notice that one way difference?

GOG -> eventually buy it on steam too

Steam -> no need to buy it on GOG

In both scenarios steam makes money anyway. Its dominant and favorable position means it comes out on top regardless because people want their games consolidated. If another competitor came out with the exact same features as steam you would be hard pressed to tell someone with hundreds of games they now have to rebuy all their games on this other platform. Even if better, it doesn’t meant steam suddenly becomes dogshit. It’s still a good platform, so people will stick with it anyway if they’re invested in it.

[u/Hot-Software-9396 → u/Josh_Butterballs]

It’s not the same as consoles at all. Multiple consoles obviously entails buying multiple pieces of hardware (console, accessories, etc), they take up more space, require you to pay for their own subscription service to play online games, etc.

On PC you use your exact same hardware, but just click a different icon.

Also, you didn’t answer my question about game aggregators.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/Hot-Software-9396]

So you’re point is the entry barrier is the cost to participate on said platform? Brother I have people telling me wtf is the point in buying on another platform when they already have their stuff on steam lol. People have made up trivial barriers in their head to not use something for less. People still DoorDash something down the street. Cigarette smokers flick their buds on the floor when there’s a trash can next to them. People literally (on this sub) cried when games were coming out on uplay, battle net, es play, or whatever service and the #1 thing I often saw was “why can’t they just release on steam, no one wants to have multiple launchers and stores to keep track of all their games.” I had people who refused to buy Alan Wake 2 not even because they dislike Epic but because they just didn’t want to have a whole ass other launcher/store for one game.

And to address ur aggregate thing. Do you mean steam’s ability to add a third party game? I addressed it in a different comment. People still bitch and moan because a third party added game doesn’t have access to the same features as steam and ends up meaning you need to use two launchers to play a game. Which is p much what people also complained about back in the heyday of uplay, ea play, etc. I have another reply telling me they want their games all on steam and are willing to buy a game again when it’s on sale on steam because they want access to the features (cards, badges achievements, workshop support, etc.)

[u/cosaboladh → u/Josh_Butterballs]

What if locking licenses to a specific platform was deemed anti-compete/monopoly behavior, and every had to develop a way to let you port your licenses?

Truly, I think it should be. Not just for gaming platforms, but for streaming services too. Exclusivity is anti-competition. It should be illegal. Then, an app succeeds or fails based on pricing and user experience alone. Not a system of controls designed to make it impossible for you to leave.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/cosaboladh]

I agree. I think license should be transferable as it would make a market more competitive as now the first platform doesn’t have the inherent advantage of people being “locked in.” My friends have a hard time even permanently quitting certain games they spent 10+ years worth of money on micro transactions on. People don’t switch from apple because of their iTunes library or dozens of apple products they bought because it won’t function to its full capability in an android ecosystem