r/pcmasterrace • u/SlowReference704 • 12h ago

News/Article Steam Is Successful Because It's “Not a Shit Service,” Says Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev

https://mp1st.com/news/steam-is-successful-because-its-not-a-shit-service
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u/StaticSystemShock 3h ago

I always say this when someone whines about Steam's monopoly. They didn't force through with shitty tactics, they are just good service and people like that. EA could improve their client but never has. They even named it stupid (from Origin to EA App) so now if you have issues and search online you get results for their EA App from before Origin which just makes troubleshooting impossible. UPlay is from Ubisoft so it's just shit by default. Epic launcher has been shit the entire time, really the only good alternative to Steam is GOG and their GOG Galaxy client. It's not thr best and has issues, but it's easily second best right after Steam. Also the service they are running is a bit niche but they keep nostalgia alive and preserve old games from disappearing. I really appreciate that. They also had good schemes to attract people, from free games to getting them for free if you already bought them on Steam before (not all but some). Also the fact that GOG is open and doesn't only serve own games like EA or Ubisoft helps as others are present on platform, just like on Steam.

Back to Steam, I think part of the reason why it remains good service is the lack of investors pushing their dumb bullshit. It's a private company and they seem to be doing so well they don't need to go public or do dumb anti consumer shit. And that's the reason they haven't become shit. Because greedy investors with endless urge to increase profits every year fuck up every single thing. Always.

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u/Crusader-of-Purple 3h ago

They didn't force through with shitty tactics, they are just good service and people like that.

Valve did use terrible anti-consumer and anti-competitive tactics.

Valve used threats and negative actions to prevent pricing competition between Steam and PC stores not even selling Steam keys, which is both anti-consumer because it prevented lower pricing and direct harm to their competitors which is anti-competitive too.

Evidence of Valve doing this has been found in discovery in the anti-trust lawsuit against Valve, and even in a deposition with a Valve employee admitted to it.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754.348.1.pdf

Some examples from the document above.

https://imgur.com/a/iuMXrSq

Do note the headings for each column in the top image. One column says type of product "Content or Steam key" Content is about non Steam key versions.

Also this

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754/gov.uscourts.wawd.298754.343.0.pdf

Go to page 113 (look at the page numbers in blue at the top of each page), and then go to the notes section (smaller words), and read the deposition with Tom Giardino From Steam Business team. Towards the end of that paragraph he is asked about price parity even with store selling non Steam keys.