A huge difference is Steam doesn't come pre-installed on your computers nor does it block you from installing other game managers.

Fair point.

I do think Steam is engaged in anti-competitive behavior, but that doesn't mean they're the full equivalent of the app store. And we can see on the PC market the large number of indie games that very literally would not exist if PCs were locked into only using Steam.

My point here is more that Steam is not really a good argument for justifying a pricing model. But it's a good clarification that in many ways Steam has "only" mostly locked down the PC gaming market, where Apple has gone further and locked down the actual software that can be loaded onto the phone.

Unrelated, I've noticed for a few years now, several of those HN similarity things claim we're proximate.

Perhaps they just think we both say Apple a lot.

Huh, that's interesting. I've never really looked into them before, but could be. Might also be speaking style or which articles we comment on.. I don't really know what metrics they look for :shrug:

I always buy on Gog first because they really care about the user. No DRM, the ability to download safe copies in case some lawsuit happens and things get pulled out (e.g. like half the music in GTA San Andreas!).

I understand you as a creator prefer steam but I wouldn't obey that, sorry. Also, reinforcing their market position is not in my best interest as a consumer.

I think you may have accidentally misread my post, or maybe I didn't word it carefully enough (in which case I apologize for the confusion). I don't prefer Steam. As a consumer, on principle in most cases I refuse to buy from it.

Steam effectively punishes creators for not steering users towards their monopoly, and they have a ton of tools for user lock-in: Steam Input, Steam Workshop, etc... They may not be as egregious as Apple, but they are often pretty egregious in their own right.

In a normal market, having a diverse set of users across multiple platforms would be a good thing as a creator, it would give you security and give each platform less power over you. Steam uses their review system to punish smaller creators who have a diverse userbase, and it uses their response to cement its market dominance even more and to give itself more power over those creators and their players. I would argue this is bad for the market.

My bigger point here is that Apple advocates will sometimes point to Steam and say "they charge high fees too, what's the problem?" There's are multiple reasons that Steam is able to charge higher fees than most of its PC competitors and remain the dominant platform for PC games, some of them due to the way that it methodically weaponizes incentives for both players and creators against alternatives. Comparing Apple to Steam does not make me like Apple more.

>Steam effectively punishes creators for not steering users towards their monopoly, and they have a ton of tools for user lock-in: Steam Input, Steam Workshop, etc... They may not be as egregious as Apple, but they are often pretty egregious in their own right.

Main difference is steam is pretty clever about how they do this. They will pull out very fast if customers start to complain, maybe reworking it later on (paid mods -> steam workshop). Meanwhile, devs on the wrong end of the stick can get some of the worst customer service out there behind the curtain. The only way to get steam to respond is to be lucky enough to cause enough customer ire (e.g. Stein's Gate prequel not being approved for Steam. Despite having an ESRB rating... until customers complained).

That's how you get stuff like the Wolfire lawsuit but people chastising Wolfire instead of Valve.

Most other companies don't even pretend to care and just eat the PR hit. That cynicism will build up over the years, so there's much less sympathy for Apple.

Supporting your "I don't prefer Steam" point, I make a point of supporting Gog (and SetApp!), only to find out that many of the games sold there are crippleware. Deep in the fine print of the non-DRM'd version distributed as 44 floppy disks (OK, not quite, but it feels like Slackware from the 90s nonetheless) is that this non-DRM version cannot multiplayer, not even offline LAN in the household.

Even more surprising, Gog's DRM'd version multiplayer may require ... STEAM! ... to run.

This is galling.

(For the game that most annoyed me, Baldur's Gate 3, this may have changed once Larian introduced their own cloud sync. I haven't tried again, the first experience was that tedious.)

I see the parallels that you're drawing and I agree with you, but I still see major distinctions.

The biggest example I'd like to call out here is that I recently moved from Nintendo Switch to Steam Deck. I was astonished by how much the Steam Deck is just a Linux computer. And I was fully able to install Heroic Launcher, which is compatible with GOG, and install all my GOG games on my Steam Deck and have them work just fine. This is light years away from where Apple is. If Apple had anything remotely like this, I would be a customer quite quickly. But it's the lack of freedom and choice that I find so objectionable.

How can you call any of that "punishment" or anti-competitive?

Steam offers the far superior platform, in every possible aspect. Every thing you've said is them OFFERING (not FORCING) better solutions to things.

For example, in what universe do you think it's sane to think a store front should accept random reviews from random people? Having bought the game is the one of the best metrics to tell if a review is even approaching sincerity.

Not having random reviews in the steam reviews is a feature.

And in the context of Android or iOS, the PC gaming market is SUPER DUPER EXTRA diverse. I own games in like 5 different stores, but always prefer Steam or GOG where possible.

Offering better services and getting more user because of it is not malicious or anti-competitive or monopolistic. It's the best possible outcome (assuming you like capitalism).

You're comparing apples to sofas, in my opinion.

The issue with monopolies isn't just their existence, it's their active efforts to keep their monopoly and the negative effects this has on the customer.

Apples monopoly hurts customer, reduces freedom and extracts rent from developers that HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE.

Steams (supposed) monopoly comes entirely from offering the better product to users and developers. Did you know you can generate Steam keys of your game FOR FREE, and sell them away from Steam, giving Steam 0% cut and 99% of the distribution costs?

Compared to Apple, the vast amount of options on PC to acquire software or games means Steam isn't even close to a monopoly. At the very least, they don't have the power to do monopolistic practices and they also just don't abuse them.

Steam is genuinely the closest thing to a perfect company (at least if you like capitalism).

> If you're suggesting that Steam doesn't have an effective monopoly on the PC market, I have bad news for you.

Not what I'm suggesting. In fact, you're making my case beautifully.

I'm agreeing that the PC being "open" isn't what makes the difference.

People are barking up the wrong tree. Your argument is much as the one I made elsewhere in this thread for why there's Amazon when there's Alibaba, and Amazon can charge not percentages more, but many times the price, for same products.

Tangentially, "imploring" people reminds me: I encourage Mac and iPhone toting friends to try SetApp. It's like Apple Arcade but for utilities. It's not from Apple, and people are confused it works for iOS. Once they try it, they set it and forget it. I don't know if it's working for the app owners there, but the value/reward seems much more balanced than the world where every widget wants $119.88 to 239.88 a year (12 x $19.99).

Less tangentially, there are ways to exploit users and ways to add value. The second is harder.

Apologies, I misunderstood what you were saying. Generally good reminder to me to regularly take a step back and try to figure out when I'm reading more into a comment than what was intended.

> I'm agreeing that the PC being "open" isn't what makes the difference.

This is a good point, but I do think the "open" part is possibly a pre-condition to making a difference. But that's kind of squabbling over details, I completely agree that iOS being open to sideloading would not be enough to change the dynamics.

And we know this because... well, Android exists. Android is a really good example of how sideloading is great and something that I love, but also not sufficient on its own to curb anti-competitive behavior.