this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
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Yeah, but why should Steam be the only game in town? That's a very dangerous monopoly.
What are you even talking about? It's an application that launches a game. It adds nothing of value to the process of opening the game. How is it less of a monopoly to use a launcher to launch a launcher to launch a game?
It's not just a launcher, it's a storefront. Uplay, EA-whatever, and Rockstar Launcher are all storefronts where you can buy the games those companies make.
The launcher itself is a UI which lets you "launch" the game. Steam for example, is a launcher and a storefront, as is Uplay.
Having all your games in a single launcher/storefront is bad, as it gives a single company entire control over your games, and monopoly pricing.
Also remember that Steam takes a 30% cut, which is totally unnecessary, and is what directly caused giants like Ubisoft and Rockstar to make their own storefronts. Because why pay a 30% tax just for selling your game, this ain't the 1990s anymore with CD-ROM pressings.
Fuck Steam and it's monopolistic, 30% rent seeking bollocks.
20-30% cut, which is in-line with most digital storefronts.
Companies exist to make money. Making money will never be "unnecessary" for a company. And hosting secure data centers around the world delivering 15 Tbps a day is not exactly cheap.
Also remember that Ubisoft and Rockstar (and Microsoft and Blizzard) came crawling back to Steam all the same, meaning they thought they would make more money even with the 20-30% tax. So a 20-30% tax must seem pretty fair to these companies for what they are getting.