Why Steam Exclusive?

Steam is already at +80% of DD sales, or some incredibly stacked percentage like that.

When you can run perpetual sales that undercut the competition then you know you have a monopoly.

Or you have a successful service where everybody involved wins, from the producers, to the middlemen, to the consumers. Steam is only the platform of choice for as long as it can keep enough people on each side of them happy.

But I guess following this logic torrent sites and the Humble Indie Bundle team have the real monopoly, because they give games away for free?

By the way, Valve doesn't control Monday Night Combat. At no point did they say if we're on Steam we can't be on any other DD platforms. In fact it was one of the smaller DD platforms that said we couldn't be on their service if we were on Steam.

I wish American's would stop ripping on themselves, it only American's look worse.

There you go, thats the proper reason! Great solutions != laziness.



As for the comments about "Steam Exclusives" because they're using Steamworks...you can still buy games that use Steam, outside of buying them from Steam. Direct2Drive for example, has quite a few...

Really? I find that very interesting.

Would it be too much to ask who the aforementioned DD platform was?

I believe that platform is Impulse, since Stardock has expressed disapproval of games that require the installation of a competing store in order to run. Direct2Drive previously held the same stance but capitulated due to the rising number of Steamworks titles.

A fairly logical assumption. I also disagree with Steam's requirement of being installed and running to play. Impulse is much better in that regard.

Eka said on Steam, not using Steamworks. I don't know if he misspoke.

Steam represents something like 80% of the Digital sales of games.

It's not at all surprising really; Steam is easy to use, makes it easy to see what your friends are playing and makes it easy to join their game. It's DRM done right. Now the brick and mortar retail giants that for years have been decreasing the shelf space given to PC games are rallying to try and stop developers from including steam integration in their video games. They abandoned PC gamers, they believed false statistics and greedy rhetoric about PC piracy and how they're making only 10% of the profits they could be making, and it has resulted in Steam becoming what it is. They're starting to realize the errors of their ways, and are trying to get their own digital distribution platforms ready but they're already so far behind Valve that it's unlikely they will ever catch up.

Is this bad for PC gaming? I'd argue that it's not inherently bad. Sure, Valve probably has the market power to abuse us consumers; however they haven't done it yet. The only thing Valve has done is proven that PC gaming is a profitable market, when damn near the rest of the video game industry including retail stores had written us off in every genre except for RTS and MMORPG. I'd rather risk abuse from a company that has yet to do me wrong than pay money to companies that decided PC gaming wasn't worth the shelf space, prompted by publishers that saw a statistic and decided their profit margins weren't large enough.

Amen, brotha!

And Stardock needs to up their game(s) before they can compete with Steam. The Stardock X-mas sale was basically non-existant. I've been looking for good games on Impulse for over a year and only found a hand full that were actually worth purchasing. During the Steam X-mas sale I bought 62 games. (25 of the were the complete VALVe pack that I picked up for 25.) I don't think I payed 150 for all the games I bought.

Stardock didn't even bother to change their frontpage design. And the games on sale were mostly the same old stuff as always. That's just not good enough if you want to compete with Steam.

I'm not saying Stardock can offer the same amount of awesome deals or better prices than Steam, but they could at least make an effort.

I'm sure the free Steamworks service included with UE3 engine probably helped too.