So You Want to Compete with Steam

Really, Steam seems to be the closest thing Windows has to an application&#x2F;package manager[0].<p>It&#x27;s almost kind of a shame that it&#x27;s more or less entirely for games and game development software - something like it with sourceforge&#x2F;github integration or an API for general purpose Windows installers would be nice.<p>[0]notwithstanding whatever Windows 10 might have, because I still refuse to touch that, but it&#x27;s probably not as good as the Steam client.

The convenience of having your game licenses all in one place over the long term is too great. The only way you could shut down Steam at this point is create an open industry standard that would allow a license to play a game to transfer seamlessly across platforms. No one wants to buy a game from a website that isn&#x27;t going to exist in a year and will take your game with you. And no one wants to have 10 different platforms on their computer. And certainly no one wants to have different platforms offer different games that can only be accessed from that platform. But of course the gaming industry has an entire business model built on exactly that: console gaming. It&#x27;s kind of a miracle that Steam even exists and people are going to be very resistant to replacing it with a completely fractured system of owning PC games.

There are plenty of businesses where you can just roll up, make a better yet not more innovative version of the leading app, and just take all of the customers.<p>Game distribution is NOT one of them, at all, by any stretch of the imagination, at this point in time.<p>I&#x27;ve saved this article to share every time I hear that pitch.

Discord could do it. Discord SHOULD do it.<p>There needs to be a serious competitor to Steam, something with significant enough market share that Steam gets scared. Steam could be so much better than it is -- I&#x27;m not saying that it&#x27;s a bad product, just that it could be better.<p>Discord seems perfectly positioned to take on Steam. They already have incredible adoption in the gaming community. And they have quite a bit of experience at this rate too. (Maybe I should go work for them and push this line from within...)

We sell our game on itch <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;QuantumPilot.me" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;QuantumPilot.me</a> Developer chooses what cut to pay to itch, which is nice. DRM free, easy to setup -- 5 minutes compare to 5 hours with Steam.<p>Itch supports indie game dev by letting community manage &quot;Game Jams&quot;: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;itch.io&#x2F;jams" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;itch.io&#x2F;jams</a><p>Their site + client is open source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;itchio" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;itchio</a>

Steam has lost that &quot;discovery&quot; aspect to it. It&#x27;s now mainly weaboo garbage, early access and PUBG clogging up the trending and leaderboards.<p>I feel like I can no longer discover cool titles or great things people are buying on the site.

What if Steam had to, by law, share your game library with other services?<p>i.e., just like you can take your phone number to any other phone company, or how banks in europe have to share info, you were able to take your game library with you to any other game distribution service?<p>Perhaps the same could be done for iOS&#x2F;Android portability

Also a huge point to consider is that games also have to be as cheap as Steam. I used to buy pirated DVDs once upon a time because the real thing would cost about a month salary. Now Steam games in third world countries are so cheap I just buy a bunch I don&#x27;t intend to play.<p>Even the discount sites and Humble Bundle aren&#x27;t able to match up against Steam in third world countries.

This article is full of good observations. A shorter way to say it is that the distance between Steam and &quot;perfect&quot; is not very large, and there isn&#x27;t enough margin to be had to justify the cost of building something to close that gap. And that&#x27;s assuming you can identify the features that would bring you to perfect from where Steam is.<p>I cannot even imagine a game distribution product that would get me to switch from Steam, unless there were Very Important games on it I couldn&#x27;t get on Steam, or unless the prices were at least 10-15% lower.

I wonder if CD Projekt heard the same arguments when they started GOG? Certainly they leveraged The Witcher and anger around DRM to gain traction. But they&#x27;ve found a sustainable niche that does not depend on going head to head with Steam&#x27;s colossal network effect.<p>Steam is generally pretty great. But off the top of my head I can think of two areas where Steam arent delivering;<p>- Greenlight. Good idea, didnt work as planned. Room in the market for some kind of Greenlight&#x2F;Kickstarter hybrid?<p>- Gaming for kids and educational software. A Kahn Academy approach but with games instead of lessons.

Amos has been doing some insanely great work with the itch.io app and butler.<p>If you are interested in how it works, I highly encourage you to read his blog [1].<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amos.me&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;efficient-game-updates&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;amos.me&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2017&#x2F;efficient-game-updates&#x2F;</a>

As someone who does video games in his spare time, this was a very enjoyable read.

As specific as this is to steam competitors this seems like good advice for trying to get into any crowded niche market. A friend of mine lately found the random hobby of promoting dog toys and such through instagram. He started with pretty much nothing but pictures of his dog and over a few months has begun working with different manufacturers and distributors to make and sell custom products and to distribute existing products and I&#x27;ve watched him do almost everything described in this article to succeed.<p>He&#x27;s spent his own time and money to help big name companies get more customers, helped smaller companies expand their business without much incentive to himself at first other than a mention here or there or some free products, in turn he used those products to gain more business for those companies and eventually became well known enough to start getting small amounts of cash and more expensive products. Eventually these companies trusted him enough to make some of his custom designed things and get commission on their sales.<p>I&#x27;m kind of getting sick of hearing about instagram but it&#x27;s been cool watching him grow this weird little business he&#x27;s been doing.

The day you try to contact Steam support, you&#x27;ll know how to compete with Steam.

Excellent write-up.

Mind you the USERS don&#x27;t even want a lot of Steam&#x27;s competition. The GOG downloader is...okay? Origin is almost universally hated and every time one of these big companies announces $NewNotSteam the collective community rolls their eyes and groans, dreading the new application that has to be installed, and kept running so it can update, to accomplish the exact same thing that Steam, GOG, Origin, and uPlay <i>already</i> accomplish because $NewNotSteam&#x27;s parent company has an executive somewhere that is tired of giving Valve money and had sufficient pull to change it.

At some point itch was one of the 99%.<p>Maybe taking on newgrounds or miniclip with a wasm based gaming platform is the niche?

I wish Steam supported hidpi.<p>It&#x27;s kind of ridiculous they don&#x27;t.

I&#x27;m actually pretty cynical when it comes to this kind of thing (for example, I don&#x27;t think anyone can really compete with Google Search anymore), but I need to disagree with this article. It fundamentally misunderstands a few crucial elements of how game publishing (and consumption) works. Keep in mind that I am a long-time user of Steam (my account is 14 years old, having signed up literally the day it came out).<p>1. The gamers<p>Gamers are by definition quasi-technical and, by their very nature, will be welcome to (at least) trying out a new client or platform. I, and most of my friends, and probably most of Twitch, have not only Steam, but also GOG, and also the God-awful Origin, and Epic&#x27;s launcher, etc. So installing a new client so I could play some games I like is <i>really not</i> that big of a deal. Steams social aspects were always secondary to its game delivery platform -- besides, most people use Discord to keep in touch, no one really takes Steam&#x27;s &quot;social network&quot; seriously. I think that&#x27;s a non-issue.<p>2. The developers<p>If you&#x27;re an indie dev that&#x27;s toiled for the past 3 years on a small game that you hope will make it big, you will <i>release it on every platform</i> -- let me say that again: you&#x27;ll release on Steam, on Itch, etc. On every. Single. Platform. If you (really) want to sell AAA games, you can just be a run-of-the-mill distributor at first, and just sell keys. Worrying about developer friction I think is fundamentally misguided.<p>3. How to win<p>Imo, winning would look something like this: scout indie developers building the next big thing (they&#x27;ll be a lot of false positives, so a lot of $$$ helps here). Make them sign contracts to <i>only</i> distribute through your platform. Do this for like 10 or 20 games, even if the contracts suck for you (hell, I&#x27;d give them &gt; 100% revenue share). Now you&#x27;re funneling people through your platform to play the newest &quot;Cuphead&quot; or &quot;Super Meatboy&quot; or &quot;Dark Souls&quot; -- obviously this isn&#x27;t easy, but I do think you could hypothetically compete.and slow.