Love it or hate it, Steam is the defacto gaming program that no PC players can do without. Launching back in 2003, this platform found early ground, and thanks to the breakout success of online hits like Counter-Strike, it’s cemented itself as a mainstay. The victory of Steam made the developer Valve one of the most profitable enterprises in gaming, and with this profit came a slew of imitators.
Though competition in the gaming market is always welcome, in gaming, imitators are often met with derision from players. Instead of pushing for lower prices and more flexible software, Steam’s competitors often frustrated more than they helped, and this is a problem that persists to this day.
Steam’s Place as King
As much fun as Steam and its games have brought us over the years, the program is far from perfect. It’s routinely plagued with bugs, it lacks functionality that chat programs have had for decades, and the enormous revenue that Valve enjoys makes these failures frustrating. Steam does rule, but it was position earned by timing and luck, and it appears all too often that this has made Valve complacent.
The Complexity of Competition
Making a high-quality program or app that offers a broad selection of titles isn’t impossible.
We know this because it’s routinely illustrated by the online casino industry, such as with this NJ casino app for PlayStar. This app features fantastic compatibility over desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones, so no users on any devices have to miss out. It also features more than 500 slots, table, card, and live casino games.
The issue in video games is that platform developers tend to stumble and fall attempting many of these steps. The most profound way is in game selection, where services are often split up by publishers, and so they only offer a few titles that players are interested in. Activision Blizzard’s system, for example, features WoW, Diablo, and Modern Warfare, but it doesn’t feature releases from others.
This might not be a problem if players only engage with one series or title, but most gamers don’t play that way. This results in having to keep multiple pieces of software up to date just to play a reasonable selection of games. Each of these can require its own passwords, two-factor authentication, lists of bugs, friends lists, and so on. Steam isn’t perfect but it can at least offer a level of consolidation that few others manage, and that alone sets it apart.
There is some hope for the future of PC gaming platforms, most notably as indicated by the Epic Games Store, but we’re a long way from real competition for Steam yet. The sad truth is that as Steam coasts by, other platforms aren’t doing what needs to be done to appeal to players, publishers, and game developers. Until one comes along and meets the needs of all three of these groups, then we’re stuck with what is often a frustrating status quo. At least, with others like Bethesda’s attempts failing, there is some hope that gaming platforms will learn from the failures of others.
