My point is that it is an option, and still a competitive one, when so many still use this option. If it wasn’t, these games wouldn’t have succeeded and/or would have died off. Its an option middlemen have to out-compete, and I’d argue many don’t.
Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day agoA software company can run its own store, and make its own launcher. Just look at so many of the big titles over the last two decades: Minecraft, League, Tarkov, War Thunder, Roblox, and more recently Hytale.
This is also survivorship and selection bias though. Not only would you not have heard of the ones that failed, but these are the games confident enough to not launch on Steam in the first place. Several of them are so old that Steam was in its infancy and not the de facto storefront when they came out.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Steam was the defacto storefront when all those games came out.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 day ago
In 2005 when Roblox came out? No. League of Legends came out in 2009, and I had barely started shopping on Steam for non-Valve games back then. Most of us were still buying games on disc at Walmart. Minecraft was doing early access before Steam had the feature.
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 23 hours ago
Jesus Christ, I had no idea know Roblox was that old. (2006 btw, not 2005) I thought LoL and Minecraft were the oldest, which both came out in 2009, and Steam had already cemented itself by then. It was definitely past its infancy, and what other digital game store was it competing with back then? I was already using it, and there was nowhere else I downloaded games from other than individual game’s websites. It WAS the defacto storefront.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Steam was a launcher for games most people still bought on discs back then. I remember 2007 was the first time I bought a game on Steam, and it wasn’t a regular habit for years after that. It wasn’t about which other digital store you used; it was that, as a digital store, it held no power in the market compared to brick and mortar. Plus, back then, PC gaming was definitively second fiddle to consoles.