TauKappaNASA said:
The pricing all depends on how big everyone's cut is. If Valve became the only digital distributor then they could charge the publishers X amount more to have their games on the service. In turn publishers jack up the asking price for their game. That's all i'm saying. Competition is good. |
The thing is, more and more competition is growing in the PC DD services. Battle.Net will never leave, Onlive, Gaikai, Impulse, and now Paradox just announced a huge step up in their game.
PC is an open platform, so there will always be competition. PC isn't closed like consoles, so 1 Digital Distribution service will never rule the entire PC market. Your criticism is misguided, since the main perpetrators of what you say are Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
Your fear will probably never happen on PC, and even if it does, I couldn't think of a better ruler than Valve. Valve has always been close to the gaming community, and most of the talent hired by Valve were simple PC modders in the community.
Jacking up the price? You mean like the Console publishers did this generation? As I said, Valve doesn't have much control over the price of games. The only time I remember Valve asking to change the price of a game was to DECREASE the price of "Plants vs Zombies" in half!! Plants vs Zombies was $20 outside of Steam, and Valve only allowed Plants vs Zombies on Steam for $10. And guess what? It was Popcap's best sold game at launch ever, with half of the sales coming from hardcore gamers, in large part thanks to Steam.
