For well over a decade, Steam has been the first port of call for anyone who wants to buy or sell a video game on PC. While there are alternatives like GOG, the Epic Store, and *snigger* The Xbox PC Games store, Steam's enormous user-base, and, frankly, superior user experience make it the de facto marketplace where PC gamers make their purchases and developers jostle for their attention.
But does Steam's dominance of the PC gaming market constitute a monopoly? Well, according to a new whitepaper, most game developers think so. Titled 'The State of PC Game Distribution' (via GamesIndustry), the paper concludes that 72% of game developers believe the platform has a monopoly on the PC games market.
The whitepaper was published by the digital distribution platform Rokky. If you're wondering "who the heck is Rokky?" then it's a new distribution platform that aims to connect publishers with various digital storefronts around the globe. The whitepaper was based on an independent study conducted by Atomik Research, which surveyed 306 executives in the UK and US between May 18 and May 22 this year.
Of those surveyed, 77% were from companies with more than 50 employees, while three-quarters were C-suite level senior managers. This does seem a bit like asking a group of foxes, "Do you think henhouses should be easier to get into?" If anything, the fact that less than three-quarters of respondents agreed that Steam has a monopoly is surprising, and I'd expect it to be much higher.
Of those companies surveyed, the majority said that Steam accounted for more than 75% of their revenue, which isn't surprising, but does provide a clearer idea of just how reliant many studios are on Valve's platform. More intriguing, however, are the figures regarding Steam's competition:
48% of respondents said they had distributed at least one game to either the Epic Store or the Xbox PC Games store, while only 10% have used GOG, and less than 8% have used Itch. Given the types of studios that contributed to the survey, that latter figure is not enormously surprising. Rokky acknowledges this caveat, stating that its survey is "dominated by larger companies with diverse portfolios."
The greatest consensus the study found regarded the future shape of gaming distribution, with 80% of respondents saying they expect to use alternative distribution channels alongside Steam in the next five years. This includes the aforementioned storefronts as well as marketplaces like GTA and Kinguin, and bundle specialists like Fanatical and Humble Bundle.
Rokky's CEO and co-founder Vadim Andreev said the company "created this report to highlight the trends that matter, though I rather think attention might have something to do with it (in which case, well played!). If Steam does have a monopoly (and let's face it, it probably does) it's largely because nobody has come up with a rival that does what it does anywhere near as well, as explained by Robin Valentine when he reviewed PC gaming's various launchers last year.
