Platform Steam has enormous weight among developers. Even such that 72% of them consider it a monopolist in the computer games market. This was shown by a new survey by Atomik Research for the distribution platform Rokky, during which the opinions of more than two hundred heads of game studios in the UK and USA were surveyed.
The survey was conducted from May 18 to May 22 this year. 75% of respondents hold management or management positions, and 77% came from studios with more than 50 employees.
Although Steam is not technically a monopoly, more than half of those surveyed admitted that they were too dependent on him. Moreover, for the majority of respondents, Steam accounts for more than 75% of total revenue from all sales channels.
However, there are signs that the situation is gradually changing. More and more studios are testing other platforms – first of all Epic Games Store And Xbox/PC Storewhere almost 48% of developers have hosted their games. A tenth collaborate with GOG, and 8% use Itch.io, which remains the preserve of independent creators. Fun fact: 32% of developers still release at least some of their games on physical media.
In addition to traditional stores, alternative routes such as G2A, Kinguin, Fanatical or Humble Bundle are increasingly appearing, attractive due to their ease of use.
The survey also showed that 80% of studios surveyed want to actively use third-party channels in the next five yearswith three quarters expecting it to increase their sales by at least 10%. At the same time, there are concerns about the gray market and the loss of control over the distribution of his works.
Analyst Mat Piscatella of Circana added to the results that while Steam is dominant, it would be wrong to call it a monopoly. “Monopoly means that there is only one provider of a particular service without any alternative, which is not the case with the distribution of computer games. Anyone can start their own platform, and many have already been created.” he reminded. This is true, but none of them could directly threaten Steam. Epic and its store could tell this story. Even free-to-play games don’t help it compete directly with Valve’s platform.
Source :Indian TV
