Steam has easily made PC gaming pleasant for us all, making purchase of games easy and providing some great prices on thousands of games, but it seems that it is not going down too well with retailers who fear the service’s market dominance.
Source’s from MCV have revealed that some UK game retailers have been telling publishers of games which work with Steam to strip them of their Steam connections or face the consequence of having their games taken from their shelves. The big concern here being that customers would preferably just download the game from Steam instead of buying the hard copy of the PC game from retailers (especially with huge games like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Fallout: New Vegas available from the service).
One unnamed exec for a big unnamed UK gaming retailer (not that there could be that many to guess from) said that “Publishers are creating a monster - we are telling suppliers to stop using Steam in their games”. It seems that same unnamed exec put for their reasoning with the rhetoric that “if we have a digital service, then I don’t want to have to start selling a rival in-store”, but it seems that other companies want to simply pave their way into this success, keeping Steams monopoly as low as possible.
It’s not just the high-street stores that are concerned with Steam however. With Steam holding a massive 80-percent of the gaming download market, rival services have agreed with the problem. One head of a rival digital service provider said; “At the moment the big digital distributors need to stock games with Steam. But the power resides with bricks and mortar retailers, they can refuse to stock these titles. Publishers are hesitant, but retail must put pressure on them.”
There are also concerns of Steam being the next iTunes of the gaming industry, with Gaikai CEO David Perry saying; “Steam has made it so easy for everyone and they have lots of users. But how long do you wait before you take control of your own digital strategy? Like with iTunes, at some point it's going to be too late.”
Steam indeed has the monopoly of the PC gaming download market at the moment, but with its success would publishers truly cave to the retailers demands or is their influence strong enough to keep going as they are?
Via: Slash Gear