Digital Download Services and the Need for Competition

You may remember that, a while back, Stardock’s CEO Brad Wardell posted a blog post outlining why gamers should encourage competition between download services like Steam and Stardock’s own Impulse. There was a lot more to the post (it is certainly a good read), but today I’d like to focus just upon the idea that Wardell puts forward about the need for competition. As an Economics student, I certainly agree with him; without competition, we’d likely end up paying extortionate prices set by the monopoly. Can you imagine a world where you pay nearly £50 for a single game? Oh wait, you probably can. Should probably make that £100.

I digress, I’d like to discuss the realities of competition in the digital download market for PC games at the moment. Just so I don’t spend a ridiculous amount of time talking about every single platform, I’ll stick with the big four: Steam, Impulse, GamersGate, and Direct2Drive.

The most obvious thing to compare is the prices of the games. Obviously, examples are in order here, so I’ll run through a few high-profile games and their prices.

Fallout 3

Steam: £26.99
Impulse: N/a
GamersGate: £40.46
Direct2Drive: £34.95

Company of Heroes

Steam: £13.99
Impulse: N/a (Only Tales of Valor is available)
GamersGate: £8.99
Direct2Drive: £19.50

Unreal Tournament III

Steam: £13.99
Impulse: £18.25
GamersGate: £14.95
Direct2Drive: £14.95

Assassin’s Creed

Steam: £19.99
Impulse: £12.17
GamersGate: £19.99
Direct2Drive: N/a

You’ll have noticed that some of these have been highlighted by me – this represents a ridiculous price point in comparison to some of the others. This is an important point – if these companies wish to compete, how do they think they are going to do it when, in some cases, their price is just under twice the price elsewhere? Anyone who even bothers to look elsewhere, even at only one other option, is no doubt going to go for the cheaper one. It seems like companies are relying upon people to buy from them blindly. Perhaps I’m overestimating the intelligence of the average shopper, but this is something that gets on my nerves more than it should.

The above list also highlights another point – how do these companies expect to compete when they don’t even offer similar libraries? It took me longer than it should to find games that appear on more than two of the four platforms. Obviously, companies buy the rights to sell the software, but surely a company like Stardock can get themselves more than 230 games to sell. As a reference, Direct2Drive sells about 500 games, Steam nearly 700, and Gamersgate around 1100. Sure, there’s a lot of fluff in there, but there is also a lot of fluff on Impulse. This means that there are only a handful of games worth getting on Stardock’s platform. If you want to promote competition, let us buy things from you!

Finally comes the subjective part of the article. I’m going to go ahead and say it: Steam is certainly the best of the four, by my judgement. Not only does it have regular sales, a much better interface, a higher standard of games in the library, and a not-annoying all-in-one client, but it is generally just the one that pissed me off the least. It has its faults: sometimes it can take a long time to start up a game, the client’s browser is slow, and sometimes the European and UK pricing is awful.

The other three are much harder to get along with. I’ll try to keep it to the main faults where possible. Impulse’s interface isn’t very easy to navigate, it has a poor library of games, the client is sluggish, and their friends system may as well not be there. The biggest problem, though, is that when you go to actually buy a game, it does its best to make sure you don’t. Recently I was sent a promotional code for 20% off. When I tried to buy something, I’m told that I cannot pay with a debit card. “No problem,” I thought. “I’ll just use PayPal.” However, you cannot use voucher codes with PayPal, only credit card purchases. Needless to say I did not make a purchase that day.

GamersGate recently had an overhaul which fixed the nasty layout issues on the site, but it still has problems. The download manager and system is a little heavy-handed and unnecessary; first you must download a file which begins the manager, then download the file, and then input the serial yourself. Perhaps not such a huge problem, but in this day and age and with my laziness getting worse daily, I don’t expect to have to input the serial myself.

Direct2Drive suffers from an ugly site with a poor layout, a lack of games, and a frankly awful sale system. In some cases, the sale is not even advertised, and one must manually navigate through all the games to see what is on sale at the time. Usually it’s not worth it anyway, as Direct2Drive, in my experience, seems to be the most consistent in being the most expensive option.

Perhaps this has turned into a rant about the drawacks of each of these platforms, but the original point stands- if these companies want to compete properly, they really ought to pay closer attention to their competitors. Honestly, who would pay £40 for Fallout 3 on GamersGate when the same game is just £27 on Steam. To me, that seems like you’re paying £13 more for the same game and a harder time installing it.