Should Retailers Stop Selling Games that Require Steam?

A couple of weeks ago, news got out that certain UK retailers were planning to stop selling games that require Valve’s Steam platform to play, citing that by selling such games to their customers, they’d essentially be sending them to a competitor. Being that Steam is getting bigger and bigger all the time, these retailers might have a point. But is this the solution?

I’m a big fan of Steam, but I am the first to admit that it has inherent issues. You can’t loan games to your friends, and sometimes you can’t even play your games if you are without Internet access. The upsides tend to overpower those, though, such as being able to re-download your games whenever you need to, have no game boxes to hog up room, and also be able to keep all of your games together in a single interface.

The problem for retails and e-tailers, is that Steam is a major competitor, offering up almost all of the new games people want to play in one convenient location. A growing number of games even sold on store shelves are requiring Steam to play, which means that even if a gamer walks out of a GameStop with their hard copy, they’ll be using Steam and have access to its store after installing.

I can understand the concern of the UK retailers here, but I’m not so sure that ceasing the sales of these games is going to help a thing. If a gamer wants to go to your store and can’t pick up what they want, then what reason does that give them to continue giving you their cash? As a counter-point, I’ve come to truly despise any sort of requirements like these, and I wish the trend would stop.

It bugs me to no end when a game requires an online platform to work, especially if it stores your saves in the cloud. It’s just clunky overall, and adds tons of hassle to what should be a simple thing. It’s not only Steam, but also Games for Windows Live. Try installing a game like Grand Theft Auto IV and see if you can get to the first mission within 15 minutes of loading it up. It’s just not going to happen thanks to this needless bloat…

All of that aside, I’m of the belief that gamers who purchase games in the store don’t care if they require Steam to play, and I have doubts that Steam is going to affect the sales of these retailers for brand-new games. I know a lot of people who need the actual game box, and others who refuse to buy anything in the store due to the convenience of Steam. If these retailers go through with their plans, they might just find themselves in an even worse position than before. But at the same time, if this results in less games requiring Steam to run, there’d be no complaint from me.

Insiders say Steam, run by US studio Valve, serves a massive 80 per cent of the PC download sector. And retailers preparing their own rival platforms don’t want that share to grow any more. Some of the biggest PC games – such as Call of Duty and Fallout – use Steam. But retailers are concerned that selling games with the tech built-in pushes users towards only buying games via Valve going forward. At least two major retailers will demand that publishers remove Steam from their games – or they will not sell them in any form.