In what scenario would Steam be dethroned?

So basically the only way Valve is going to get taken down is if all the head staff simultaneously lose all of their business sense. They aren't about to get taken down by an external force any time soon, so they'll have to go through a massive series of big controversies and customer-screwing decisions. I mean, EA still maintains a customer base even with their reputation and limited catalog. It would take something absolutely spectacular for Valve to drop dead, especially considering how invested their customers are.

If a DRM free service could take your Steam library (and Origin, Desura, etc.) and keep them in one place I'm sure that would become the Steams successor. Probably won't happen but I like to have dreams :b

That shit will NEVER happen. Not as long as there are crazed fan-boys like you who think Gabe, Valve and Steam are The Holy Trinity and refuse to have games anywhere else than on Steam. Like the way I don't understand people who have never played Mass Effect 3 because it's not on Steam and say would rather die than use Origin. Or the FUCKTARD IDIOTS who buy Ubisoft games on Steam and play them with TWO clients open, rather than just going the easy way and getting them directly on UPlay.

Also, even if it won't be the top dog anymore, Steam will NEVER disappear. No company ever pulls their games from Steam, usually it's valve that kicks them to the curve. Even EA...they announced they weren't gonna put their new releases on Steam anymore, but they left the older games right there where they were. SO you won't have to move your games anywhere if you don't want to. Only an idiot would think like that.

If companies make their move trying to dethrone steam, steam wont just sit there and let that happen, they probably will adapt, I think steam and valve are one of the smartest companies on the gaming field.

I think you're thinking like a console gamer. You mentioned having to move on to "the next big thing". PC gaming doesn't have that. You're talking as if you're afraid you threw your hat into the fad ring way too late because the "Steam fad" is coming to an end. IF Steam is ever "dethroned", do you really think they'll just take their ball and go home? No, that's what you would expect on a console, on PC, Valve would push and fight to reclaim that top spot.

With all of that said, what would it take? Someone would have to do what Steam does, do it better and offer PC gamers something they couldn't get on Steam. That right there automatically eliminates both Origin and Uplay. Sure, you can only get EA exclusive titles on Origin and while Ubisoft recently tried to do the same with their games and Uplay but caved after a day. Both of these companies have way too much stigma surrounding them to prevent them from ever coming close to taking the "throne".

Now, GoG Galaxy has the potential to take the "throne" but they won't, for 2 reasons. 1. They don't cater to many current games. The majority of the games they sell are older games. There's nothing else to really say about this, it's pretty black and white. 2. They don't do the sale thing very often. A few years ago, a couple guys at both EA and Ubisoft all of a sudden had their panties in a wad because they felt Valve was discounting games too heavily during Steam sales. So naturally, since the overlords were unhappy, the loyal subjects (read: gaming "journalists") were forced to question whether or not Valve was actually hurting the entire industry with the frequency and costs of the sales. During this time GoG actually came out against Valve, saying they feel frequent sales at heavily discounted prices diminish the point of having a sale. Instead of buying a game when they want it, players will wait for it to go on sale because they know it's bound to go on sale soon enough. While, there is some truth to what they're saying, let's face it, we PC gamers love our Steam sales.

I do hope Steam becomes less dominant. Nowadays there are so many people with the wont-play-unless-on-steam mentality, even for free games. And surely that's not a good thing for the industry in general. A lot of good games out there don't get much recognition, while shitty ones get all the attention just because it's on Steam.

Anyway my preference for game stores/portals is: itch.io > GOG > Steam > Desura > Origin. itch.io is awesome, more people need know about it.

if PA dev kills Gaben

It's almost impossible for Steam to be dethroned given the present day circumstances.Steam is growing and expanding too fast for something like Origin/GOG/Desura to catch up.

Think about it,Steam gave us features like music library,in-home streaming and announced a console and a OS in the last 2 years.It makes it easy for indie devs to get their game out there,it has it's own cloud with saves/screenshots/videos etc.It's own review system and trading system and much much more.

Steam will be here for a looooooong time and I think it will outlive Valve.

Who's to say Steam was ever really throned in the first place? Sure it provides a great experience for having all your games in one place with ease of installing and uninstalling and being on chatting with your friends even in-game, and some bonuses such as achievements and trading cards -- but really? It has downsides too, such as:
1) DRM. Ugh, nuff said.
2) Have to be online to play your games. Sure some provide offline access, but you have to jump through hoops before you have that availability.

Sure I have a lot of Steam games, I don't want them to go down either. But GOG Galaxy -- Someone needs to teach Steam that some things they're doing are just wrong. And if it's GOG Galaxy that finally accomplishes this, hey kudos to GOG.

IMHO GOG Galaxy will dethrone Steam. Soon or later.

I don't think that Steam have a throne at all, neither have dominance in games market. What do I see is an incredible useful tool, which makes our gamers life easier to buy and maintain our game collection.

There isn't ANY other good option in the market because of one thing: games publishers. Steam is a business tool perfect for 90% of the game publishers, and their popularity came with this. Origin sucks, uplay sucks but they are personal solutions and most games from EA and UBISOFT are available on Steam.

About DRM: DRM is something that stupid publishers put in their games to prevent piracy AND for game developers for the same reason. I think they should had learned when GOG launched Witcher with both options. Even with the DRM free option, people cracked the DRM version and the drm-free wasn't so spread in the internet. People crack games because DRM exist. People pirate games because they don't want to pay. It's delusional to think that people will start buying more games if they can't crack it. People who pirate games, songs, movies and any other stuff normally don't want to pay nothing for it. You can see the numbers of PS3 units before and after the first crack and understand quickly how this works.

Last, about GOG galaxy. I think I gave enough reasons of how it would never work for the great titles. Game industry is the same as Music and Movies. The big publishers aren't interested only in numbers, but how to control their IPs and who have access to it. Steam gave all the tools for them to control it and GOG doesn't have anything to offer on it. As I said, it isn't about money...

UPlay or Origin, or any other existing service will never dethrone Steam.. the reason being they are too restrictive. The only way another service is going to dethrone Steam is if Gaben dies and Andrew Wilson becomes the new CEO of Valve.

Probably Facebook, Google or Amazon will but it. Amazon could integrate Steam with twitch.tv; Google with Youtube, and Facebook could improve the social component and the integration with Steam (more than linking your Steam profile with your Facebook account)

Unless a client lets me migrate ALL my Steam game to it for free and is more reliable than Steam (sadly, not that hard as of lately) and all my friends move to it as well they will never dethrone Steam.

I can see a few scenarios where Steam is Dethroned in 5 years time (or longer)

1. Someone (probably EA) opens up new project similar to Greenlight. But with some modifications. If the game is high quality (as in well polished, bug free, with nice looking graphics etc.) it gets a dotation to finish it up. From 10 to 50 k$. Double that if it is their client exclusive. In the result indie scene moves away from Steam - well, at least the good part of it. On Greenlight all indie titles that are left is grass simulator, rock simulator and angry birds simulator. This causes more and more people to use two game clients. After a year or so the second stage of attack begins. Origin/uPlay/GoG Galaxy/Something else summer sale. Encouraged by lower commissions than on steam AAA developers slowly start to migrate to other platform. Price war begins. After a few more years other client gets 41% shares in PC digital games distribution, while steam drops to 40% shares.

To be honest it is not a really bad scenario.

2. Steam changes something in it's game policy, most likely after some new UE regulations. (further changing model from selling games to licensing them) Few months later one developer for some reason drops it's entire library from steam, and the games are removed from accounts of Steam users. After few months games return, but the damage is done. Digital distribution drops by 30-50%, and steam as the biggest fish in the pool gets hit hardest. Orign and uPlay survive mostly thanks to the first party games. Steam with relatively smaller first party library losses most. After some time Steam is bought by competition and accounts are merged.

Imagine that one day your steam account is uPlay account...

3. Valve shareholders insist on increasing profits. Steam increases commisions. Developers get angry, and start promoting their games in other services. Competition rises, while steam declines. After two years prices on one other platform are lower during sales than the ones on Steam. Two or three years later Steam drops to second place, two more years and it is on third place.

So gamers lose, developers lose, Valve lose, only EA and Ubisoft wins. I am not looking forward to this.

4. One other platform in it's new update releases some sort of metagame surrounding buying games. Win free games, free DLC, free in game items for buying and other things. Maybe there will be some sort of collectibles used for playing (like card game, but the only way to play it is to buy items in a store, or get achievements in the bought games) Popularity of this game/metagame is drawing more and more users to the site, which in turn generate much higher revenues. Steam tries to fight back, by releasing game played with badges and cards, but it is too little, too late. Few years later steam loses first place.

To be honest it is something which we can see with GOG Galaxy in a year or two. Maybe with Origin, but my money is on GOG. Why? Because they are relatively new on this market (With GOG Galaxy, not GOG itself) and might try something risky to get more market share.

Steam is big. But it is not too big to fall from the throne. Atari had over 80% of games market in 1981, over 70% in consoles and about 25% of personal computers. Where is it now? In 1983 over 40% of computers were manufactured by Commodore. Eleven years later they went bankrupt. Sega was battling neck to neck with Nintendo - even outselling it for some time. And now look at new Sega consoles.

Make no mistake - Steam will be dethroned. It will fall from first place in PC game delivery system. Not today, not tomorrow but one day it will. And the question is will it lose like Nintendo lost with Sony in the Playstation 2 era, or like Commodore with PC in early 90's.

"One of the things I'm getting a bit fearful about when it comes to PC gaming and Steam, is how easily and quickly an Origin or a uPlay or a GOG Galaxy could be the client/service that dethrones Steam."

"Origin or a uPlay "

"uPlay"

"dethrones Steam."

u wot m8!?

I don't mind having multiple game library software, Eg Steam, Origin, Desura.

Origin already has a great support and a refund policy. On GOG the games you buy are ACTUALLY yours and not "rented" + they're pro-consumer as much as they can be... All it would take for me to fully switch is for one of those to introduce market/trading + price tiers enabling what we have on Steam right now with RU/BR trading.