Most people seem to be at least aware of this fact, but they seem to be okay with it because it’s (at least not publicly known to be) paid exclusivity on Steam.
I always thought this was the strangest viewpoint. As a consumer, I’m inconvenienced by exclusivity exactly the same whether someone was paid or not. I’m really surprised that any consumer would care whether it’s paid. In my mind, if a consumer goes to their local store specifically to buy Product Y, and they find that the store doesn’t stock Product Y, they’re disappointed / upset no matter the reason it’s not stocked at that store. But apparently there are consumers out there who would withhold their opinion until they went home, did some research, and established whether the manufacturer of Product Y was paid to exclusively sell the product at another store. Only at that point would they be upset. If they learned that Product Y simply wasn’t stocked because the manufacturer refused to stock it in their local store, these consumers (apparently) remain happy that the system “works as intended.”
Also, most/all of the launchers encourage exclusivity by encouraging developers to make their games rely on a proprietary API. This encourages technical lock-in, and it’s basically a fee (in terms of development hours required) the developer needs to pay to launch the product on additional platforms. Consumers are apparently okay with this too, and I also find this strange.
Anyway, my opinion is that consumer view on launchers is wrong, obviously. Nearly all of them have features about them that encourage exclusivity, and they’re pretty much all bad for that reason.
Most people seem to be at least aware of this fact, but they seem to be okay with it because it’s (at least not publicly known to be) paid exclusivity on Steam.
I always thought this was the strangest viewpoint. As a consumer, I’m inconvenienced by exclusivity exactly the same whether someone was paid or not. I’m really surprised that any consumer would care whether it’s paid. In my mind, if a consumer goes to their local store specifically to buy Product Y, and they find that the store doesn’t stock Product Y, they’re disappointed / upset no matter the reason it’s not stocked at that store. But apparently there are consumers out there who would withhold their opinion until they went home, did some research, and established whether the manufacturer of Product Y was paid to exclusively sell the product at another store. Only at that point would they be upset. If they learned that Product Y simply wasn’t stocked because the manufacturer refused to stock it in their local store, these consumers (apparently) remain happy that the system “works as intended.”
Also, most/all of the launchers encourage exclusivity by encouraging developers to make their games rely on a proprietary API. This encourages technical lock-in, and it’s basically a fee (in terms of development hours required) the developer needs to pay to launch the product on additional platforms. Consumers are apparently okay with this too, and I also find this strange.
Anyway, my opinion is that consumer view on launchers is wrong, obviously. Nearly all of them have features about them that encourage exclusivity, and they’re pretty much all bad for that reason.