by Tathagata Mukherjee
Published September 2023
Download full pdf of article here (TBC).
Abstract
With more than 120 million active monthly users (Steam, 2021) and over 44,000 games available for purchase (SteamSpy, 2021), Steam is a central figure with a near-monopolistic grasp over videogame distribution for desktop computing users. Its expansion into non-anglophone territories and displacement of existing distribution networks present an imperialist outlook and has become a cause for concern. This work will use a postcolonial and Marxist approach to highlight the gaps that exist in the study of platforms and the failings of whiteness that characterise the videogame industry. This paper aims to provide a methodology for reinterpreting existing archival records outlined by indigenous scholars.
Keywords: platforms, videogame distribution, Steam, postcolonial theory, decolonization, Marxist theory
Introduction
This paper will argue that the videogame distribution platform Steam presents an imperialist infrastructure engaged in colonial practices of expansion and displacement that controls and modifies how the videogame industry functions. The oppressive presence of whiteness in the context of videogames can often be observed in the complex technological setup of digital platforms, perpetuating structural inequalities that have economic and political consequences. By taking a postcolonial approach, I will account for the development of Steam since its launch in 2003, looking at it as a platform and as an imperial force that creates uneven power structures characterised by anglophone notions of race and culture.
The videogame distribution market is a vast and complex structure that has been documented mostly within the context of the formation of multinational game companies (Kent, 2001; Kohler, 2005; Kraus, 2009), with scholars focusing on understanding how the videogame industry works in different countries (Cervera & Quesnel, 2015; Deka, 2017; Horacek, Iparraguirre, Averbuj, & Oulton, 2015; Kerr, 2006, 2017) and how it is characterised by imbalances and prejudices (Gray, 2014; Gray & Leonard, 2018; Malkowski & Russworm, 2017; Murray, 2018a; Vysotsky & Allaway, 2018). While this paper is concerned about the imperialist threats posed by Steam, a brief outline of the distribution market through the years sets the stage for understanding at what point Steam entered the market and established itself in the years that were to come.
Scholars have studied platforms, both digital and gaming, as political objects (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009; Fordyce, 2021) configured by a capitalist system that challenges the idea of boundaries (Wallerstein, 1974). My choice to use a postcolonial approach to studying platforms is influenced by a need to establish how Steam resembles other digital platforms that are engaged in acts of subjugating non-white folk and their identities (Benjamin, 2019; Brock Jr., 2020; Nakamura, 2008; Gray, 2014). The role that race plays in the study of platforms is significant. It might not be at the forefront of this paper at all times, but it is present at every moment as a beacon that aligns our experiences with imperialist platforms as people of colour.
One needs to look at Steam from a place that is not influenced or structured by whiteness. We need to look at platforms not in the way they want to be observed and studied but in the way that remains hidden from plain sight, in materials that surround us but have been constructed in the same vein as platforms want us to see them. This paper is about reclaiming a narrative that helps us see Steam’s position in the videogame industry as clearly as possible. This work is inspired by indigenous scholarship (Pascoe, 2014; Smith, 2012) focused on reclaiming histories to paint an honest picture as well as by the work of platform studies scholars (Helmond & van der Vlist, 2019; Helmond, Nieborg & van der Vlist, 2019; Plantin, Lagoze, Edwards, & Sandvig, 2016) who have established the importance of reinterpreting archival materials. A platform’s imperialistic nature comes to the forefront once a methodical approach has been set to go through its various records, iterations, and archives. The colonial infrastructure of Steam can be more efficiently established as this work goes through how Steam has displaced other forms of distribution; monopolized the market; and established an imperialist hegemony that controls how videogames are produced, distributed, and consumed.
Thinking about decolonization is a step that I strongly consider as a way of restoring balance of power between consumers and Steam. Using postcolonial theories and Marxist critiques, I seek to articulate how the world of videogames is not just connected to reality but also has socio-economic effects on everyone involved in the process of making and consuming games. The problem that I will address is whether the power dynamic that Steam presents can be analysed to allow those that are marginalised by such platforms to reclaim that space. I hope that this paper encourages thinking about videogame distribution in a way which can reimagine the distribution market as a space that might be decolonized from the grasp of imperialists.
Steam and the Videogame Distribution Market
There is no singular moment in time throughout the history of videogames and gaming culture that can serve as a starting point to understand how game distribution works. This section provides a brief historical overview of videogame distribution focusing on its transnational development since the 1970s, before moving on to a discussion of modern, digital distribution practices and their effects on the videogame industry. The purpose of this overview is not just to contextualise Steam’s presence in the digital world but to establish what distribution looked like before Steam entered the market. The goal is not to differentiate between digital and non-digital forms of distribution but to understand the characteristics of non-digital forms of distribution and how Steam has built on it to become an all-encompassing platform of coloniality.
Before the popularity of digital distribution, retail distribution of physical media allowed the movement of products from one place to another. During the 1970s, when arcades were in vogue, a two-way distribution network between the U.S. and Japan paved the way for international distribution channels (Kent, 2001, p.64; Kohler, 2005, p. 15; Kraus, 2009, p. 78). The Japanese distribution network expanded in other parts of Asia, like Hong Kong (Wai-ming, 2015, p. 207) and Singapore (Wai-ming, 2001) in the late 1970s where both U.S. and Japanese products became available to consumers. In the 1980s, Indian retailers established informal game distribution practices; they travelled to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and Dubai to purchase Nintendo and Atari products to then sell in India (Deka, 2017). In countries like Argentina, distribution revolved around unlicensed merchandise that emulated U.S. and Japanese products (Horacek, Iparraguirre, Averbuj, & Oulton, 2015, p. 37) in the 1980s and 90s. Similar black market and gray market distribution networks were popular in Mexico till the 90s (Cervera & Quesnel, 2015) in the absence of official distribution channels, despite its proximity to the U.S. Global retail distribution of games was mostly a fragmented network serving the needs of domestic markets or markets that were deemed politically and economically important by the world.
Aphra Kerr (2006, p. 1) states that the videogame industry exploits digital distribution networks since there are no regulations, and this might explain why much of videogame production is still concentrated in the “Global North”, such as the U.S. and Japan (Apperley, 2010, p. 16). Production of videogames is mostly controlled by a small number of large companies (Kerr, 2006, p. 79) which impacts the experiences of players who are located outside the countries in the Global North (Apperley, 2010, p. 18). Kerr (2017, p. 7) claims that major videogame producers like Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts, amidst others, still consider physical distribution as a critical part of their production strategies, which might explain why the videogame industry was late to adopt digital distribution (Dymek, 2012, p. 48). Digital distribution is characteristically similar to retail distribution practices, and scholars have raised concerns about the widespread impact on players who are not located in the U.S. or Japan.
In the field of games, digital distribution is largely platform-based. Due to the low overhead costs of digital distribution, platforms like Steam benefit from the technological mechanisms (Allen-Robertson, 2013, p. 103) which provide game developers with more revenue (O’Donnell, 2012, p. 105). Stefan Werning (2019a) uses a diachronic affordance analysis to examine the role of technology in Steam growth as a social media platform and an economic ecosystem. Werning’s analysis (2019b, p. 18) of anti-corporate digital distribution platform Itch.io reveals that its $1 game pricing model is an extension of capitalist consumer culture. Digital distribution of videogames pushes for more control over how games are consumed, and often create communities that engage individuals to consume more.
In the videogame industry, a small group of digital platforms offer distribution services, many of which are closely associated with specific hardware: Sony’s PlayStation Store for PlayStation consoles, Microsoft’s Xbox Games Store for Xbox consoles, Nintendo’s eShop for Nintendo consoles, Apple’s App Store for iOS users, Google’s Play Store for Android users. In the desktop computing space, Steam has a near-monopoly on the distribution of videogames across OSs like Microsoft’s Windows, Apple’s macOS, and even Linux. U.S.-based game development studio Valve Corporation launched Steam in 2003 to validate physical games and distribute update patches through an installable software client and used this infrastructure to set up a digital distribution service for videogames that could be accessed by any consumer across the U.S., subsequently across the globe. Since then, Steam has grown to accommodate many other game studios, publishers, and player-consumers, all housed within a single platform. As one of the largest distribution platforms, it offers more than 44,000 game titles (SteamSpy, 2021) to 120 million active monthly users (Steam, 2021a). It has standardised digital distribution in the videogame industry, and its platform infrastructure affects videogame consumption— and more specifically, the consumers who are part of it.
Set up as an alternative to retail distribution of games, digital distribution dominates the former (Zackariasson & Wilson, 2012, p. 4), with 63.6% of players preferring to download games digitally (Limelight, 2019, p. 4). Although 59% of game developers are based in North America (GDC, 2019, p. 9), 53% (1.33 billion) of total player-consumers are located in the Asia-Pacific region (Newzoo, 2019, pp. 29–31), contributing to 47.4% (US$72.2 billion) of the total revenue earned by the global videogame industry in 2019 (Newzoo, 2019, p. 12). It can be assumed that digital distribution has been beneficial for allowing most developers to overcome the limitations of traditional distribution methods (Sandqvist, 2012, p. 145). This means that the U.S.-based videogame industry has a hegemonic role in the digital distribution and, in turn, the consumption of games in most non-Western countries.
The geographic and economic imbalance stated above is one of many inequities that characterise the field of videogames. Academics have been actively engaged in interrogating issues of discrimination (Gray, 2014; Vysotsky & Allaway, 2018), lack of inclusivity (Richard, 2015; Taylor, 2006), and marginalisation (deWinter & Kocurek, 2017; Harvey & Fisher, 2014) in gaming culture where topics of race, gender, and sexuality overlap (Gray & Leonard, 2018; Malkowski & Russworm, 2017; Murray, 2018a). While these studies have been framed from sociocultural perspectives of diversity and inclusion, scholars have also been addressing inequalities from non-anglophone, postcolonial perspectives of subjectification (de Wildt & Aupers, 2019; Penix-Tadsen, 2016), oppression (Mukherjee, 2017, 2018), and imperialistic expansion (Mukherjee, 2015; Nieborg, 2020). These studies are concerned with the specific ways that structural oppression in different areas of gaming culture and industry affects individuals.
Previous academic work about Steam investigated particular aspects of the platform (Lin, Bezemer, & Hassan, 2017; Lin, Bezemer, Zou, & Hassan, 2019; Werning, 2019; Windleharth, Jett, Schmalz, & Lee, 2016) and experiences of players in games on Steam (Gandolfi, 2018; Joseph, 2018). This paper aims to study Steam as an imperialist platform that uses distribution to expand into new territories. It takes a different approach to academic inquiry, inspired by ideas of decolonization put forward by indigenous scholarship (Pascoe, 2014; Smith, 2012, 2019). This academic approach is informed by the fact that Steam is more than just a distribution platform of videogames; it is engaged in imperialist practices colonising the videogame industry and its actors.
Imperialism, Videogames, and Marxist Critiques
Distribution determines an individual’s position in the production cycle (Marx, 2015[1973], pp.27–29) and governs the positive and negative effects that it has on an individual (Marx, 1999[1959], p. 598). When it comes to digital distribution of videogames, although game production is mostly controlled by a small number of companies (Kerr, 2006, p. 79) concentrated in the U.S. and Japan (Apperley, 2010, p. 16), the technological mechanisms of Steam have started providing game developers with more revenue (O’Donnell, 2012, p. 105), lowering overhead costs (Allen-Robertson, 2013, p. 103) and leading to a near-monopoly position for the platform in the game industry. This monopolisation characterises the industry (Dyer-Witheford & de Peuter, 2009) that is part of a decentralised global political and economic order (Hardt & Negri, 2000) and has led to an increased awareness of the political nature of videogames (Hammar, de Wildt, Mukherjee, & Pelletier, 2021) amongst scholars. For a platform like Steam, the capitalistic videogame industry becomes the perfect place to thrive, build, and establish a stronghold for global game distribution.
Platforms are imperially formulated (Fordyce, 2021, p. 301) contributing to colonial mechanisms that need to be challenged (Mukherjee & Hammar, 2018, p. 11) to form postcolonial perspectives (Mukherjee, 2017) and address the geographic, economic, and political asymmetries currently present in such structures (Jin, 2013, 2015; Nieborg, 2021). Forces of imperialism often lead to the colonisation of people and resources within an oppressive capitalist system (Lenin, 1978[1917]), leading to class polarisation (Hegel, 1967, pp. 150–151) and economic expansion (Schumpeter, 1954). Platforms challenge the idea of the geographical boundaries of world-systems (Wallerstein, 1974, 2011[1974]) while being governed by the logic of an inequitable relationship (Suny, 2001, p. 25) consisting of both imperial and subordinate societies (Doyle, 1986, p. 30). A methodology that connects videogames to the global political economy (Murray, 2018b) highlighting the class struggle between white oppressors and those who wish to destabilise them (Hammar, 2020) becomes a necessity to study platforms. The application of postcolonial theories and critiques of gaming culture and industry highlight global inequities that affect anyone who is not part of a special elite class located at the top of the production cycle.
A Postcolonial Approach
In the context of platforms, and more specifically Steam, we see a colonisation of videogames’ distribution practises through the formation of imperial powers facilitated by expanding into new territories, adapting to local economic conditions and undermining established systems. I consider the use of a postcolonial lens a key approach that can shed light on why we should be more concerned about the way Steam operates.
Postcolonial theory has helped articulate the devastating effects of imperialism after World War II through its assessment of the idea of the other, mapped out by scholars as early as Fanon (1967) and Said (1978), with more recent critiques contributing to this concept from scholars such as Ahmed (2000), Lentin & Titley (2011), and Gilroy (2005). The concept of the other validates the existence of the colonial class struggle that has continued to contribute to imperialism even within multicultural and global societies, forcing colonised subjects to participate in their oppression.The role of race and ethnicity is critical to postcolonial studies and to understanding imperial power formation. Evidence gathered by scholars has shown that platforms seek to neutralise the ideas of race (Nakamura, 2008) and block the resistance mounted by minorities to reclaim their identities (Gray, 2014). Digital platforms and digital technology become a space for white racial ideology to subjugate people of colour (Brock, Jr., 2020) through discriminatory algorithms that lead to commodification, sexualisation (Noble, 2018, pp. 16), and segregation (Benjamin, 2019, pp. 25–26). The subjugative nature of platforms does not just allude to the idea of an imperialist power structure but verifies its existence in more ways than one. Perhaps even more concerning is how platform structures reinforce these oppressive logics by creating new layers upon existing layers through updates (Hu, 2015), thus habituating users to continued participation (Chun, 2016). The presence of distribution on such networks provides a cogent imperialist structure that can control information flows and subsume subjects using it.
(Re)Interpretation of Steam
Since platforms like Steam are subject to permanent alteration and fluctuations (Brügger & Finnemann, 2013, p. 72) that lead to undocumented changes, this paper examines press releases, news reports, and interviews pertaining to Steam and its co-founder, Gabe Newell, from 2003 till 2020 using databases like Factiva and Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine to reconstruct a history of the platform that lies beyond the recordings of Western objectivity.
Applying postcolonial theories to media objects like videogames helps articulate their relationship to the world. The resulting analyses reveal the uneven power relationships that exist not just in gaming culture but also beyond it, enabling them to produce an account of these inequities to reflect an understanding of the individuals who are oppressed.
Indigenous studies scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012, p. 21) states that imperialism can be read as an economic expansion and subjugation of an other, leading to the colonisation of indigenous knowledge. Smith (2012, pp. 42–45) says that the first step to decolonization is to reject the language of the oppressor to understand the reality of the oppressed living on indigenous land infected by colonialism. Indigenous Australian author Bruce Pascoe (2014) uses European accounts of the world, and particularly Australia, to reconstruct these anglophone narratives in a way that challenges established records and reframes them from an indigenous and local viewpoint. This work seeks to formalise archival research as an alternative to Western objectivity, highlighting the ironies and failings of whiteness and Eurocentric, anglophone civilisations. Pascoe states that the cultural, social and economic aspects of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have been misrepresented and devalued in the accounts of white colonisers and explorers (2014, p.11).
Pascoe claims that Anglophone records make assumptions that suit their coloniser narratives and filter information to justify their imperialist goals. I use this perspective to revisit archival materials so that they can be interpreted from a non-white point of view and in order to understand how Steam functions. Smith (2012) states that anglophone approaches to making sense of the world do not necessarily bring out the injustices that are embedded deep within, which complements Pascoe’s outlook and reinforces the logic of the methodology that I use in this work.
Scholars engaged in the study of other digital platforms have used historical analyses in different capacities to shed light on the inner workings of platforms. Helmond, Nieborg, and van der Vlist use an “empirical historical approach” (2019, p. 124) to gain a deeper understanding of Facebook’s architecture to answer political-economic questions tied to technological and economic expansion. Plantin, Lagoze, Edwards, and Sandvig (2016) emphasize the importance of historical analysis when it comes to looking at the infrastructure of platforms through case studies that focus on Google, Facebook and the Open Web. Their analysis focuses on establishing a different perspective on the study of platforms while trying to differentiate platform studies from infrastructure studies. Anne Helmond & Fernando N. van der Vlist’s (2019) work on developing a methodological outlook for historical platform studies played a crucial role in the formation of the methodology of this research. Their research (2019) highlights the significant role that archival material plays when it comes to reconstructing histories of platforms and writing histories from a different vantage point.
Applying this historical and archival research method returned 8,372 records that were surveyed for this paper. 340 articles, reports, interviews, and press releases out of these 8,372 records were analysed. These archival materials were thematically analysed and then categorised based on their themes. These themes include displacement of non-digital forms of distribution, Steam’s attempts to control the videogame industry, the formation of imperialist governance within game distribution, and localisation efforts to expand into non-Western territories.
Displacement of Non-Digital Forms of Distribution
Archival research shows that Steam started focusing on “social networking and online multiplayer features” (Alexander, 2007) as early as 2007 to increase interaction levels between players (Boyer, 2007) and throughout the years has added more features such as Steam Trading for exchanging gifts and cosmetic items (Sinclair, 2011; Valve, 2011a), Steam Workshop for creating and distributing “mods” (Valve, 2011b), Steam Community Market for purchasing and selling content using Steam Wallet (Schreier, 2012), and Steam Trading Cards (Valve, 2013). These features have also led to scammers stealing Steam accounts (Rose, 2014), hackers stealing high-value items (Orland, 2015; Wawro, 2015a), and backlash from player-consumers over the commodification of free mods (Valve, 2015; Wawro, 2015b). The addition of such features has always focused on offering consumers what non-digital forms of distribution cannot provide, to displace and replace them, thus creating an abundance of value for users so that they cannot leave the platform.
Steam’s Attempts to Increase its Control over the Videogame Industry
Apart from ensuring that players remain engaged, Steam has also focused on using exclusive distribution partnerships to attract videogame developers like Ubisoft (McWhertor, 2008); Square Enix (Steam, 2009a); Massive Multiplayer Online game developer NCsoft (Steam, 2009b); family-friendly entertainment publisher PlayFirst (PRNewswire, 2009); Electronic Arts and select games from its catalogue (Electronic Arts, 2019; Maragos, 2005; Rose, 2011); and developer of female-focused games such as the Nancy Drew series, Her Interactive (Business Wire, 2009). While Steam focused on distributing games for Microsoft Windows operating system users from 2003 to2009, it expanded its focus to Apple OS and Linux OS by distributing games for free (Manila Bulletin, 2010), optimising existing products (Cifaldi, 2012, 2013a) and building entirely new Steam Machines hardware (Ligman, 2013) that would run on a Linux-based operating system called SteamOS (Graft, 2013a). The latter was a push towards complete control of the videogame industry (Rose, 2013b) through the production of hardware, software, and distribution of games, competing with companies like Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. This project failed due to a lack of consumer adoption (McAloon, 2019), leading Steam to discontinue its work on SteamOS and Steam Machines (McAloon, 2018; Orland, 2018). This specific development highlighted Steam’s zeal to expand beyond videogame distribution by producing the very foundations (hardware and software) that players need to play games.
A System of Imperialist Governance
Steam co-founder Gabe Newell has admitted in various interviews that Steam has often gatekept (Graft, 2013b) processes that were supposed to be democratic (Valve, 2012) and how the platform is a dictatorship attempting to migrate to a participatory model (blogphilofilms, 2013; Cifaldi, 2013b). Even game developers consider Newell as a “benevolent dictator” (Barrett, 2016) who controls a “better monopoly” (Barrett, 2016) which serves their profitmaking interests (Webster, 2009). Steam’s parent company, Valve Corporation, is devoid of hierarchy, which on paper suggests independence and freedom (Graft, 2012) but employees’ worth depends on meeting Newell’s expectations (Nutt, 2015) and creating value for Steam (Wawro, 2017) by acting like consumers (Peterson, 2013). Reports of discriminatory behaviour, including “dehumanising” transphobic behaviour (Matulef, 2018) and exploitation of minors (Brightman, 2016), recently put this structure under legal scrutiny, but the case was ruled in favour of Valve (Klepek, 2018). Understanding the contexts that Valve Corporation creates for its clients and its employees plays a crucial role in understanding what the Steam platform stands for and the consequences people face when questioning or critiquing it.
Regional Pricing and Currency Support
The Steam videogame distribution platform is global, allowing consumers from almost all countries and territories to access it, barring those that have an export restriction sanction issued by the U.S. government. As a result, Steam has made a move towards offering regional pricing, allowing players in non-US countries to purchase videogames at an adjusted price based on the exchange rates and fluctuations of the local currency in a particular region against the U.S. Dollar (USD) and predetermined with the help of extensive market calculations done by the platform (Birnbaum, 2017; Steamworks, 2021a, 2021b). Since 2014, Steam has expanded from supporting just five currencies to serve its 75 million active monthly users globally (UOL BoaCompra, 2014) to thirty-nine currencies (Steamworks, 2021c, 2021d) in 2021, adding local currency support for consumers in the UK, Europe (Valve, 2008) Brazil, Mexico, Turkey (UOL BoaCompra, 2014), Colombia, Peru (UOL BoaCompra, 2015), India (Alwani, 2015), Argentina, Costa Rica, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Poland, Qatar, Ukraine, Uruguay, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka (Birnbaum, 2017) and Australia (Valve, 2018). With the availability of hyper-localised payment options for certain regions (Alwani, 2016), Steam has also made sure to region-lock its games (Steam, 2020) and prevent players from exploiting regional pricing features through Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) (Beckhelling, 2020). By distributing games in regions and countries other than the U.S., Steam has gathered enough information about their economies to reduce the friction encountered by consumers when attempting to purchase games across borders, ensuring that videogame consumers in these countries purchase games exclusively on Steam.
The Role of Distribution as an Imperialist Function of Steam
Distribution is a process, a step in a capitalist production system (Marx, 2015 [1973], p. 27) that allows game developers to deliver their products to Steam users. Steam acts as a point of control that has reduced distribution to an imperialist function of profitmaking. This is complemented by how Steam goes beyond the distribution of games to engage player-consumers and ensure that they keep coming back to the platform. Steam uses distribution to set up an elaborate globalised socioeconomic system where player-consumers become active participants in the standardisation of imperialist aspects of game distribution. The platform uses distribution as a tool to get player-consumers to purchase games and use community-based features to keep them engaged.
The underlying logic of how Steam uses distribution becomes crucial in understanding how the processes of distribution and audience engagement feed into each other to set Steam up as an imperialist platform. Smith (2012) articulates how imperialism operated as a means for colonisers to secure new markets and expand their territories of control beyond boundaries, subjugating non-white, non-anglophone people. Steam blurs geographical boundaries by concentrating on localisation efforts through translations, regional pricing, and local currency support. This leads to the formulation of a new imperial power where the platform adapts to local economic conditions by colonising existing systems of language and currency. Steam has almost managed to redefine the idea of a modern, digital world-system (Wallerstein, 1974) through the otherisation of player-consumers due to the colonial setup of its platform. This shows how a digital platform offers a more all-encompassing, literal, world-systems model and conceptualises a modern understanding of imperialism.
Displacement as an Operational Logic of Steam
Steam can be considered as a platform that is made up of different layers. Each new update constitutes a single layer that gets added to the platform over the top of existing layers and contributes to Steam’s technological expansion. A new update is supposed to fix issues present in older layers. Instead, the new layer obscures the old ones from view. It displaces the old layers, takes their place, and modifies the Steam platform through expansions that remain unexplained. The functions and rules belonging to older layers remain visible despite the layers themselves disappearing under a new update. So, new layers absorb all the issues that the older layers had, and they now present a new problem, which will ideally be addressed in a future layer and update.
Taking a step back from Steam and looking at the distribution of videogames reveals the same issue of displacement. The platform was launched in 2003 by a company located in the U.S. as a validating system, but it was always positioned as a global digital distribution network that would compete with non-digital forms of game distribution on an international level. As Steam kept updating itself, each new layer made it easier for game developers and player-consumers still reliant on retail distribution to look to Steam as a solution as it solved issues posed by non-digital forms of distribution. The platform has always been building layers on top of these non-digital forms of game distribution and used these layers to expand its service into countries other than the U.S., where it displaced local retail distribution practices to take their place and increased accessibility to games. Such territorial expansions allow Steam to extend the uneven power dynamics of the platform, where it controls the price of each game, the availability of each game, and how each game should be consumed in a particular country.
Updates to Steam are imperialist expansions. They force subjects to either comply or lose access to their library of games, thus further displacing these subjects’ ability to question Steam with each new update. From a geographical perspective, each layer accumulates power by colonising existing regional distribution systems. Each localised expansion empowers Steam to control the flow and consumption of videogames in locations beyond its jurisdiction. This explanation builds upon the works of Noble (2018), Chun (2016) and Hu (2015), whose discussions about the power of updates offer crucial points about governance and control on digital structures. The approach taken by this paper shows that Steam is more than just a distribution platform, as it colonises parts of local economies and consumption practices.
Monopolisation in the Videogame Industry
Steam’s centrality to the videogame industry has direct consequences for the actors who are part of this sector as well as wider global economic consequences for those who enjoy videogames. Through its digital distribution network, Steam has standardised how videogame distribution works by governing multiple parts of the videogame production cycle. It is not just a monopoly, but an infrastructure that extracts economic value from all participants and keeps expanding itself.
Lenin (1987[1917], pp. 255–264) considers imperialism as an economic stage in which a capitalistic monopoly has established its domination and colonial empires can often be found investing in rapid development in their colonies to extract value. In the context of Steam, game developers often have no choice but to distribute their games via Steam due to its massive, global consumer base. The way Steam has constructed its platform as a closed system relies on a false notion of openness, in that this system exists strictly in an expansionist sense of profitmaking and domination over global media consumption.
With every aspect of videogame production being dependent on Steam, a hegemony in the world of videogames has been advanced, one which is not just U.S.-centric but Steam-centric as well. The problem that this platform presents is colonisation of the videogame industry’s political and economic processes. Steam creates a culture that is shaped by this colonisation and becomes an intrinsic part of videogame production. Throughout the years, games journalists have been constantly trying to ascertain Steam’s revenue and market share, reporting an approximate 75% market share in 2013 (Edwards, 2013) and later in 2017, an estimated revenue of US$4.3 billion (excluding sales from DLCs and microtransactions; Bailey, 2018), which comprised 18% of total digital PC games sales (US$23.9 billion; Batchelor, 2017). This research shows that the problem is not so much about the exact financial position of Steam in the videogame market; it is as much about its hegemony within the marketplace, affecting consumption, exchange, and production from its position as a major player controlling the sale of PC games.
Moving Towards Decolonization
Studying a platform like Steam and how it perpetuates an unequal power dynamic steeped in the imperialist tendencies of the videogame industry and its distribution practices shows the interconnectivity of white oppression, colonisation of indigenous spaces, and imperialist infrastructure. This research focuses on the economic inequalities that exist in society through their critiques of modern capitalist systems of production. It also reveals how colonial empires establish political governance through economic and geographic expansions, articulating the systematic oppression they produce in the contexts of capitalism and colonialism (Lenin, 1987 [ 1917]; Jin, 2013, 2015). Elizabeth LaPensée, Outi Laiti, and Maize Longboat (2021), while discussing the involvement of Indigenous people in the production of videogames, talk about the ability, or lack thereof, of Indigenous people to self-govern their own representation in videogames. The idea of sovereignty plants the seed of an alternative to the current imperialistic traditions in the videogame industry.
The asymmetric power structure of Steam contributes to the process of subjugation, exploitation, and discrimination against a select group of individuals so that the power to control and govern remains concentrated in the hands of the oppressor. Postcoloniality is often theorised from the perspective of the oppressed, and this perspective paves the way for the decolonization of how we study oppression on platforms. The process of decolonization will serve as a key for understanding and engaging with a reinterpretation of how platforms like Steam are perceived by the world.
Can We Decolonize It? (Yes, We Can!)
The imperialist infrastructure of Steam reflects the ideals of white colonisers and their practices of expansion and displacement. Steam controls how the videogame industry functions and the effects this power has on the global political economy. The more the platform expands and updates itself, the more layers are added to its existing structure. This leads to an accumulation and growth of power and the obsolescence of older forms of distribution, conditions upon which Steam operates its effective monopoly. The platform’s capacity allows it to use distribution not just to control the flow of videogames around the world but also to perpetuate the otherisation of player-consumers. The significance of examining inequities on digital structures from the perspective of the player-consumer becomes clearer through an understanding of the colonial nature of platforms.
Platforms are highly problematic structures. Their fundamental infrastructure presents a colonial problem in the form of imperialistic expansion and displacement due to monopolistic ambitions. Previous research conducted by postcolonial and critical race theory scholars has identified and examined the formation of oppressive frameworks on platforms and within the context of the videogame industry. By reinterpreting existing records of Steam in the vein of indigenous scholarship, I have attempted to decolonize how we study platforms and approach the problem of imperialism in the videogame industry.
Both Linda Tuhiwai Smith (2012) and Bruce Pascoe (2014) discuss in their works how much of formalised historical accounts are told from the perspective of colonisers. Smith (2012, pp. 30–32) draws attention to the fact that historical materials and archives are important in understanding the present, but they need to be reclaimed from the point of view of the colonised. In a similar vein, Pascoe (2014, pp. 150–151) discusses how history has been, to a certain extent, insulated, one-sided accounts by Anglophone historians in the U.S. and Europe sprinkled with a whiteness that is imperialistic and moralising. I have taken into consideration that a significant portion, if not all, of the archival material that I have incorporated into this paper, whether it comes directly from Steam or media outlets, have been created from a U.S.-centric, Western perspective that can be quite limiting in understanding the breadth of the problem that Steam poses. Therein lies my move for decolonization as I reinterpret Western records from my own experiences as a person of colour, as a consumer on Steam, and as a scholar whose world is more than just the ideal dictated by Western objectivity.
Steam presents an unequal power dynamic that is all too familiar within the context of race, power, and global politics. Decolonization through reinterpretation identifies how imperialist platforms operate and colonise digital spaces and users within those spaces. It provides a voice to the oppression that has been propagated by the whiteness of Western perspectives of the videogame industry and platform cultures. The layers that exist atop Steam need to be broken down so that Steam becomes an equitable site for game developers, publishers, and player-consumers. Steam’s monopoly control over videogame distribution requires further examination to prescribe methods of checking such expansionist tactics and empowering the individual actors within the videogame industry. Although this paper does not address the perspective of game development in different countries, the hegemonic role of the U.S.-centric production of games occasionally leaks into the critical commentary on imperialist infrastructures.
The aims that I draw from my research are ambitious. They attempt to offer more resolutions than can be readily arrived at through academic interventions. Nonetheless, I feel that we need aims and goals to orient our political aspirations. This orientation gives us an idea of how we can begin and proceed from this point onwards (Ahmed, 2006, p. 545) so that we can think and attempt to decolonize platforms and distribution practices. I frame the following recommendations in this light – not as a checklist of things that we need to achieve, but as tools that can orient ourselves to take action against imperialism.
First, the imperialist tendencies embedded in platform structures need to be strictly regulated through antitrust laws. These platforms are global, and the way they set up information flows in countries all over the world shows a disregard for regional jurisprudence. Governments need to set up commissions that can investigate these platforms and hold them responsible for how they treat the citizens of a country, in the model of, for example, the European Union Antitrust Policy. Regulatory frameworks that focus on levelling the playing field for producers, consumers, and platforms should be a priority to ensure that these structures cannot monopolise and dispossess existing businesses or continue to commodify individuals.
Second, the videogame industry needs to organise itself and establish global and regional regulatory bodies comprised of game developers, publishers, and consumer representatives that oversee production, distribution, and consumption practices. Policies need to be established democratically so that consumers can purchase and play videogames without needing to be subsumed by distribution platforms. Platforms need to adhere to regulatory frameworks at a global and regional level so that consumers have the freedom to choose independently. This will help refocus on the local and the regional while maintaining connections to the global gaming community and industry. The political-economic conditions of the videogame industry are currently shaped by imperialist visions and colonial ambitions, and if we want to understand and address this problem any better, we have to decolonize how we study platforms and videogames.
Author Biography
Tathagata Mukherjee recently graduated from Monash University with a Master of Communications and Media Studies. His Master’s thesis focused on the imperialist aspects of the videogame distribution platform Steam. His academic interests include decolonization, platform infrastructure, identity formation, and distribution practices.
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