Valve Tells Players they Shouldn’t want the Steam Machine at a Lower, Subsidized Price as it goes Against “the Openness of the PC Ecosystem”

Valve has officially launched the Steam Machine today, revealing its incredibly expensive price tag that we all expected due to the ongoing component crisis. With a starting price of $1,049 for the most basic version of the Machine without a Steam Controller bundled in, it's a big hit to players' wallets, especially when living essentials everywhere are getting more expensive. But that's the way it ought to be, according to Valve, and it's the way that you should want it to be, for the good of the PC ecosystem.

That's what Valve is telling players in its launch announcement, and it's what it told The Verge ahead of the Machine's launch. Though the wording between the statement shared in a Steam Hardware blog post and the one given to The Verge differs slightly, the message is the same.

That we shouldn't want Valve to subsidize the price of the Steam Machine to instead continue supporting the idea that the PC ecosystem should be as open as possible, and if Valve were to subsidize the price of the Machine, it would encourage a closed system instead.

"While this [price subsidizing] might seem like an easy solution, it doesn't align with our beliefs about how healthy ecosystems are built," Valve told The Verge. "If there's anything we're religious about at Valve, it's our belief that open systems are better in the long run, for ourselves and customers. The openness of the PC ecosystem in particular has enabled it to be the primary driver of hardware and software innovation, because anyone with an idea for a way to do something better was able to take a shot at it."

"When companies sell their hardware under cost for competitive advantage, or buy exclusive content for it, they're doing that to build a more closed ecosystem, one where you don't get to choose what software you want to use. We don't want that for PC hardware, and we don't think you should want it either. You shouldn't feel like you have to buy Valve hardware; you should be able to view it as just one option alongside all the devices for playing games, and select the one that makes sense for you. This means you get to decide which device fits your personal tradeoffs around things like price, performance, form factor, peripheral support, and everything else you care about. That's the strength of the open PC platform, and subsidizing hardware runs counter to it."

Valve also confirmed that players who want to try building their own version of the Steam Machine, can do just that with the latest version of SteamOS. "With our newly-released SteamOS 3.8, you can run the same code and operating system as Steam Machine on your own living-room PC using whatever PC parts you want." As long as those parts include an AMD-made GPU, that is, since those are currently the only supported GPUs. Valve does say it is working on expanding that support in the future.

You won't find too many people who'd argue against more options for players, but Valve's comments aren't exactly the easiest for players to bear. Especially when they come alongside reports that Valve wanted to price the Steam Machine at $750 USD. For all its arguments against subsidizing the price of the machine to hit that $750 price tag, the reality is that Valve could've eaten the extra few hundred without breaking a sweat with how much money it makes operating Steam.

Its words also feel moot when Valve still develops exclusive games that you can only find on Steam-friendly devices. An open PC ecosystem with more options for players is obviously the most consumer-friendly ecosystem, but it standing on your soapbox about it after announcing a very expensive gaming box doesn't seem to do Valve any favours when its CEO is about as famous for his yacht collection as he is for being the founder of Valve.

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.