That’s also what makes the prospect of a platform war in PC so wrongheaded. I think you’re right, that the other vendors are starting to see this as a serious fight, but it’s just not true. Using Steam does not make me less likely to use GamersGate or Impulse. My PC can work with all these different platforms. It’s not zero-sum the way it often is between Sony and Microsoft. They can all flourish together provided they keep offering me advantages that keep me coming back. I like GOG’s truly DRM-free approach, I like GamersGate’s selection and emphasis on strategy, and I like it when D2D is really cheap. And I love how convenient Steam is. Impulse… well, I like Stardock games.

What will make this destructive is if they all start trying to cut each other down. If this boycott triggers a war where suddenly titles are going vendor-exclusive, consumers are going to be the big losers. Right now it’s a fairly free and open market, but exclusivity will kill that. Then PC will lose one of its remaining huge advantages over consoles: lower average prices.

Between Steam, Games For Windows Live, Battle.net, and probably others, what we have here is an emerging platform war within the PC platform. I guess PC developers aren’t used to that, but Gearbox did publish their games on consoles.