This Week's Episode of "Aging Executives Who Don't Understand The 21st Century"

I read this article earlier today about videogame retailers fighting back against Valve's Steam, the digital distribution platform I've previously gushed about here. According to the article, Steam is responsible for a whopping 80% of videogames downloaded on PCs (using "PC" to mean any personal computer, not just those running Windows). Apparently a number of UK videogame retailers are threatening not to stock any games distributed by Steam, to try and pressure publishers into not using steam. From the article:

The head of sales at a big-name digital service provider agreed: “At the moment the big digital distributors need to stock games with Steam. But the power resides with bricks and mortar retailers, they can refuse to stock these titles. Publishers are hesitant, but retail must put pressure on them.”

Yup, the power definitely does reside with the brick and mortar stores. Just to be safe, they should ask Hollywood and Blockbuster how they successfully put pressure on Netflix in order to.... oh.