I mean, provide evidence that it doesn’t? Why would we have to seek dev opinions to prove this?
I find it fascinating that Lemmings suddenly turn off their critical thinking skills when it comes to Valve. We really need to study this.
But they’re my favorite treat seller 🙁
What criticism of Valve do you have?
Aside from fostering and enabling a gambling addiction in millions of children?
Well they are being criticized for this in every relevant thread so I wonder if there’s something else for your critical thinking claim.
If only this was true.
They have the largest share and can direct the market/development, no question, but they not a monopoly. I think GOG has a good shot to complete as time carries on. At least while Gabe is still alive, they’ve been relatively ethical.
If the choice of largest developer platform is between Steam and companies like Epic, EA, or Microsoft, Steam still looks like a better alternative.
Came here to rant similarly. Just because they’re the biggest in the market does not mean they have a monopoly. There are plenty of options available, no one is locked into using or selling on steam.
“Lock-in” doesn’t make it a monopoly; market share does, and Steam dominates there. So much so that EA gave up on offering things exclusively on Origin.
I buy games on GOG when they’re available, but it seems like their market share is getting smaller as time goes on.
That said, the barrier to entry for a Steam competitor is non-existent, so they may never really be able to have a true monopoly. They can still have problematic levels of influence, though. I’m sincerely worried about what direction Valve will take after Gaben retires or dies.
Steam has so many features built-in like steam input, remote play [together], the forums with guides and stuff while most other platfors are relatively barebones, I’m not sure all stores have regional pricing either, they say Steam is a monopoly but they have done a lot to gain their market share for better or for worse
Steam remains on top because they remain the best. Can’t say I’d happily switch to a different platform given the games in my library but I’m open to it if the store provides a better experience
Yeah other than gog and itch every other platform is terrible. Epic gives a bigger share to devs and gives away a lot of free games, but they’re a publicly traded company trying to buy their way into the market so they can enshittify.
Basically, there isn’t a moat around pc game stores, but competitors aren’t even trying to be as nice as steam, and many publishers don’t publish to the best alternative because they want you use DRM (gog)
Epic gives a bigger share to devs and gives away a lot of free games, but they’re a publicly traded company trying to buy their way into the market so they can enshittify.
220+ free games in the library. One paid game that was an exclusive that wasn’t worth it in the end. No other transactions. Haven’t done the math, but in retail prices, that’s a lot of money to piss away hoping I’ll spend anything more.
They’re not giving away retail price games. They’re paying dev teams single payouts to make a game limited-time-claimable. Your copy of a $60 game didn’t cost Epic $60, it cost them “$400k divided by number of downloads within the promo period”. And the devs take the payout because they know it’s coming in addition to all the paying customers on Steam. Basically a guaranteed return on investment.
Whoa, that’s really neat information. Thanks for sharing!
MS Gamepass uses the same model. Some percentage of a customer’s $30/mo doesn’t go to Sandfall Studios for “selling” Expedition 33 on Gamepass, Sandfall got a fat lump sum from MS in exchange for MS being allowed to distribute their game to subscribers.
Sure is! Didn’t say their strategy was working lol
They have the largest share and can direct the market/development
That means they’re a monopoly. Having some small fry competitors doesn’t make you not a monopoly.
Look up the case of Standard Oil, against which an antitrust suit was filed, charging it with abusive monopolistic practices. The case was won, and Standard Oil was broken up - at a time when it had less than 70% market share.
I don’t know if I would say they’re a monopoly there are other options/store fronts out there…it’s just that the vast majority outside of GOG suck. in fact they all suck OTHER than Steam and GOG.
And as a Linux user…I ain’t got much of a choice. Steam, now, just works for me. I don’t even have to toggle the compatibility option anymore or hell even mess around with proton if I don’t want to. install steam via whatever package manager or flatpak and i’m off to the races.
Anything other than Steam is unlikely to work. EA, Epic, and Microsoft have all essentially told me they don’t want my business simply because I use Linux.
I think it qualifies as a monopoly because of the network effect of having so many users and so many games on it. Especially on the developer side, it’s basically mandatory to release your game on Steam because the number of users you can reach is so much higher than any other platform.
That being said, it’s not a monopoly that most people have a problem with because they generally continue to serve users well even though they have enough market power that they could enshittify things. If they were a public company they almost certainly would have done that by now.
It’s hard to justify calling them a monopoly when they don’t have exclusive control over the supply of a product or service. Developers aren’t forced to exclusively ship on Steam or not at all.
But then again, supposedly Steam do force developers to put games on sale on Steam at the same price elsewhere it’s on sale which is definitely a monopolistic behaviour (stifling competition where say a new market might make their fee 10%, enabling the developer to sell it cheaper on a different marketplace).
If Steam suddenly introduced a policy that prohibited devs from selling on other platforms alongside Steam, most devs would choose Steam because they would make way more money on Steam than elsewhere.
The power to do that is monopoly power, regardless of whether Steam is abusing that power currently. I think that their behavior on the whole is pretty good, but that doesn’t make them not a monopoly.
Developers aren’t forced to exclusively ship on Steam or not at all.
That’s just not true in practical terms. If you want your game to be discovered and you don’t have a massive advertising budget, it’s not a serious option to try to forego selling on Steam while staying in business as a game developer. That’s like saying Amazon isn’t an ecommerce monopoly because you’re not “forced” to sell there, even though that would mean bankruptcy and irrelevance for most sellers.
You can sell your game for different prices on different platforms, you just can’t sell steam keys that way. If you purchase a game on Itch and it gives you a steam key, that’s still a steam purchase and is subject to this restriction. If you purchase a game on Itch and it hands you an installer then you can buy that game at whatever price they want to sell it at.
It’s not a monopoly. I’ve tried the other store fronts and they either don’t work on linux or they are extremely anti-competitive. I’m not sure why you’re dying on this hill but good luck.
This!
There’s a difference between being feature-rich and popular and being a monopoly.
Call me when Steam is buying competing stores to shut them down.
Now, in terms of PC gaming monopolies, let me introduce you to “Microsoft”.
Seriously. Part of the reason they’re even so popular is because they aren’t actively pursuing profit maxxing/underhanded business practices to corner the market and consolidate market share like every other one of these blood sucking cretins. They really are one of the extremely short list of corporations that ACTUALLY win in the marketplace because their product really is just that good. Running the steam deck with Linux, contributing to the development of Wine/Proton, and telling Microsoft to kick rocks has made me a Gaben fanboy for life. If Steam was the ONLY way you could purchase PC games, I’d honestly be fine with that, as long as Valve remains a private company under the iron fist of Mister Newell.
Remaining a privately held company is really the only protection from enshittification. Not a guarantee, mind you.
Gabe Newell is a man with a red button on his desk that, if pressed, will immediately grant him 11 figures to distribute as he pleases. It’s labeled “sell Valve to Microsoft/go public”. Newell hasn’t pressed the button. Newell and his employees are satisfied with “making shitloads of money” and don’t need to “make more shitloads than last year, forever”.
I can reasonably say that Newell probably won’t press that button during his lifetime. Similarly, I’d trust anyone with that button to hold onto it no matter what, because “if it’s getting pressed, it should be me pressing it.”
Once Newell dies, many bets are off. That’s a really, really tempting button to press. There are very few humans likely to not press it.
Steam does force the sellers on their platform to not give better discounts elsewhere. So basically if you see a game that’s 20% off on steam and it is ATL, you won’t find it 30% off anywhere else.
Not necessarily a monopoly but definitely not allowing competitive pricing.
Now that I think about it, it’s probably why Epic has to go with the “timed exclusive” approach instead of just giving you a bigger discount.
Not true. I just checked the first game currently discounted I know on GOG’s front page: Ghost Runner. It’s at -75% (7.49€) on GOG but full price (29.99€) on Steam.
Price parity doesn’t mean no discounts. All games in all platforms are the same fucking base price, each store front applies different discounts for different products based on their metrics. The other guy is right, EGS doesn’t get 30% cut like steam but their games is not 15%-20% cheaper, if they give you a 15% once in the blue moon doesn’t mean shit.
Compare to lowest all time price on steam, not current price. Pretty sure it’s going to come out to the same.
Goal post.
Not actually true. They only require price parity for steam keys. Basically don’t sell steam copies anywhere cheaper than on steam. Any other copy you can sell for whatever price.
They only require price parity for steam keys. Basically don’t sell steam copies anywhere cheaper than on steam.
Even that isn’t true which a quick search on isthereanydeals before buying games will show a lot of times when it comes to steam key prices.
Recent example is ARC Raiders. https://isthereanydeal.com/game/arc-raiders/info/
Current best price is 15% off for $34.17 versus $39.99 on Steam. And all time low was $31.92.
People are missing out on deals if they assume Steam store price is the lowest price for Steam games.
I linked their own guidelines regarding steam key prices. They do require price parity with steam for steam keys. (with some exceptions)
But the key price is the same, they giving you a discount. They can’t change the price of 100$ to 80$ without giving a 20% discount.
They can set retail price to $1000 for all I care. As long as the actual sale price is $10 for instance is all that matters. And putting off permanent price for as long as possible to not devalue products and get more customers during sales due to thinking it is a deal is common strategy.
Its actually why when epic did coupons and covering the discount some publishers opted out because they didn’t want their games to sell that low yet even if the profit taken is the same. Because they were aware price tracking sites would lead people like me to pass on future sales seeing that the price had been lower, so deciding to wait instead of “overpaying” compared to the all time low.
As part of the four-week long sale, Epic is offering $10 off every single game on the store priced over $14.99. Crucially, Epic explained it would be footing the bill for that promotion, meaning developers’ take-home cut wouldn’t be impacted by the deal.
On the surface, it seems like a win-win for all involved, but some publishers have decided to pull their games from the store for the duration of the sale.
They can set retail price to $1000 for all I care. As long as the actual sale price is $10 for instance is all that matters.
It does matters because is how price parity works, promotions has a beginning and end date, it’s not based on the lowest price at a time but in the consistency of the price.
What business would want to sell a product at the same low price all the time. They want to sell it at the highest price possible, but will have sales to also reach more price sensitive consumers over time as those willing to pay more decreases. But, not keep it permanently low to sell games to consumers who would pay more between sales.
Anyways when it comes to this comment I had responded to.
Not actually true. They only require price parity for steam keys. Basically don’t sell steam copies anywhere cheaper than on steam. Any other copy you can sell for whatever price.
Point of my comment to them in providing data of ARC Raiders being cheaper outside of Steam is that in actual real world cases Steam copies have and are being sold cheaper than on Steam. And its not the exception as data from isthereanydeals shows.
I believe the clause applies to any storefronts as it operates on the MFN pricing principle.
But let’s say it doesn’t, and you’re correct and you could buy the same game on itch, gog, humble, epic, M$ store, ubi store, whatever else.
Did you ever actually see any of the stores promote better pricing on their first party platform? I haven’t.
Did you ever see assassins creed games being 5$ cheaper if you buy them on the ubi store as an example?
Same as the above for humble, epic, EA, Microsoft?
That’d be a pretty effective way to drive people to your storefront and drive first party sales with additional profit to the first party… and yet for some reason that practice apparently doesn’t exist.
I am almost 100% sure that’s not done out of the goodness of the shareholders hearts and has more to do with the legal spaghet of it all.
But at the end of the day the above is speculation, I have no concrete way to prove it one way or the other besides the limited observations that I’ve made over the years.
They don’t want to drive you to your storefront so that you get the games cheaper. They want to sell for the same price without paying commission. They want to pocket the difference, not give it to you.
I’ve never seen a reliable source display steam has price parity. Their steam key price parity however is very clearly displayed. https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Did you ever see assassins creed games being 5$ cheaper if you buy them on the ubi store as an example?
I had tracked ubisoft vs steam prices over the years, and usually if you wanted to pay less Ubisoft was the way to go for Ubisoft games.
Like Far Cry 6 $6 all time low on Ubisoft store and $11.99 all time low on Steam.
Good resource, thanks
What do you mean it doesn’t exist? Epic got me to download their launcher because they were selling gta 5 for free. How could I have found that out if I only play on steam???
I think there is a distinction to be made between being a monopoly and doing anti-competitive behavior.
Steam hasn’t done any anti-competitive behavior that I am aware of, but they do have enough market power to be considered a monopoly. Consider how companies like EA and Activision tried to maintain competing platforms but caved because those platforms were not viable compared to Steam. That’s monopoly power.
Yes, this, so many people use words but don’t know what they mean.
Yes, Steam is an effective monopoly.
You don’t need to literally be the only possible option, the entire market, to be ‘a monopoly’.
Economists very often refer to a company that has just a vastly oversized market share and other kinds of market influence, ws compared to the next comptetitor or set of competitors, as a monopoly.
Like uh, Walmart has a decent chance of having a local, effective monopoly on the grocery market, if you live in a whole lot of US cities.
And also yes, when it comes to anti trust law… yeah you generally have to do things that are either current anti competetive or anti consumer practices, of have done them in the past to acquire your monopoly status, to be broken up by a possible Sherman Act based action.
It is actually possible to become a monopolist without doing anything particularly uncommon in the market, or underhanded… its possible that just no one bothers to meaningfully compete with you untill its too late.
theres basically one anti conpetitive measure they hold primarily, and its the one that states the listing price of a game must be the same on all platforms policy. stops devs from having a lower listing price on other platforms.
other than that its usually other platforms shooting their selves.
I’m pretty sure that that only applies to steam keys being sold on other sites. If it’s being distributed in some other form, it can be cheaper.
This “most favored nation” clause in contracts is huge! It means that even another store takes half of Steam’s cut (say, 15% vs 30%), the game can’t be sold for less, meaning other rival stores can never compete on price. In other words, Steam drives up prices for games economy-wide. Amazon does something similar, and this was part of the basis the FTC’s antitrust lawsuit against them.
Steam doesn’t prevent anyone from selling their game at whatever price they want. They only prevent them from selling it through THEIR distribution platform at a lower price than it can be purchased directly from Steam. IE they cannot sell steam keys for less than the steam list price. If they want to distribute themselves they can.
Steam drives up prices for games economy-wide.
You must be joking
Say I sold a game for $10 on Steam and GameStoria. With the 30% you suggest I would take home $7 from Steam and $8.50 from GameStoria. I make more with a competitor who is willing to take less and of their instead wanted to charge more, Steam would be more profitable… The consumer doesn’t see anything but a $10 game.
but they do have enough market power to be considered a monopoly
Bullshit. Being the most popular platform does not automatically make a monopoly, this is armchair lawyer nonsense.
It’s true that I am not a lawyer, so feel free to not take what I say as what the law says. I think that the law certainly should consider Steam to be a monopoly with its level of market power, even if it doesn’t currently.
From what I have heard from actual lawyers, monopolies are not currently illegal under US law anyways. They’re only illegal when combined with anticompetitive practices. That’s my best understanding as a non-lawyer, anyways.
Failing to make a product that doesn’t suck shit does not make a monopoly for your competitor.
In fact, Steam is de facto not a monopoly because of the very existence of GOG. EA and Activision tried to break in to this arena but failed to provide a product that actually switched people off of steam, because they failed to provide a comparable experience to steam. GOG did, and they’re doing fine.
By this logic Google isn’t a search monopoly because DuckDuckGo exists, despite Google buying default placement in Safari, Firefox, Chrome, etc to make sure no other search provider can compete, with their bribe to Apple alone totaling $20 billion a year to maintain their search dominance. What do you think monopoly power is if not that?
Can you describe where Steam has done anything even approaching that, ever?
EA and Activision stores didn’t fail because Steam bought them out and bullied them out of the market, they failed because they were trash products. Steam doesn’t buy “default placement” in anything. They just have a good product that people want to use over alternatives.
Point out a situation in which Steam has acted anti-competitive and I might agree that you have a point, but I can’t think of any situations to call out here.
Um, there is more than one type of anticompetitive practice? Amazon uses predatory pricing to drive companies out of business, Microsoft uses tying to sell Teams, Google uses self-preferencing for their own services in search results, Facebook acquired Instagram rather than compete with them, etc.
One of Valve’s favorite anticompetitive cudgels is requiring “most favored nation” clauses in their contracts, prohibiting devs from selling for less on other storefronts (which Amazon also has used).
Um, there is more than one type of anticompetitive practice? Amazon uses predatory pricing to drive companies out of business, Microsoft uses tying to sell Teams, Google uses self-preferencing for their own services in search results, Facebook acquired Instagram rather than compete with them, etc.
None of which are related to Steam nor has Steam done anything resembling any of these examples to my knowledge.
One of Valve’s favorite anticompetitive cudgels is requiring “most favored nation” clauses in their contracts, prohibiting devs from selling for less on other storefronts (which Amazon also has used).
Valve prohibits people from selling steam keys for less on other storefronts which I think is perfectly reasonable. You can list your game on Steam for $20 and distribute it on Itch for $5 or even free and Steam has zero problem with this, so long as you aren’t distributing steam keys via that storefront. This is to try and prevent a developer from leveraging Steam for advertisement purposes but making all their actual sales off-platform.
Whether something is a monopoly or not is independent of anti-competitive practices. It’s about market power.
yes, it is “is independent of anti-competitive practices”, a monopoly is when there is only one company providing a product or service
If there’s a genuinely good product that’s popular because it’s good. There’s no need to step in and give shittier products more share in the market.
The point in breaking up monopolies is to be more fair for consumers. If you want to say they’re technically a monopoly because they have a large share of the market then fine. But I don’t see that as a bad thing until it starts abusing its power.
I agree that Steam is pretty good as it is, and there are certainly more pressing concerns. However, in an ideal world, what Steam does should probably be handled by the public sector because it’s a natural monopoly. People like only having to go to one place to find their games, but that place doesn’t have to be controlled by a for-profit corporation.
GoG has, like, 1/5th the market share of Steam. It’s not nearly big enough to prevent Steam from having monopoly power. If Steam came out with a policy saying that games could not be on both Steam and GoG, the vast majority of devs would release on Steam. That’s monopoly power which Steam has, regardless of whether they are currently abusing it or not.
Even if there were literally no other competitors, GOG holding 1/6th of the market share (your words) absolutely precludes Steam from being a monopoly.
You’re using a different definition of monopoly from what I’m using. To quote Wikipedia:
In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.
I’m using the latter of those definitions. I don’t think it’s particularly useful to only consider it a monopoly when there are literally no competitors. I think it is useful to consider it a monopoly when it has dominant market power. Steam’s estimated 75-80% market share is dominant market power.
So how often does steam charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises?
the power to charge overly high prices
One doesn’t have to actually use a power in order to have that power. If I was carrying a loaded shotgun, I would have firepower. I wouldn’t have to actually fire the gun to have firepower.
Also, one could argue (and Epic Games has) that Steam’s 30% cut is overly high for digital distribution. I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but that doesn’t really matter to the question of whether Steam has dominant market power.
If they do anti-competitive behaviour then that would make them a monopoly.
“Steam is so popular because they’re good not because they’re a monopoly”
“Oh yeah? Well what if Steam was a monopoly? They would be a monopoly then right!”
Il Epic had free cloud saves and more social aspects they would be a much more appealing option, especially because they are much friendlier towards indie devs since they demand a much lower service fee. Steam is just the best for consumers right now
Also if they didn’t have an irrational hatred for Linux.
And all the fixation is on Epic vs Steam, but it has also been Epic vs GOG. Since their exclusive deals were prevented from being released on GOG too. Probably since people would actually be willing to biy from GOG if steam wasn’t available with how hated epic is, and would have led to GOG growing as opposed to Epic.
A lot of people requested that DARQ be made available on GOG. I was happy to work with GOG to bring the game to their platform. I wish the Epic Store would allow indie games to be sold there non-exclusively, as they do with larger, still unreleased games (Cyberpunk 2077), so players can enjoy what they want: a choice.
Words don’t matter. Do well and have a platform that most prefer? You’re a monopoly. People don’t realize that to be a monopoly you must be the only source and actively prevent access to or other sources of the same product. How many of those using the term monopoly regarding Steam have GOG Galaxy, Epic, Battle.net, and etc. installed on their machines, ya think.
Being the best does not a monopoly make!
Edit: Further, and speaking of Epic, I never heard of Steam paying devs to pull their games from other platforms for exclusivity deals.
72% of devs meaning 72% of developers = people or 72% of developer studios = a bunch of suits?
75% of respondents were senior managers of C-suite level.
Ah ok, so pointless people. They could ask an AI…
Note the survey is also posted by a company whose service is to help people publish on multiple storefronts at once.
72% of devs work for some giant corp or doesn’t know what monopoly means. Gotcha.
Do you know what monopoly means?
Unlike Google or Apple, I don’t think steam will remove your game for putting it on GOG or Epic, how is it even a monopoly? you’re not forced to sell there
It is a functional monopoly. I would be shocked if wasnt also a monopsony effect going on here where many devs are disproportionately getting their revenue from Steam and as such are functionally mandated a Steam release.
72% of devs have no clue what the word monopoly means. That would mean that Steam is the only store selling PC games on the market, but that’s not the case. Hell, the article itself mentions several:
However, it also noted that developers have started utilising other platforms including the Epic Game Store and the Xbox PC Games store.
Almost half of those surveyed (48%) have distributed a title to both stores, while 10% have used GOG and 8% have used Itch.io.
So, a monopoly? Most definitely not. A market leader or holder of a vast majority? Yes.
Do you also think Google isn’t a search monopoly because Bing exists? This is a very bad argument that completely ignores market power.
Well, yes? According to Merriam-Webster:
1: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action
2: exclusive possession or control <no country has a monopoly on morality or truth—Helen M. Lynd>
3: a commodity controlled by one party <had a monopoly on flint from their quarries—Barbara A. Leitch>
4: one that has a monopoly < The government passed laws intended to break up monopolies.:>
I’m not arguing that Steam doesn’t have overwhelming market power, it most certainly does. But key words here are “exclusive” and “one party” and Steam does not control the PC market exclusively, nor are they the only party on the market.
The question isn’t so much whether a company is a monopoly, or part of a duopoly, or oligopoly, but whether their market power lets them coerce their rivals, suppliers, customers, etc. It’s a common misconception that a company needs 100% of a market before they can exert monopoly power (as a seller), and the threshold is even lower for monopsony power (as a buyer), which is common in labor markets with powerful employers, for example.
Legal thresholds for application of anti-monopoly laws have historically been quite low as well. For example, in Brown Shoe Co. v. United States in 1962, the US Supreme Court approved blocking a merger between Brown, a company that manufactured less than 6% of shoes in the US, and Kinney, a company that sold only 2% of shoes! And that actually seems like the right approach, since the Clayton Act, for example, doesn’t only prohibit acquiring 100% of a market (which would render it worthless), but blocks any acquisition when “the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition.”
That’s not what that word means. Zero competition is virtually impossible unless government is strongly enforcing it
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Sure, but it’s well earned. The rest doesn’t do shit. When Microsoft dominated, they made things worse.
To me, the amount of excusing from the gamer community is incredible. Stuff like “they’re not a monopoly because they’re ethical and I like Steam.”
They are, in fact, a growing pseudo monopoly. They take anticompetitive measures, with their APIs and storefront policies (like dictating pricing on other stores). Set aside the 30% cut, and no, it’s mostly not enshittified on the consumer side…
Yet.
How can people type that out on Reddit + Windows 11, or on their phones, with spam and ads in their face, without seeing the future danger? The irony is tremendous.
Don’t mistake me, I like Valve and the storefront they’ve run so far. I happily use it. But I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them, and am waiting for the shoe to drop.
As far as I am aware, they only dictate the pricing of Steam keys on other stores. That seems fair to me, because they are doing the distribution in that case. Games that are on Steam can be cheaper elsewhere if they’re distributed separately.
That being said, I totally agree that they’re a monopoly based on their market power.
What I’ve read is that devs can’t price games lower than Steam on a non-Steam storefront that doesn’t use Steam keys.
For instance, if a dev has their own little DRM free store page where they sell DRM free downloads, they can’t take the 30% fee off their own store (reflecting what they’d actually make) without risking being delisted.
Maybe it’s an OCD thing, but this bothers me as a consumer. I could pay the same price for, say, Rimworld from Ludeon or from Steam, but Ludeon would get significantly less from the Steam sale.
It’s also anti competitive. For example, it means some other storefront with a lower fee can’t use that as a pricing advantage.
…It’s not a massive issue now. In practice, most little devs just sell Steam keys, and most publishers want to maintain pricing parity (outside of sales) for consistency.
Who said anything resembling “they’re not a monopoly because they’re ethical and I like Steam.”?
Like half the comments on this thread are absolutely in that vein.
No they aren’t.
Wow stunning argument. I was going to sit here and trust my eyes. But the depths of rhetorical Flair you have just expressed have rendered me powerless to argue.
Yeah, it’s about as stunning as yours.
The comment threads above mine?
I typed this out before I saw them, not expecting much of that on Lemmy (being a enshittification refuge and all).
The comment threads above mine?
No they don’t
They have the largest share and can direct the market/development, no question, but they not a monopoly. I think GOG has a good shot to complete as time carries on. At least while Gabe is still alive, they’ve been relatively ethical. If the choice of largest developer platform is between Steam and companies like Epic, EA, or Microsoft, Steam still looks like a better alternative.
There’s a difference between being feature-rich and popular and being a monopoly. Call me when Steam is buying competing stores to shut them down. Now, in terms of PC gaming monopolies, let me introduce you to “Microsoft”.
Seriously. Part of the reason they’re even so popular is because they aren’t actively pursuing profit maxxing/enshittification business practices to corner the market and consolidate market share like every other one of these blood sucking cretins. They really are one of the extremely short list of corporations that ACTUALLY win in the marketplace because their product really is just that good. Running the steam deck with Linux, contributing to the development of Wine/Proton, and telling Microsoft to kick rocks has made me a Gaben fanboy for life. If Steam was the ONLY way you could purchase PC games, I’d honestly be fine with that, as long as Valve remains a private company under the iron fist of Mister Newell.
Not a single one of those are saying anything close to what you claimed…
Who said anything resembling “they’re not a monopoly because they’re ethical and I like Steam.”?
…but they not a monopoly… At least while Gabe is still alive, they’ve been relatively ethical.
Friend, I don’t know what more you could want. That’s… pretty similar.
They didn’t say they don’t have a monopoly because they are ethical. They said they don’t have a monopoly and also that they are ethical.
The fact that you have to cherry pick and misrepresent context to try and save face is pretty pathetic TBH.
The difference is that Steam is not a public company. While they have done some problematic things, everything they have done has been to benefit the customers.
Plenty of stores dictate the price on other stores. The idea is just to keep pricing consistent across the board. Why would one store list a product and help advertise it when they know they aren’t going to sell much of because it’s cheaper elsewhere.
Physical items have some leeway in that as stores can mark things down, but digital items are the same regardless of where you get it from, and when it comes to steam if a store is selling a steam key Valve does not take the 30%, meaning they get nothing out of a key sold elsewhere and will sell less copies themselves if the other keys are cheaper.
On that 30%, I remember articles coming out when steam was gaining traction that showed how little it was compared to physical stores. When you combined creating the physical game, shipping, and store cut developers were lucky to get 50% of the game cost. And that didn’t count GameStop pushing preowned for $2 less that the dev didn’t get any cut of.
They have reversed a lot of things that the customers pushed back on as well.
As long as GabeN is in charge I don’t think they will go public and become shit. Apparently his son is poised to take over when he retires or passes and is in the same mindset of this father, but time will tell.
Valve got to where it is specifically by playing the long game and looking forward while putting the customer first. The efforts they made for VR and the Steam Deck would not have happened in any other company.
They aren’t buying small studios to crush them like all the rest are.
Plenty of stores dictate the price on other stores.
…How is this okay?!
Let’s put it another way. What if Walmart upcharged for some product, and told the manufacturer “if you don’t raise prices at every other store, we might pull your brand.”
They have no choice if Walmart is the majority of their marketshare.
What if Amazon did this? Or EGS, if they had 75% market share?
…Yes, it’s a massive improvement over physical retail. Does that mean 30% across the board is okay? And what about the factor of most devs getting crowded out by a much larger selection, now?
…And plenty of private companies are anti consumer. Some get worse going private. That’s no guarantee.
Look, Steam is incredible in many ways. One massively understated thing is Valve’s attempts to keep the store tagged an organized, which is a enormous boon to “niche” games and gamers, as opposed to spammy, unsorted messes like the iOS/Android App Stores or Amazon. It’s clear they actually care about their consumers and sellers, and their long term experience, and the actual quality of their store.
…But I still do not trust one company with an entire sector. I want GoG, or Itch, or hell, even EGS to still have some market share in whatever niches work for them, in case Steam starts to enshittify.
Reward corporations for good behavior. Don’t trust them.
Amazon does do that, and people hate it for it. Lemmings just seem to suddenly go blind when dealing with Valve’s shitty practices.
I don’t know what you’re expecting. Publishers don’t put every game on GoG and all the publisher run stores are very anti consumer, or they’re EGS which will definitely turn anti consumer the second they think they’ve got the market share. Where are you wanting people to buy their games?
I want them available and Itch and GoG or publisher stores or elsewhere, basically anything but one store unless they need Steam for API features.
I want Steam to not have so much marketshare they can dictate prices to other stores.
The status quo right now is okay, but I don’t like the direction it’s heading, where other stores may not even keep their heads above water.
I want them available and Itch and GoG or publisher stores or elsewhere, basically anything but one store unless
This seems to be suggesting that a large portion of games is only published to steam, which I don’t think is the case?
Except it literally is, per the article?
Well, this is publishers complaining. Maybe they should publish on other platforms. I don’t know what they expect to happen lol
I’d say it’s more of a ‘de facto’ monopoly, as every other storefront sucks so bad.
It’s ironic that Valve doesn’t have shareholders forcing horrible decisions that make people hate a platform to maximize short term profits, yet they reap in crazy amounts of money per year in comparison to public companies with dogshit monetization. Funny how that goes huh?
The number of people in this thread claiming that Steam is not a monopoly is too damn high. If actually you’re interested in the evidence, the Organized Money podcast recently had a great interview with pair of lawyers whose full time job is suing Valve as a monopolist on antitrust grounds, and winning over and over on behalf of their clients.
Where is that evidence? (That is not a podcast with one of the involved parties in it)
I quickly looked into it and there is zero public indication that Bucher Law PLLC ever won a single lawsuit against Valve. One lawsuit of Valve against Bucher Law PLLC (in response to their arbitrations) was dismissed.
https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/10620119/valve-corporation-v-bucher-law-pllc-et-ano/
The only thing they do is file arbitrations, which they are apparently “winning” but they did not provide any further proof of that.
All the “grand victories” are celebrated exclusively on their own website. Mostly you find people on Reddit claiming that they are a scam and a really weird Youtube commercial.
They also claim multiple times that Federal Judge John C. Coughenour ruled that Valve is an “illegal monopoloy”. Which I cannot find any records for. Unrelated to Bucher Law, Coughenour was the judge in Wolfire vs Valve and he threw Wolfire’s case against Valve out in 2021 but allowed them to proceed in 2022. Coughenour then resigned from the case.
https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/59859024/wolfire-games-llc-v-valve-corporation/
The case is now a class action lawsuit against Valve and still ongoing.
You’ve only highlighted what’s so fucked up about binding arbitration: it’s secretive. It forces plaintiffs to retain individual counsel, with arbitration clauses in contracts typically blocking class actions in public court and requiring you to waive your right to a trial by a jury of your peers. This means there is no precedent that is set or that binds future decisions by the arbitrator, there is no public record that gets reported on and embarrasses companies, and there are no large payouts to be recovered when a million people get nickel-and-dimed for a few bucks each and can sue as a class.
I only worked with what you provided, alleged evidence of Valve being a monopoly. The US legal system being… questionable has nothing to do with it.
Bucher Law could provide proof of their arbitation successes on their own at any time at least but they didn’t even do that. And even if, that does not proof that Valve is a monopoly because there is no judge and no ruling.
Until the Wolfire case (that is an actual case) gets a verdict by an actual judge, these are just a few law firms trying to make a quick buck.
That’s just begging the question, isn’t it, requiring a conviction as a monopolist as the only acceptable form of evidence of monopolization? If someone said the same thing about Google when Epic sued them in 2020, would you have waited the 3 years it took to get a trial verdict before making up your mind?
Also, many arbitration settlements include NDAs as a condition of getting a payout, so it’s disingenuous to say they could provide evidence that might require their clients to forfeit their settlements or risk them getting disbarred.
I agree the venue is unfortunate, but why are you insisting on giving the giant for-profit corporation the benefit of the doubt rather than the consumers who are trying to hold them accountable?
requiring a conviction as a monopolist as the only acceptable form of evidence of monopolization?
Legally speaking, yes.
Ethically speaking, I have not seen sufficient evidence to call Valve a monopoly yet. Obviously everyone can call Valve a monopoly, or not, I don’t really care either way. Actual evidence would have to come in the form of documents proofing Valve manipulates prices, hinders competition or anything similar.
Unfortunately most documents in the Wolfire vs Valve case are not publicly available. The point Wolfire makes in their statement about not being able to sell their keys cheaper than on Steam, has some merit but I will leave it to the judge to decide on that one. It’s not enough for me personally to call that anti-competitive.
If someone said the same thing about Google when Epic sued them in 2020, would you have waited the 3 years it took to get a trial verdict before making up your mind?
I did make up my mind, but there was no evidence until the ruling.
Also, many arbitration settlements include NDAs as a condition of getting a payout, so it’s disingenuous to say they could provide evidence that might require their clients to forfeit their settlements or risk them getting disbarred.
Fair point, many do. They could mention it though.
but why are you insisting on giving the giant for-profit corporation the benefit of the doubt rather than the consumers who are trying to hold them accountable?
Because I am the consumer in this case and I don’t see any wrongdoing by Valve in this case. There are other store fronts on PC, Valve doesn’t force any prices, they don’t force exclusivity, they don’t buy competition up and they don’t prevent the competing stores from functioning in any way.
People simply flock to Steam because it’s the best service and until Valve engages in (proven) anti-competitive behaviour, there is no reason to change anything about that.
Is the 30% cut they demand too much? Yes. Are they engaging in unethical gambling? Yes. Are they a monopoly? Not in my opinion.
That’s incredible that’s even a thing. Saving this for a listen, thanks.
This study is just asking managers, they didn’t talk to devs. Also how is it a monopoly when 80% expect to be using non steam distribution channels in 5 years? Maybe I’m missing something because the source study isn’t available without giving them your name and email but their stats look contradictory to me and their method is… Well corporate managers aren’t really devs IMO.
https://rokky.com/pc-game-distribution-report-2025
