this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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I was trying to avoid the monopoly complaint because it's bogus for the reason you said. The truth, Valve has a massive market share and people are very used to Steam, tied to it in many cases. Other publishers tried to set out on their own with their own store fronts and most of those have utterly failed. Even Epic still sells their games on Steam. It's a powerful market with a lot of brand loyalty that those companies really do want themselves.
Fair.
Other than the "not actually a monopoly" argument, I think it's important that Steam has that marketshare because they add value. They have a stranglehold on the market similar to the way BarCodes do. You don't have to register your product with the bar code authority, but it will sure make your product more accessible to more people.
And that's before cloud saves, achievements, patching infrastructure, community forums, game recording/streaming, and other stuff built into the Steam client/API.
Whether that's worth a blanket 30% is absolutely a conversation worth having. Maybe it should be a sliding / bracketed scale depending on revenue or units sold or something. But like you said, the big lawsuits are coming from competitors, not smaller developers.
True, but nobody is bound by it. There are other ways to sell on PC, there are no other ways to sell on iPhone. And games bought elsewhere will work just fine on a PC that has Steam installed. Anyone can leave at any time, or buy from anywhere. The only way to do that on iPhone is to switch your entire phone with Android. Apple's position on the iPhone is far more controlling and monopolistic than Steam's on PC.
The Steam tax might be too steep as well, but these are not identical situations. It's far easier to avoid Steam if you don't want it. I prefer to buy from GOG, and only buy from Steam when it's cheaper or not available on GOG.