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Valve "played capitalism so well they broke it" and now Steam can't be replaced
(www.gamesradar.com)
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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The issue with that is that Steam still isn't a monopoly by that definition either. Epic can't compete because they provide an absolute dogshit service. Not because Steam has some unassailable institutional advantage. When the epic storefront launched a ton of people were hoping it would be good, and would have happily bought games there. It was garbage, and they refuse to listen to customers on how to improve.
There are other options both for devs and customers.
The reality is Steam isn't muscling out Epic because of being a monopoly. Epic muscled themselves out by being out of touch, greedy, shitsticks. And that has largely been the same story for about every failed game storefront.