120
Valve "played capitalism so well they broke it" and now Steam can't be replaced
(www.gamesradar.com)
Funny way of saying monopoly.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
120 points (98.4% liked)
Hacker News
5692 readers
697 users here now
NOTICE: The bot occasionally has downtime, sorry about that. I'm working on adding better monitoring and error recovery so I can get notified faster.
Posts from the RSS Feed of HackerNews.
The feed sometimes contains ads and posts that have been removed by the mod team at HN.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
In my opinion the quote is wrong. If they played capitalism they would have enshittified and abused their monopoly so hard, they wouldn't have a monopoly anymore. They have a de facto monopoly because they didn't abuse it and enshittify as hard as they should have under capitalism.
The reason other companies cannot compete is because they do play capitalism, and it makes them shoot themselves in the feet.
It's playing capitalism, but in a different way than most large (publically traded) companies. Enshittification and publically traded companies kinda go hand in hand due to shareholders' gambling mindset. It makes companies prioritize big short term capital goals which often are at a detriment to the company's longevity. Because Valve is a private company, their goal is the longevity and stability of the company rather than appeasing shareholders who are only invested due to gambling money into the company.
A former Epic Games developer is calling out Steam users, saying that they wouldn't move on from Valve's store even if a better alternative emerged.
So this guy admits that Steam is the best right now...
I would move on if a better alternative emerged. But at this point it's not just the store, but the utility. Steam lets me add whatever games I want from any source and use their interface to make controllers work, tweak graphics settings, etc. Hell, I'd say I like it better for that use than for the paid games. I don't see anyone else ever doing this.
It's also a matter of trust for me. Valve have earned my trust over the years by not being shitty, so I've stuck with them. Epic can give me all the free games they want, but I don't trust them. Same if some other company came out with a better store/launcher. If the company sucks, I don't care how good the app is.
Or at least by not being the shittiest, it's kind of a pragmatic balance, yeah some shittyness but only as much as they must incur for some publishers/developers to approve being in their ecosystem. Sharing a game library within a household is more complicated than I would like for example, owing to DRM restrictions. Steam has gone out of their way to try to make it more possible, but it's still a pain by its nature.
GOG takes a harder line that is easier for me, but misses out on a fair number of titles as a result. Which is why I prefer throwing the money at GOG to very strongly make clear my preference.
losing 30% to Valve is probably better than joining the list of games that flopped on PC because they were Epic Games Store exclusives.
Epic burn!!
With my PS4, I decided to pay for the online gaming because the free games and online play with Rocket League. It's seemed like a good deal, I guess. Anyway I lapsed the payment. Then found it all the "free" games I collected (and never played) required a subscription. And Ironically, Rocket League didn't require a subscription. So I basically was paying for a Netflix like gaming service where you slowly get games if you remember to click on them each month. But in reality, I was just giving Sony free money.
That ended it for me.
These dudes have no connection to reality. They only understand how to extract. They have no idea how to make anything. The assertion that you could vibe code a steam replacement completely misunderstands what makes Steam work. Sure there is an element of an entrenched market, but Steam sales are famous among their customers. They have mod support built in. Great features like remote play, streaming, social features. They've done amazing things for Linux gaming slowly chipping away at Microsofts control of the OS market.
These executives brains are completely rotten.
The secret is to not be a public company ran by a board of directors who actively enshittify the crap out of anything they touch.
Valve is privately owned by Gabe who unlike the CEOs that usually get selected by these boards isn't a complete psychopath.
Gabe specifically said in an interview that he would have never been able to hire and retain the talent Valve currently has had it been a public company. The board would have demanded layoffs and outsourcing to countries where labor is cheaper with zero fucks given to product quality, reputation or long term growth.
And dedicate years of work into improving Linux compatibilty to future proof the company? A board of directors would have shut that down immediately.
Let's hope that Valves next owners also understand that and that they are not some investment firm looking to deconstruct it for parts.
Valves non gabe leadership is the exact kind of insane that would make it public for a quick buck, Chet Faliszek has talked about it extensively
you could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week
As usual, completely missing the fucking point.
Epic recently did this, surprisingly I didn't consider switching over.
Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at research and analyst firm Newzoo told GamesRadar+ that "As long as Valve is independent and not a publicly traded company," it looks impossible for Steam to be overthrown as the de-facto PC gaming marketplace.
Yeah, no shit! As long as they're not beholden to shareholders that need them to enshitify their platform as much as humanly possible before the users can't stand it anymore and leave in droves... It's just impossible to compete with them!
Who would have thought!
moth supposes they might be correct about one thing. there are so very many Steam users who are rabid fanboys. we've all seen the memes of GabeN depicted as a Messiah. there's a not insignificant portion of the Steam user base which does not want any competition for Steam because they believe in the righteous supremacy of Valve. it gives moth the icks, and as such in the very few occasions when I buy a game instead of sailing the high seas, I buy from other retailers like GOG, Epic, or Itch.io.
I can see concern over how much overzealous support Steam commands, and can see GOG and itch.io as strong alternatives, particularly better catering to DRM-free compared to Valve.
But Epic.... nah, every time an Epic decision maker speaks publicly it reaffirms that they should be the last option folks are considering. Always seems to be sour grapes about why they aren't the best and why it's just unfair that people reject AI slop and bragging how they AI slopped up some stuff and how excited they are to AI slop it up more over time... Never sparing a moment for excitement over in any way improving things for the actual customers, but always about how they could do better business and be lazier.
Gabe mostly looks good by contrast with Sweeney, and grading on a curve I can at least get the excitement. Of course also going beyond the store front into things like actively pushing Linux, Wine, and VR capabilities, even when they admit flat out it might not be the most profitable investment of effort. Also packaging up things nicely for handheld and couch usage in ways that just most folks never bother with the required polishing touches.
This is just like when I switched to Buddhism.
So the billionaire execs that are whining and bitching, pissing and moaning in this article, run worse gaming platforms than steam currently. Now have they ever TRIED improving their own gaming platforms to make ease of access, UI, and customer service better for PC gamers? No. No they havent. They just look at the more successful company that is doing exactly that, and complain about them having a monopoly when they really just run a better business model and take care of their customers. I mean the only rhing Epic games has going for it are the free games every month, and even those are pretty hit or miss (as in they started free but now theyre just getting "featured" as free) and it makes it seem disingenuous. When we see large sales on steam, theres some kind of price reduction on basically everything in the store. They want you to build up that library and get to gaming, none of the other nonsense. Summed up, this is the equivalent of powerade executives coming out and complaining that gatorade is curbing the market because they run a better business, and its really nothing other than another billionaire being a crybaby in a public space because they want to hoard more wealth.
Steam has established a massive monopoly, the only reason they're winning so hard is they're not over-abusing it.. yet. Steam users are already being overcharged en masse, and sued for it.
Yes, as software goes, it works well for now. But I will roll my eyes out my skull when they inevitably abuse the fuck out of their platform-locked users and Valve supporters complain like that outcome wasn't written on the wall for many years.
It may be one year away, it might be ten, it might even be thirty. One day people will complain loudly that all the games they bought on Steam are effectively unplayable and they should get a refund, I will shrug and say "well yeah, we did tell you", and I will be dismissed. But I'll feel very correct, and that.. isn't much of a consolation either. The world is frustrating.
I've worked for several ISPs. None can hold a candle to Cox Communications. They were public for a time, but as I heard it the family bought back control and privatised it again. Like Valve, they can do whatever the fuck they what, on whatever timeline they want.
Build a great product or service, the people come. Built shit, the people leave. Turns out that's how capitalism is supposed to work. Somehow the consumer has elected to buy products and services from companies that shit all over them. (NOT the case for Valve, because I didn't write that well.)
I had Cox for years. Constant rate hikes. Slow service, and frequent outages. Data caps, lower speeds than advertised. Customer service sucked if you ever had a problem. Then AT&T fiber came to my area with way better speeds, no data cap, and dramatically cheaper. No outages at all so far. And yes the rates go up, but they're still cheaper than Cox and way faster.
AT&T is a horrible company. Among the worst ISPs around, right up there with Verizon, Frontier, etc. But they're still beating Cox in service and price.
I wouldn't be lauding Cox's virtues just yet.
Better how? Steam already does everything almost perfectly
They could remove the DRM. And stop the gambling for children.
I'm wagering that Epic Games considers those things to be the things that Valve actually does right.
Which is their whole problem, they value the shittiest facet of Valve and think the 'good stuff' is where they screw up, and bemoan that Epic can't get the worst stuff going because Valve is an option in the market.