The greedy/entitled morons are mad and try every day to convince us to lower our standards so they can make more money.
Anyone who bitches about Steam being a "monopoly" instead of it being DRM should not be taken seriously.
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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All these concern trolling articles about Valve's "monopoly". We never get this shit about Youtube, Windows, local ISPs and other utilities, etc. Super subtle, guys.
All of those are run by business-school people.
The people who went to business school are mad that Valve isn't running their platform like the rest of the cartel.
The entire AAA video game industry right now is basically freaking out, panicking and financially imploding right now, after at least a solid decade of mainly figuring out how to waste an enormous amount of money...
While all trying to be the next big live service game.
A live service game isn't so much a game as it is a platform itself, a cash shop for in game content, a social media platform in itself.
(See Roblox for an extremely problematic but successful version of pulling this off)
These people all failed miserably at this, such that Ubisoft imploded, EA got bought out by Saudi Blood Money, Unity itself is imploding as an organization, MSFT switched its gaming division into pure wealth extraction mode before they shut it down in ~5 years and just act as IP liscensing overlords... etc.
They all tried to establish vertically integrated businesses, and despise that they can't come close to matching Valve, the most competent horizontally built business in the entire industry.
And yes, the 'video game industry' includes nearly all 'video game journalists'.
These people are with few exceptions, allergic to doing any actual investigative journalism, they're mostly just paid to manipulate the flow of discourse around video games, as a form of marketing, hype management, sentiment management.
They're a private company and thus have resisted many of the enshittification trends that run rampant through the industry.
And also their competitors are absolutely atrocious and are completely tone-deaf to what customers actually want.
This is exactly right. As soon as a company becomes public, it's all over. Profits at X%, every quarter, no matter the cost. It's the death of a company.
It doesn't have to go public to do that. It can get sold to private equity. The original owner can pass the business to their kid who has grown up privileged and huffs their own farts. Going public is a guarantee of enshittification but it isn't the only way.
Tepid take: The only people calling Steam a monopoly are the loser competitors who can't find a more extortive business model that will actually compete in their quest to syphon wealth out of the gaming ecosystem. Also 'news' outlets that are being paid to assert this narrative, and dumbshit reactionaries who believe those narratives. Sorry Epic CEO, you can't cry and shit your pants into forcing a successful company to make room and give you a cut. The market will ony respond to a better product here, and Epic ain't it. EA learned this lesson with their shit-ass Origin product years ago, brand loyalty takes a long time to build and is a powerful variable, and steam is good at not fucking with the gamers, or at least only within parameters of acceptability, it appears.
Every other company could challenge Steam, but instead is enshittified within an inch of its life from the get-go. It's as much that Steam is doing so much right as it is that competitors are doing so much wrong.
Not you, GOG.
Gog is good, itch.io is good. They have different niches, and each do beautifully.
GoG was my second digital store, I resisted Steam for so long, but over the years, Steam has become my #1 source for games. It's just so easy, plus they are relatively consumer friendly. With the revamp of Steam Families, it's just so so much easier to have everyone playing on Steam. Plus I have a Steam Deck.
I try and buy games on GoG, set them up with Heroic, and it works great, better than EA, Epic and other storefronts, but just not quite as slick as Steam.
One day St. Gabe will be martyred, and Steam will undergo the unavoidable descent into enshittification, as to will GoG. I do not pledge undying loyalty to any platform, but Steam and GoG have been awesome for so long.
Besides, other than Itch and Humble Bundle, who even comes close in being good to use?
GOG's market share being around 1% compared to Steam's 80% only proves the point that no amount of great features or love by gamers is enough to challenge the monopoly.
That's because for the vast majority of gamers their games aren't on GOG. From the top 50 sellers on Steam only Rimworld, Baldurs Gate 3, No Man's Sky, Tainted Grail and Kerbal Space Program are sold on GOG. 90% of the top sellers on Steam aren't on GOG. GOG has a lot of great features but when GOG doesn't have the games people want to spend money on there's very little reason for those people to use GOG.
Steam is not a fucking monopoly. Take my downvote
Valve treats me like they actually want to earn ky business and they use their vast wealth to make cool shit. Valve is also the reason I no longer have to deal with Window's bullshit to keep playing my favorite video games.
Yes, I would love to see more altruism, but Valve is, at the bare minimum, the epitome of moral neutrality as a business. So there's nothing to really be mad at them about, and rather I have some gratitude for how they've used their money.
On the flipside, as others have pointed out, everyone else keeps shooting themselves in the foot. The only one thar hasn't (to my knowledge) is GoG, but they're never going to reach Steam status in a Capitalist society. And their social features are unavailable on Linux.
The next closest after that is Epic, who's shitty, buggy ass launcher and storefront is so horrendous that when they give games out for free, people buy said games on Steam instead.
So... Why would we be mad at Valve for their competition being shit?
Because they are one of the few mega companies that hasn’t shrinkflated, enshittified, or otherwise crumbled the quality of their offering. Haven’t sold out the privacy of their customer base to advertising companies, and are generally good to deal with for customers and developers.
It’s not a secret formula that no other company can learn from. It’s as simple as not being dicks IMO.
For some reason, most companies seem to grow too a certain threshold at which they sell their souls to profit and will self destruct to get more of it. Steam thankfully isn’t one of them….. yet.
I'm not mad because they go above and beyond to support Linux, which I prefer to use.
None of the other stores do even the bare minimum for Linux users, while Valve has helped make it easier to play almost every game.
what difference not having shareholders has
Other game launchers: "fuck Linux it's so small"
Valve: "everyone deserves to play games :)"
Other game launchers: "Steam is fucking monopoly!!!"
Valve is working on linux as more of an exit strategy should MS go apeshit and go full walled garden. Their work started following MS floating ideas of a walled garden about a decade ago.
Its less “Everyone deserves to play games” and more “We gotta cover our asses”. Just that we all benefit in the end.
But Valve's “We gotta cover our asses” move is to help an open ecosystem, not try to create their own walled garden. Yes, they are a company making a rational, capitalistic decision but it's also the less lucrative but more moral decision.
Great. Any time someone has a successful business that supports Linux somehow it is just terrible. I always wonder if these are these real people or just FUD from competitors trying to make Linux support undesirable. Sure I prefer FOSS, but I'm also happy there is some commercial game support. Maybe I'll use it some day, maybe I won't.
I’m “mad”. Their business model should be illegal. If you buy a game you shouldn’t be chained to their platform.
That's not an issue with Steam that is an issue with consumer protection and copy right laws.
It’s definitely as issue with Steam. Once you purchase a game you can’t just launch it…you need to launch it through their platform. I don’t want to have my internet connected and Steam updated just to play a game.
That's only true if the publisher chooses to use DRM.
A meaningless distinction when none of the games you bought can’t be launched without Steam.
It's important to know who the bad guys are and what are the tools they use. We (gamers) should be focusing on the DMCA and publishers that use DRM. DRM providers are a simptom of laws that allow people to be screwed, not the problem it's self.
Valve literally released hardware and said "hey, competitors, feel free to add your own stores and even OS". None of their competitors even bothered to try.
Valve doesn't need to resort to underhanded tactics to secure their monopoly like other monopolies. They just know that they provide a good service.
Funny because they absolutely use those tactics even to this day. Among other things, they go around and tell developers not to set lower prices or discounts elsewhere if they want to be on Steam (see page 160 here).
There is nothing underhanded about preventing vendors from selling their products for lower prices on other storefronts and you're a moron for thinking otherwise.
Most of those conversations seem to be steam asking the vendor to allow them to lower the price it's being offered on steam to match the lower price it's being offered elsewhere (or remove the sale from steam). I dont see any threats to kick games off steam (though that could be implied) or demands to remove lower priced sales from elsewhere.
It doesnt look particularly abusive to my eye at least.
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Not if they want to sell on steam, if they want steam to issue steam keys for purchases made outside of steam. Yes they literally let you use all the steam infrastructure for sales that they don't get to take a cut out of, with the requirement being you cannot undercut them for those sales.
If you want to sell for cheaper outside of steam you can, you just no longer can ask steam to issue extra keys beyond those sold on steam store.
Did you look at the page I pointed to? It's done irrespective of Steam key use. Look at the "Type of Product" column.
It seems a lot of those content type are regarding promotion on the steam store, so it means their games won't get featured on the front page (essentially steam advertising their game) if they are undercutting the sale of the content. On some it seems to be about in game purchases/DLCs, which also could be a problem if someone could buy those outside the system for far lower price and still use the version launched from steam (particularly if it's a free to play title)
A few of them do they clarify that they would still sell their stuff on steam but not promote them, but most of the other ones lack the context for this.
Their tactics including not only threats to delist but also threats to reduce visibility does not make it any better. If those numerous examples aren't crystal clear about the former, here's another quote from Valve (page 18 here):
“We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam key or not, as a part of the same shared PC market—so even if you weren’t using Steam keys, we’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours . . . .”
When you say "undercutting the sale", I don't know what you mean. They are talking about developers setting lower prices outside Steam, which Valve obviously sees as a disadvantage to Steam. Your DLC example also does not make sense and I don't see that on the list. For a few of the quotes on the list, the type of parity is marked as content, but the overwhelming majority are related to price parity.
I skimmed most of this thread and didn't see anyone mention that Steam actually supports third party stores. They let developers sell game keys on other storefronts for free (with limits, granted—the number of keys they can generate depends on sales on Steam, I think.)
Fanatical and Humble only exist because Steam handles all of the games delivery infrastructure for them. That's, like, the opposite of monopolistic behaviour. Name another tech monopoly giving their services away for free so other directly competing businesses can profit.
Not to mention they are no monopoly by any definition. I can buy games at half a dozen other stores I know of, probably a hundred I don't.
Bad take. The competition is literally constantly shooting themselves in the foot by offering a worse service and doing nothing to make gaming better.
It's not steams fault that companies like EA, Epic MS etc. are rotten to the core with their business practices and no one wants to use their storefronts.
GOG is the only one i might consider an alternative that isnt completely rotten.
That's the thing, though. The people who went to business school want to make sure all businesses operate like gas stations across the street from each other.
Valve being relatively autonomous in their decision making throws a wrench in that scheme.