Not OC, duh.
I get that we shouldn’t be happy about any type of Monopoly but Steam occupies the PC gaming space similar to how Linux dominates the server space.
You can’t really complain that almost every server running Linux is a bad thing. Granted Steam is not open source, but you have to imagine how little effort it takes to not make a shitty marketplace/platform as a competitor.
The fact that such a low bar cannot be surpassed by multi billion dollar companies is all you really need to know, especially when GOG successfully exists.
Steam is a closed source market place blob that takes 30% middle man tax. Valve however has understood FOSS, and the contributions they are making are immense.
When a true FOSS project is dominating this means the people are in control of it. Not corpos nor is it a monopoly. People have voted by donating work for it to be the most successful thing in its applicable area. Dominating FOSS projects also suck up and integrate a lot of innovation greatly reducing duplicated effort.
FreeBSD is alive and well, and it even benefits from Linux’s DRM GPU drivers.
Although the drm gpu drivers are mostly of a corporate effort, we are seeing an occasional interventions by the people “no, not like that” to keep the sometimes shoddy quality up.
/<this is a bit too high effort post.>
ow Linux dominates the server space.
Linux is free. Free cannot be monopoly. Bad comparison here.
Steam is also free unless I’m missing something?
Steam is gratis to create an account, it is not free. All game purchases have a 30% tax, and you don’t own the games you purchased.
Not tax, it’s Steam’s cut.
“Luigi wins by doing nothing!” ahh company 😭
fr
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to ask “are other companies bad?” when trying to determine if a company is a monopoly. One thought experiment I like to do is pretend the CEO dies and is replaced by Satan. How much damage could he do? If it’s a lot, then probably you’ve got a monopoly.
Suppose Gaben dies, and he’s replaced by Satan. Could he do damage to the gaming community by doing something exorbitant, like charging a 30% cut of game sales from the folks who actually develop the games? Could they do anticompetitive vendor lock stuff like only allowing you to purchase DLC through steam? Only time will tell. And it will, because at some point Gaben will die, and he will be replaced by someone less magnanimous and angelic than him.
They do have competitors, they competitors just aren’t very popular. There is the colloquial definition of monopoly, and a different legal bar for being declared a monopolist under US law.
To be declared a monopolist requires that a company already has destroyed or is actively seeking to destroy competitors through anti competitive behavior. Even if people mix terms, the general idea is that they’re not doing anything unreasonable and anti-competitive to gain their position in the market. They have competitors, they’re just not popular, and steam has not done anything to make them unpopular.
The real danger is that if steam decided to suddenly start being externally anti consumer, like many of it’s competitors already are, it would be difficult for people to migrate away due to a lack of interoperability between services. Users can’t transfer licenses to play games between services, nor can they easily interact with social features on other platforms. But that’s not really steam’s fault, that’s how all the competitors (for the most part) work as well.
There is the colloquial definition of monopoly, and a different legal bar for being declared a monopolist under US law.
The US legal bar for being a monopoly has been a joke since Reagan. But even aside from that, legality is not an interesting concept in discussions like these. Slavery was legal. The real question here is whether this situation has the potential to cause serious harm to society.
The real danger is that if steam decided to suddenly start being externally anti consumer, like many of it’s competitors already are, it would be difficult for people to migrate away due to a lack of interoperability between services. Users can’t transfer licenses to play games between services, nor can they easily interact with social features on other platforms.
Exactly, this is the problem. This is anticompetitive behavior.
But that’s not really steam’s fault, that’s how all the competitors (for the most part) work as well.
Yes it is, this is a deliberate choice they made. No one held a gun to their head. And it is precisely this kind of stuff that antitrust laws were supposed to protect us from. And you can see that in countries which do still have reasonable antitrust laws, Steam is being sued for precisely these practices.
Exactly, this is the problem. This is anticompetitive behavior.
It’s not anti competitive if it is litterlay also what all the competitors are doing, and have been doing since the very dawn of digital markets for software. It also dubious if they could legally even set up such interoperability even if they wanted to, as it could potentially violate parts of the DMCA.
They’re not doing anything to destroy their competitors, they’re not a monopolist, and the repeated failures of court cases against them all over the world shows that. There are a few on going cases against them, but, there are far far more cases that have already finished that failed to show any monopoly seeking behavior.
Yes, an evil ceo could do much harm by turning steam into the companies shooting themselves in the face. However, they are currently one of the only ones not doing that, so that’s where gamers will go.
There’s a difference between a monopoly that exists because all other options are shit and a monopoly that exists because of anticompetitive practices.
Haha love this post. I find it astonishing how “leftist” lemmy can’t see this and keeps defending this obvious Monopoly just because the current CEO is an intelligent greedy guy… Happy suckers all around I guess…
That also makes no sense. Literally any large company could do great deals of harm even if they have countless competitors if they set out for the goal of just doing harm.
There is a serious fundamental difference between a monopoly and a general market preference.
If every single one of your competitors all decide to be stupid and you don’t you arnt a monopoly. You just are the only one not being stupid.
That also makes no sense. Literally any large company could do great deals of harm even if they have countless competitors if they set out for the goal of just doing harm.
Surely you understand that the amount of harm that a company with no serious competitors can do is much higher and longer lasting than the harm that a company with competitors can do.
If they start being stupid, they’re suddenly on par with the competitors already being stupid. Suddenly they have viable competitors.
A monopoly is when all competitors have been destroyed, not when competitors aren’t particularly competitive. At least, under the letter of US law.
Literally any large company could do great deals of harm
Which is why there shouldn’t be any large companies.
Tbf they already take a 30% cut, I dont have a huge issue with it though.
30% isn’t a big cut, and the DLC thing is to prevent customers from getting scammed
Wow, thanks Steam!
Dude… What? Just pass the blunt pls
They don’t allow ads in games. Support Steam.
really?
Both Sony and Nintendo have been consistently posting record revenue numbers in the past few years. Neither are that far off Valve.
Regardless, this whole Steam circlejerk reminds me of the early days of Android, when people still believed that Google wasn’t “evil”. Let’s hope I’m in the wrong here.
The difference was that people pretended like Google ever had an option to “not be evil”. At the end of the day, they were a publicly traded company, and thus, line must go up, or else the collective hive mind of the public market would vote the leadership out and replace them.
Steam is private, thus, the current leaderships can ignore the demands of the public market hive mind. Private companies can be evil, but it depends on who owns them. They’re not guaranteed.
In fairness Google was just becoming evil at that point. It was a fantastic company when the founders ran it.
Google isn’t privately owned. It’s hard to be on the stock market and not be evil. I think Costco is the only one that has managed it for any appreciable length and that is under threat of death from one of the co-founders.
I didn’t realize we were still in the early days of a platform that launched in 2003.
I’m old enough to remember the uproar because Half Life 2 had Steam as a hard requirement to be activated, even for physical copies.
Steam was born as Valve’s DRM.
Fundamentally you can’t compare a private and public company. Private companies have a legal requirement that drives them towards becoming shitty for the consumer. While a private company isn’t.
Steam is literally a mom and pop shop. A huge one but it is. They have no legal pressure to enshitify they have no legal requirement to put money and share holders before customers cause they have no shareholders.
Public companies do not actually have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. That is a myth based on a misreading of the Dodge V Ford decisions. That specific reading of the precedent of that decisions has never actually been used in a court case to charge a CEO.
Private companies have a legal requirement that drives them towards becoming shitty for the consumer. While a private company isn’t.
Umm… I think I’m confused now
The first word of that sentence should probably be “public” - then it makes sense.
It’s not being a monopoly that is illegal — if it were then all of “big tech” would be screwed. It’s using a monopoly toward anti-competitive ends and enshittifying everything that is illegal…which is funny, because even that really doesn’t seem to be illegal when you look around these days.
The law only matters if it’s actually enforced.
I mean, yes.
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Steam is a scary monopoly, getting scarier.
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It’s not their fault the industry (minus GOG) comitted mass seppuku.
Both can be true. One can worry about Valve, and use them hesitantly, while laughing at everything else like it’s a cartoon.
I wouldn’t classify it as “scary” quite yet.
Our benevolent yachtlord for life won’t live forever. Next guy (or group of owners) may not be quite content with simply having a billion dollar yacht, might enshittify for more yachts quicker.
Point being, GabeN is no saint, but he shows restraint with his greed, if you can even call him greedy. Next guy might kill the golden goose and then we’ll all have a fun time because all our games are all on Steam. That’s the scary bit.
I would still wait until we know who the heir apparent is to worry.
I feel like a peasant waiting to find out if the good old king’s son is gonna ruin everything.
Good news is his kids appear to be level headed like him.
As they say wealth never lasts past the third generation. Gaben built it up, his kids understand their father and keep it going. The grandkids are spoiled and don’t get it and run it into the ground.
So we got time.
Whilst mostly true, to truly maintain wealth over many generations, you have to be very consistent with the culture that you pass down.
If Gabe is smart (I assume he is), he will know about the third generation problem, and how to mitigate it. He will talk about it with his kids and grandkids when they are old enough to understand. Building a culture around a shared set of values, making then understand that their success is built on providing the best experience to gamers that they can.
The other key thing, is to make the next generations understand that, whilst 10 years may seek like a long time, it really isn’t.
How is steam a monopoly if they don’t even own the biggest platform they sell games to? And even steam os being Linux has to be fully open to comply with the gpl meaning anyone can modify and install whatever they want.
It ain’t a public company. Nothing scary about it.
People don’t change in a dime when you get to gabens age. You tend to become stubborn and set in your ways.
What’s scary is what the guy after gaben will do. But so long as gaben is around and the company is private we are fine.
We did get lucky with the benevolent king, but we might not get that lucky in the future, yeah.
itch.io seems rather unproblematic
The payment processor thing was a mess, and they really went through and mass delisted a ton of things that did not meet the criteria, including a lot of SFW stuff.
The fact that they complied so readily, and overreacted so much, makes them pretty sus to me.
They used to be right below GOG for me, and I suppose they still are, but I trust them about as much as I trust Valve to not randomly delist things because some Karen in Australia whined.
Except for you know the whole it actually is a huge f****** mess.
agreed, i still dislike GOG’S AI take.
GOG’S AI take
What happened, exactly?
All I can find is someone used an AI image for some kind of marketing.
I remember for a job requirement they want The developer to use AI or Smth
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What are all those blue & white squares on the top right? I recognize every other logo, but I have no clue what that’s supposed to be.
Roblox
Ah, gotcha. Heard of it, never seen it.
No shit. It kills me when people play on console. I mean I get the simplicity and all, but they try to use the “it’s cheaper” angle and yeah, bullshit. It’s initially cheaper, then you’re paying what $20 a month to just play online, then games are $10 off at most on their respective stores and then you get to rebuy them when a new console comes out.
Steam games are like 50%-90% off constantly, and Epic has free games like every week. I’ve had games for over 15 years through steam. So yeah I paid $1,000 for my PC but after 3 years console owners have spent $1,500+ after monthly fees and buying games.
And in most cases you can’t mod your games at all on console, which is basically a free way to vastly increase the shelf life of any title.
PC forever.
To be fair is you’re into something like Ubislop it is really the only way to go, the integrated excessive DRM on a console keeps you from dealing with a terrible launcher, three layers of DRM, anti-tamper, and rootkit KLAC crap.
deleted by creator
Don’t forget the Humble Bundle which or mostly on Steam.
It kills me when people play on console.
As a PC and console gamer, consoles are easier to buy once and play a round of games for a number of years. PCs, on the other hand, are much better especially for certain game types.
Each has its role, but I was almost exclusively a console gamer for a couple of years because:
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You can sit back and relax and play on your TV after a long day of work
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If I buy a console, I can expect that almost all games will play correctly on it without having to upgrade mid-cycle
It’s quite a bit more complicated to try to figure out which video games your current graphics card can and cannot play, when you should spring for an upgrade, and when you need to do a complete re-build. To add to that I do not like windows and so I’m a member of the linux gaming club (there are dozens of us, DOZENS) and that makes things more complicated as well. With a console, they’ve worked out the licensing, the performance, and most fiddly bits and I can just sit on my couch, buy a game and play.
When I was younger and had more time to deal with things like the above, I gamed exclusively on PC. But with everything else going on with work and life, I find it much easier to just pick up a controller, plunk down on the couch, and play for a couple of hours.
Both have their pluses and minuses. I would say I like console gaming better because it usually happens in the living room and doesn’t feel as anti-social.
But to your point…cost savings isn’t really the primary reason to game on a console IMO.
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I paid $1,000 for my PC
What year was this?
It took me $1200 to build a PC to play Skryim on high settings in 2012.
I mean, to be fair, consoles are being jacked up to insane levels as well.
this is the reason why i dont like Consoles, If you ignore Video Game choices.
(if you want to know Video Game choice: TF2 Is not on Console for example, ik it used to be but not anymore,but its one of my favorite multiplayer game, no multiplayer video game i found is like it.)Also backwards compatibility. I can buy a new shiny modern PC and nearly all the games I bought in the past 30 years will run.
Oh true, like Windows 98/95 Video Games.
Just like that, yes. Also DOS Games and whatever
Yeah - through virtual machines and emulators, but still.
I call it accepting a negative, voicing opinions against it, while also not interfacing with it.
The pricing behind PS+, when considering all the Netflix-style games available, is decently generous. Less so for Game Pass, but it used to be better. I think most people are upset that it’s a gatekeeper for online play, but begrudgingly accept it as part of that wide game service.
I’m generally with you that pricing is better, but I have had occasions where a deal price on PlayStation beat out the lowest historical price of a Steam key.
If you were to claim you should never accept a platform with negative behaviors, I would point at Steam’s Counterstrike skins market, which can even encroach on you should scammers wish to sell to you, or steal your account to get a high “user reliability score”. I’d rather it didn’t exist. I still support Steam even with it there.
I just bought a Switch 2 and am playing Pokemon Champions lol. Consoles are not horrible
Pokemon Champions, the game that was supposed to be the definitive PVP pokemon game but only launched with 186 out of 1028 pokemon? That game?
Yeah it’s fun
Did you even read the entire comment or are you just here to provide a random fact about yourself and contribute nothing?
They bought a Nintendo product.
Do you really have to ask?
Nintendo is the worst offender here.
Their audacity to pretend that the switch 2 is a different console than the original switch is fascinating. They cut corners on hardware when they released the original and now Nintendo is charging you again to buy slightly better hardware that will still underperform.
I get that non nativ ports can have performance problems, but even Nintendo originals run under 30fps with mediocre graphics. You get better performance if you run the switch games on a steam deck via an emulator.
Personally not in the market so I can’t verify that, but damn - just how awful you and your fanbase have to be to release a product that performs worse than your direct competitors on your own originals ground. Steamdeck is already an underperformer in terms of hardware, and how much longer has it been produced than the Switch 2? 3 years?!
It’s still a monopoly though. The misconception is that calling Valve a monopoly, is somehow an attack on Valve or blames Valve. It’s just a description of Valve’s position in the market.
Also, shame on whoever thinks Valve won’t ever abuse this position at some point in the future.
Funny meme tho, just being pedantic
But it is still the best launcher on market all others are crap especially epic. And despite being dominating player it still didn’t abuse this power, meanwhile you hear only bad things about other launchers, delisting your games, insane telemetry, lack of reviews etc.
I hate most of other launchers not because they are bad but because they are required for playing some games: rockstar etc.
Gog found good niche in DRM free games which is great.
It’s still a monopoly though.
No, it is not. You and the other commentators need to stop repeating that propaganda lie by the true monopolists of PC gaming (Epic, Microsoft,…).
All of Steam combined makes up a fifth of the PC gaming revenue. A fifth! That’s a very good percentage but a fifth of anything is not a monopoly and that’s not even including mobile and consoles where Valve isn’t even competing at the moment.
Fortnite, Rocket League, Valorant, League of Legends, Minecraft, still World of Warcraft, Roblox,… are where all that PC gaming revenue is concentrated but a few mid-tier games sell best on Steam (because the same priced copy on EGS offers worse value) and suddenly everybody keeps repeating the lie of the true monopolists that the company that isn’t classified in the EU as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act is a monopoly (but Microsoft is).
I know you didn’t make this graph, but what was whoever-it-was smoking when they put the line for VR all the way up there? It should be slithering along the bottom right like a snake.
You’re misreading how the graph is laid out. The y axis is the combined total revenue of the entire video game market, with each new piece of the market being added on top of the older ones over time (although arguably arcades are the oldest form and should be below consoles). VR is the newest niche, and so it goes on top of everything else as it adds its revenue to the gross total of the entire market, despite only being a tiny piece of that sum.
In your layout, consoles/arcade would be at the top with everything else underneath them.
Even that don’t make no sense, boss. If that were the case not only should consoles and arcades be swapped, as you say, but also the VR line should be slipped in between handhelds and mobile. Dactyl Nightmare came out in 1991 and certainly wasn’t even the first VR experience, but it was the first commercialized one I can think of — and played myself, believe it or not. I can’t imagine VR as a whole made anything other than chump change until 2018+, but it was indeed there and chugging along quietly.
I can’t imagine VR as a whole made anything other than chump change until 2018+, but it was indeed there and chugging along quietly.
The graph specifically calls out the Oculus Rift as the start of what it considers the VR segment.
I would consider things like the Virtual Boy as VR to some extent as well, but I do see the logic as to why they only started the line with the Oculus. Before that it probably wouldn’t even show up as the money there was a drop in the bucket of a tenth of a percent of anything else, but it’s also widely considered that the Oculus and the Vive were the first really viable commercial VR headsets that started the VR game niche/genre. Before that, VR could probably be considered as niche as eye and head tracking hardware for sim games, and I don’t think that I’ve ever heard somebody mention those when talking about money in the games industry. Or even mentioned them in general outside of conversations like this. I don’t think most people even know that that kind of stuff even exists.
I know you didn’t make this graph, but what was whoever-it-was smoking when they put the line for VR all the way up there?
From what I’ve learned from buddies who are into VR, it’s a really weird subculture of super high end headsets, sometimes even full body suits with force feedback, and other shit. Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised if all that revenue is A) real and B) relying on a few big spenders.
That’s not the issue. The issue is the callout on it says the VR market is only $5 billion at its peak, which is well below mobile, which the gold VR line is drawn above, correlating with the position of being greater than $180 billion on the Y axis on the chart. Which is not how line charts work.
which the gold VR line is drawn above
That’s your issue? A minor cosmetic thing? And I thought you meant that the VR graph should be way thinner and that its numbers are an overestimation.
Well, I think it’s a well readable graphic which is why I like citing it. It doesn’t require zooming in to get it but you can zoom in to read who’s responsible for the graphic (“Art direction + design: Clayton Wadsworth”).
Damn, handheld virtually nonexistent since 2020
Only because they don’t count the Switch as handheld. Nintendo was pretty much the entire handheld market.
Only because they don’t count the Switch as handheld. Nintendo was pretty much the entire handheld market.
I don’t know what would be left by how they lay out the numbers. Switch (2) is console, Steam Deck is PC. The Chinese “boutique” handhelds by Ayaneo, Ayn,… use existing game ecosystems (either PC or Android).
I guess Playdate and whatever Atari sells these days. Can’t think of any other dedicated handheld with its own ecosystem.
Microtransaction-laden cell phone games very infamously oozed in and ate that entire market’s lunch. It turns out for short duration video game adjacent distraction on the go, people would much rather use the device they already have with a “free” (only up front) option rather than pay for a Gameboy/DS/PSP and games to go with it.
Square discovered this the hard way when they tried to release their various Final Fantasy remakes on smartphones in the early days as if they were regular games, i.e. pay $4.99 or whatever and have access to it in theoretical perpetuity and to the nearest decimal point, no one bought any of them. It turns out consumers respond much more positively to downloading a game for “free” and then coughing up several times more in microtransactions over time than buying any given title outright would cost, and/or being incessantly bombarded with ads as they play. Obviously the industry has figured this out and now everything you can play on your cell phone is feemium pay-to-win microtransaction hell built around slot machine mechanics, but it doesn’t matter because it apparently prints money.
Wait, a fifth? My bad, that’s insane. I don’t know a single PC gamer who doesn’t have most of their games in Steam, me included. Can you hook me up with a source for that?Turns out you are the one lying. Everything I find says Steam has 75% ish market share.
Where the hell are you getting your numbers? Everything I see says that Steam made a record 16 billion in 2025 while PC gaming as a whole made 43 billion. That would put Steam somewhere around 27% of the PC market.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gamesindustrybiz-presents-the-year-in-numbers-2025-year-in-review
https://www.eteknix.com/steams-revenue-surpasses-16-billion-in-2025-new-estimate-shows/
https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/25526042
I posted some sources here. I might be misinterpreting how that number is arrived at?
I think the 75% number may be accurate specifically for PC game distribution, not PC game revenue. 75% is the number Gemini gives as Steams’s/Valve’s market share when Googled.
https://www.quantumrun.com/consulting/steam-game-statistics/
Turns out you are the one lying.
You are obviously completely unaware about the concept of citing sources. I did not make that graphic and you did not care to follow the cited sources at the bottom of the graphic.
At the very worst you could accuse me of citing a source that’s 2.5 years old by now because its newest numbers are from late 2023 but then you made up random numbers without even backing up any of it, so my standpoint is still more valid than yours even if the numbers cited by me are not as recent as the numbers cited by @EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
The “source” is just a name, I was hoping for a link. Again every source I find says 75%.
https://zipdo.co/steam-gaming-industry-statistics/
https://coopboardgames.com/statistics/epic-games-store-vs-steam-market-share/
I’m open to being proven wrong
You are on lemmy, a decentralized and open source platform, nobody here think microsoft is good. If a bunch of evil corporations control the entire videogames market that still count as a monopoly, all of these are shit including Valve.
They also lied, it’s not a fifth, it’s 3/4
People call Valve a monopoly, and they are right but… is it a monopoly because they wanted to become one? Or because the competitors are completely clueless about what do the customers want? Can we blame Valve on becoming a monopoly when they simply are listening to the customers while the competitors (like Epic) keep ignoring users demands?
EA, Ubisoft, Microslop… they all tried to make their own launchers to move away from Steam and they all failed. Why? Because they wanted to make those launchers their way, while actively telling the users to shut up about their demands on what would make the launchers great.
Epic… Epic keeps throwing fortnite money to EGS launcher but keeps ignoring the most basic user demands.
Like, dude? I’m telling you that, for buying your product, it must have A, B and C. But, instead of offering me that, you make a product that lacks specifically A, B and C. And you expect me to buy it?
It is a monopoly, but because nobody else is even trying. And that pisses me off.
I agree that Valve has, in some instances, succeeded primarily because they’re not aggressively anti-consumer in a market of aggressively anti-consumer alternatives. However, they are not innocent by any means.
Last I checked, they are still automated when it comes to the majority of their “customer services”. Getting an actual human to consider things is expensive and they don’t want to spend money on that.
(Edit: Their solution to cleaning up their storefront is algorithms and crowd sourcing. The don’t manually do much of anything to filter the selection - it’s more algorithms, policies, and crowd sourcing reviews, tags, reports, etc. This prevents them from looking like they are actively controlling the storefront and is waaaay cheaper. They would much rather let influencers publish recommended lists for free than pay someone to find and remove asset flip garbage games. Systems like this are what gets you results like the opaque decision to ban Horses and financially devastate an indie studio without telling them why. It’s what gets you massive review bombs from China cratering reviews for great games because Valve isn’t willing to spend time working out an alternative method for Chinese gamers to communicate with game developers about games sold on their storefront - because typical feedback methods like discord are banned in China. Valve’s solution is to just default to filtering out reviews made in languages other than your own, entirely.)
They are very conscious of the numbers behind their success and the money that their platform and marketplace rakes in. They have worked with literal economists when it comes to their marketplace. Yet they turn a blind eye to concerns like skin gambling with children.
They do sometimes behave like bullies when negotiating with those who want to sell their games on Steam. The proportion of money paid out to devs/publishers is a factor of success and benefit to valve rather than anything else - if your game makes a lot of money (for Valve), you get a discount on the percentage taken. Some of that bullying behavior is also anticompetitive - as has been brought up in lawsuits. Their policies use “most favored nation” clauses.
- Basically if you want to benefit from Steam, the dominant marketplace, you have to offer Steam customers nothing less than you offer customers anywhere else. No discounts on another store or your website. No bonus content or service that might make a non-steam purchase feel better than a purchase on Steam.
Finally, they may not be anti-consumer but they haven’t exactly been spending a lot of effort on improving the functionality of services that their platform has. The clearest example would be issues with their friends-related services like voice chat that have plagued the platform for a long time, though some have recently been improved. They know they are dominant and don’t spend money when they don’t need to in order to keep customers.
All said and done, I use them as my default though I’ve made efforts to be more dev and indie dev conscious. Unfortunately, greed fuels most of the world and makes it hard to do anything that favors anyone besides those with power.
Microslop… they all tried to make their own launchers to move away from Steam and they all failed.
Microsoft didn’t fail. They bought Minecraft and Blizzard / Battle.net, two things that are money printers outside of Steam.
Microsoft ACTS like they fail because they demand higher profit margins from their gaming division to fund their AI investments.
Epic… Epic keeps throwing fortnite money to EGS launcher but keeps ignoring the most basic user demands.
EGS has an insane installed base because of Fortnite and Rocket League alone. League of Legends and Valorant are also available there but not Steam. Same with Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact.
It’s just that these games drone out the other games on EGS and that’s why they sell better on Steam. And what is that droning out usually called? A monopoly.
is it a monopoly because they wanted to become one?
Valve is a for profit company, one of their main goals is to make money.
It is a monopoly, but because nobody else is even trying. And that pisses me off.
It is a monopoly because they hooked everyone to their own proprietary third party software launcher, you should be pissed of about not owning any of your games
Doesn’t matter. Monopolies are bad and should be dismantled.
Doesn’t matter. Monopolies are bad and should be dismantled.
Then start with actual monopolists:
Yes, we should dismantle all actual monopolies.
Valve is also an actual monopoly.
Monopoly means it’s the only seller in the market. This isn’t true for PC gaming. You have GoG, Epic, Itch.io, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay, Rockstar smaller websites that host different kinds of games. Steam is the biggest player on PCright now, but there’s nothing about Steam that prevents any other type of competitor from getting into the market and possibly de-throning it.
Valve is also an actual monopoly.
No, a fifth of the PC gaming market is not a monopoly.
Market share is not the only determinant, and also yes holding 20% of the market can empower an actor to exert monopolistic power. Maybe learn a little bit before you open your mouth; you sound as stupid as the FTC.
Maybe learn a little bit before you open your mouth; you sound as stupid as the FTC.
No arguments, only insults. Pathetic.
No, not automatically.
You only go around punishing people that do bad things, not everybody that finds themselves in a random situation.
The meme I hate is “Valve wins by doing nothing”. You cannot be any further from the truth. Valve has won so far by doing many things right, they keep doing many things right. It’s like IT or maintenance work, or being God, your work is invisible until everyone dies.
Don’t be a bastard, and do the right thing. That’s hard to do apparently.
I fear for my game library the moment Gabe dies.
The term monopoly does not apply here. Not only do we lack any evidence of anti-competitive practices, there literally are competitors, they just suck and they are very unpopular.
There is mild vendor lock-in. If all my games are on steam, why would I buy my games elsewhere. Not to mention the steam client contains the steam store and advertisements for games in said store, so anybody in the steam ecosystem is incentivized to stay there. Games bought in Steam aren’t trivially launched without launching Steam.
All of that is true, but I still think “monopoly” is not the right word. It’s a bit of a unique situation. Ideally we’d have laws that make Steam provide a downloadable copy of the game that can work without Steam… but we’re so far from that.
fair enough, no point arguing about definitions anyway
True
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service[1]. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller’s marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
A monopoly is just an observation of the market landscape. Doesnt require ill intent or anti-competitive practices. Steam is just a benevolent monopoly. Until its not…
I think the issue is there is the economic concept of monopoly and there is the type of monopoly defined and banned by regulation. They are similar but not the same
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service
So like Epic in case of Unreal Engine and Microsoft in case of Windows. Steam makes up a fifth of all PC gaming revenue and EGS has a wide installed based because of Fortnite, Rocket League etc. People just choose not to spend their money there for games that are available elsewhere. That’s different from EGS not being able from supplying goods and services because they were pushed out.
There is competition. And the term “monopolize” is used as a way of saying someone took action to stomp out the competition so I would say that 99% of people would assume intent whether or not it’s technically a part of the definition, because 99% of the time a monopoly exists it’s not by accident. But again, importantly, there IS competition.
Valve just shipped a controller that only works in steam 🤣
No it can already work with anything that accepts SDL input (which is a bunch of software and most modern games steam or not). They upstreamed support for it before the controller even launched.
Shhh, you will crush their whole world
is steam really over 95% of the market? i think that’s where the limit is
is steam really over 95% of the market? i think that’s where the limit is
No, 8.6 billion out of 45 billion dollars. That’s a fifth.
well… that’s it then. case closed.
That’s the entire gaming market. Steam commands 75% of PC gaming.
The entire gaming market is closer to 200 billion on that graph.
I don’t really know where they got one fifth from, look it up and you will find three quarters.
No, 8.6 billion out of 45 billion dollars. That’s a fifth.
The graphic literally says PC games revenue is $45 billion. What are you getting at?
Every statistic I can find says that Steam had 74% market share in 2025
Even at 100% of PC gaming, that would be a small part of video games in general. A bit disingenuous to call that a monopoly.
It’s 75%. It’s not crazy far up on the monopoly scale, but IMO enough to be called one.
But there is no “limit”. If you are the only vegetable seller on the market, you have 100% market share. But as long as anyone else can set up another shop and compete equally, I wouldn’t call it a monopoly.
courts tend to use a percentage limit to define what is and is not a monopoly. the law specifies that anything below 50% of the market can not be a monopoly, and the chart shows that they’re below that. making it about pc gaming in particular i believe would narrow the scope enough that the courts wouldn’t care.
agreed, i will just hope they dont abuse the monopoly like Google or Microsoft. (this will be wishful thinking)
Has valve ever done anything to stifle the competition?
Nothing I know of
Competition actually exists, GOG, Epic, itch.io. More used to exist but they were shitty, inferior products and died out because of that. Steam grew up to being the standard it is now and we come to expect it. It’d take same or better to unseat them.
yeah i know,but i feel like Steam’s competitors are inferior.
(personal opinion though)Save for Epic the other two set out with what they intend. GOG wants you to buy games without DRM that you can download installers for whenever you want to install them. Generally more consumer choice.
ItchIo wants to be a place for small, indie developers to get a spot in the market without having to rely on Steam. Smaller games and media for consumption that I don’t think takes a big of a bite out as Steam does.
Steam has some legitimate criticisms to it certainly, and Gabe is part of the class of people I don’t like. But certainly not a monopoly.
hey its me again to shit all over your post, so its not a shitpost when you actually mean the shit you’re trying to convey.
Yours truly
Lol gog with the propeller hat in the corner
hahaha yeah.
Shoulda had him playing with Itch.io
good idea.
Me playing steam games on an arm handheld right now cause you can just install an arm build of the steamos frontend on any arm linux device and with a little tweaking my games just work. Its actually amazing, modded terraria, trackmania, schedule 1, etc just work.
an arm handheld
Yes, that’s usually what the hand is at the end of.
Did you see the leg football match last night?
The only ARM Linux device i have is the Raspberry Pi 5.
would be cool to try it out on the PI.Oh, reminds me. Gotta bust out my RP with retropie os on it, is retropie still a thing? My RP is a little older it’s the 1gb cpu with wifi
pretty sure, dont have retropie on mine though.
The RP5 isnt the strongest device ever but im sure some indie games will run well on it. Also with steam pushing native linux and possibly native arm builds soon of games performance will only improve.
good comment, and yeah most 2D indie games work fine.3D is where it starts to struggle.
(with BOX86/BOX64/FEX-EMU ofc)
native,3D works fine.
Once steam goes to shit we will all sail the seven seas but multiplayer will suffer
Back in my day we used Hamachi and multiplayer was just fine.
Ugh it was a pain to setup
GOG just sitting in the corner waiting for people to notice them.
GOG just sitting in the corner waiting for people to notice them.
And they can keep sitting there while they’re not actively supporting Linux, despite all that Cyberpunk/Witcher money (and according to their statements the funding got even better after their sale). To play their games on Linux, I have to go through all the steps to get Heroic and its terrible GUI, go through its WINE settings,…
Meanwhile 90% of the Steam games: Hit “Play” and it just works.
Gog is no longer part of cd project red
Gog is no longer part of cd project red
“and according to their statements the funding got even better after their sale”
don’t forget the GenAI for marketing.
How’s multiplayer on gog ?
am probably gonna rebuy all my video games on alternative platforms, or imma play open source games instead.
i can also take the games outside of Steam.I mostly play mmos tbf but I want to download and safely store a copy of wow classic servers and clients and mods in case we have an apocalypse event lol
kinda like me, i mostly play TF2. (but i have to wait hours for my servers to start.)
multiplayer will suffer
Good. It’s a cesspool.
Just playing with friends might get harder
![Steam competitors be like. [Extended?]](https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/8d2d46eb-234c-41bd-b7c1-fb9c4c9f2508.webp){kind=link}