They don’t have a monopoly. Full stop. Just off the top of my head, we have Epic Games Store, GOG, and Itch.io, which may not be as popular as Steam, but are absolutely viable alternatives if Steam ever goes completely to shit.
A real monopoly is like how, in my city in the US, there is exactly ONE company you can buy electricity and gas from. It’s a subsidiary of Avangrid, which is a Swedish corporation, not even on the same continent. They’ve been doing incredibly fucky shit with billing customers for years now and they have the mayor in their pocket, so if you want electricity, you have no choice other than to pay up. There are no alternatives unless you have the money to pay up front for a full off-grid solar install.
it depends on your definition of monopoly. For example the US FTC classifies a monopoly as a company with significant and durable market power with the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.
Steam would definitely meet that criteria, if you aren’t on steam your game is very unlikely to go anywhere. Can it? for sure but it’s significantly less likely to be successful, and steam basically sets the standard for what should be on a storefront and pricing for deals.
Being said, the act of being a monopoly in the eyes of the FTC isn’t a bad thing either, as long as the position isn’t being abused, which Steam currently is not.
Steam doesn’t even fit the criteria of the FTC definition. It wasn’t Steam that raised the price of games to $70, it was actually done by Take-Two followed by Sony, Activision and Nintendo. And it was Microslop who first tried to normalize the $80 price tag before Nintendo swooped in and made it a reality. And Steam didn’t tell Team Cherry to raise the price of Hollow Knight which is why it released with a $20 price tag. In fact during it’s entire “monopolistic” stage Steam has never set the price of any game except their own (which they priced a market price). Even the 30% cut wasn’t pioneered by Steam, 30% was roughly what retailers used to take. Valve simply rolled with what was a reasonable cut back in the day because they were effectively replacing retailers.
As for the rest, I don’t know you’ve been living under a rock but some the most successful games today are not on Steam. Minecraft is not on Steam, Roblox is not on Steam, Fortnite will never be on Steam, Blizzard games are not on Steam, Riot games are not on Steam. But maybe you meant indie games that haven’t made a name for themselves? We don’t know if those games would’ve been more successful had they released on Steam but Vintage Story seems to be doing just fine without being on Steam and the same could be said about Starsector. The upcoming Hytale game doesn’t seem to be releasing on Steam either. Steam is not a requirement for success. And of course you can always try to partner up with Sony or Nintendo and release PS or Switch exclusives.
Steam has a market dominant position on PC because Valve understands the market they’re in while their competitors in the PC space don’t. However in the wider gaming space Steam is hardly a monopoly. Steam Deck has sold about 4 millions units (numbers from Feb 2025) and people talk like it’s going to change the gaming landscape, meanwhile Microslop has sold almost 30 million units (numbers from the end of 2024) of Xbox series S and X and this gen of Xbox is considered a failure. The scale at which Microslop, Sony and Nintendo operate is completely different. In the wider gaming space Valve is in no position to set prices or exclude competitors because Valve has extremely low market penetration outside the PC landscape. Steam can’t even influence the PC market because it’s an open platform. Hypothetically if games on Steam started costing $100 then developers could just release games on their own and set their own price. Furthermore Steam is in competition on the PC marketplace but Steam is also in competition with consoles because at the end of the day people have a limited time to play games and they’re going to play games on whatever platform is most comfortable to them. If Steam stops being comfortable and Sony or Nintendo pull their sticks out of their asses (I think is Microslop beyond saving) why wouldn’t people slowly transition away from Steam and into console gaming the same way we’re seeing a trend of console players very slowly transitioning into console + PC gamers.
You have to put magnifiers on so the only thing you see is Steam and then add blinders to narrow view of the wider gaming space down to PC to be able to make some a statement about Steam being an monopoly. And if I just look into the horizon then the earth also seems flat. Just because I ignore all other evidence and focus solely on the perception that the earth is flat, it doesn’t mean the earth is flat. The same way just because you ignore everything else and perceive Steam as monopoly it doesn’t mean Steam is a monopoly.
Only argument I have for the dev side is that unless you’re big enough to be your own platform, if you develop a PC game and you don’t offer it on Steam, you’re only kneecapping its potential financial success, possibly to a critical degree.
They don’t have a monopoly. Full stop. Just off the top of my head, we have Epic Games Store, GOG, and Itch.io, which may not be as popular as Steam, but are absolutely viable alternatives if Steam ever goes completely to shit.
A real monopoly is like how, in my city in the US, there is exactly ONE company you can buy electricity and gas from. It’s a subsidiary of Avangrid, which is a Swedish corporation, not even on the same continent. They’ve been doing incredibly fucky shit with billing customers for years now and they have the mayor in their pocket, so if you want electricity, you have no choice other than to pay up. There are no alternatives unless you have the money to pay up front for a full off-grid solar install.
it depends on your definition of monopoly. For example the US FTC classifies a monopoly as a company with
significant and durable market power with the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.Steam would definitely meet that criteria, if you aren’t on steam your game is very unlikely to go anywhere. Can it? for sure but it’s significantly less likely to be successful, and steam basically sets the standard for what should be on a storefront and pricing for deals.
Being said, the act of being a monopoly in the eyes of the FTC isn’t a bad thing either, as long as the position isn’t being abused, which Steam currently is not.
Steam doesn’t even fit the criteria of the FTC definition. It wasn’t Steam that raised the price of games to $70, it was actually done by Take-Two followed by Sony, Activision and Nintendo. And it was Microslop who first tried to normalize the $80 price tag before Nintendo swooped in and made it a reality. And Steam didn’t tell Team Cherry to raise the price of Hollow Knight which is why it released with a $20 price tag. In fact during it’s entire “monopolistic” stage Steam has never set the price of any game except their own (which they priced a market price). Even the 30% cut wasn’t pioneered by Steam, 30% was roughly what retailers used to take. Valve simply rolled with what was a reasonable cut back in the day because they were effectively replacing retailers.
As for the rest, I don’t know you’ve been living under a rock but some the most successful games today are not on Steam. Minecraft is not on Steam, Roblox is not on Steam, Fortnite will never be on Steam, Blizzard games are not on Steam, Riot games are not on Steam. But maybe you meant indie games that haven’t made a name for themselves? We don’t know if those games would’ve been more successful had they released on Steam but Vintage Story seems to be doing just fine without being on Steam and the same could be said about Starsector. The upcoming Hytale game doesn’t seem to be releasing on Steam either. Steam is not a requirement for success. And of course you can always try to partner up with Sony or Nintendo and release PS or Switch exclusives.
Steam has a market dominant position on PC because Valve understands the market they’re in while their competitors in the PC space don’t. However in the wider gaming space Steam is hardly a monopoly. Steam Deck has sold about 4 millions units (numbers from Feb 2025) and people talk like it’s going to change the gaming landscape, meanwhile Microslop has sold almost 30 million units (numbers from the end of 2024) of Xbox series S and X and this gen of Xbox is considered a failure. The scale at which Microslop, Sony and Nintendo operate is completely different. In the wider gaming space Valve is in no position to set prices or exclude competitors because Valve has extremely low market penetration outside the PC landscape. Steam can’t even influence the PC market because it’s an open platform. Hypothetically if games on Steam started costing $100 then developers could just release games on their own and set their own price. Furthermore Steam is in competition on the PC marketplace but Steam is also in competition with consoles because at the end of the day people have a limited time to play games and they’re going to play games on whatever platform is most comfortable to them. If Steam stops being comfortable and Sony or Nintendo pull their sticks out of their asses (I think is Microslop beyond saving) why wouldn’t people slowly transition away from Steam and into console gaming the same way we’re seeing a trend of console players very slowly transitioning into console + PC gamers.
You have to put magnifiers on so the only thing you see is Steam and then add blinders to narrow view of the wider gaming space down to PC to be able to make some a statement about Steam being an monopoly. And if I just look into the horizon then the earth also seems flat. Just because I ignore all other evidence and focus solely on the perception that the earth is flat, it doesn’t mean the earth is flat. The same way just because you ignore everything else and perceive Steam as monopoly it doesn’t mean Steam is a monopoly.
Avangrid is not owned by a Swedish Energy company, you probably mean Iberdrola which is Spanish.
Only argument I have for the dev side is that unless you’re big enough to be your own platform, if you develop a PC game and you don’t offer it on Steam, you’re only kneecapping its potential financial success, possibly to a critical degree.