Oh come on, comparing Steam to telecoms is a bit of a leap. Nobody *needs* access to video games on a day-to-day basis. Video games are a luxury item at the end of the day. Their breaking up also assumes that hosting video games for downloads is a thing only Steam can do. Steam hosting the game files and Steam as a service for the customer have little to no relation to each other. Steam, or anyone else for that matter, could just as easily use AWS. Breaking up Steam into many, smaller Steams might lead to lower prices, or devs will choose one, that one will become the dominant one, and we're back to square one. The best way to drive prices down is competition. It's economics 101. Do not blame Steam for being successful, blame their competition (Epic in this case) for being inept. Epic was the VC baby everybody was banking on going toe-to-toe with Steam, but they couldn't even get basic shit like a cart or a wishlist working for far too long. Steam's 30% cut is a different problem altogether. Yeah, it's probably excessive, and would ideally be tiered by sales. However, all the games (that I have seen) that released on Epic first, with their paid exclusivity, eventually came out on Steam. So what does that tell us about how impactful that 30% cut is. Steam's pre-existing userbase is a factor. Userbase they have, and maintain, due to their wide array of features. And, all those features Steam provides aren't free to maintain. They host the game on their own servers, they host all the user generated content on their servers, Steamworks matchmaking is ran by Steam. Game devs aren't just getting their game sold through Steam, Steam does much much more than that.

And this is how people will explain why upcoming technofeudalism is a good thing. Our new masters have earned it

Maybe it's just a bad take. Just a hurdurr big tech bad sticker on an argument doesn't win it for you if your argument is crap.

Sorry, they didn't gobble up existing infrastructure. Comparing them to telcos is just a bad argument.

If you lose access to a vast majority of the market if you don‘t use a service, it’s a monopoly. Don’t defend monopolists.

I dunno about those lame features, I use Steam because AAA mostly gets exclusively released there on PC. It kinda sucks.

A monopoly isn‘t good if the product is good. It‘s still bad.

Why? What are the negative aspects of breaking up Steam that way? I can’t think of any. I provided plenty of benefits both to consumers and developers.

Now we're just making things up to justify a bad take?

What‘s made up?

> if you don't like a distribution platform taking 20-30% of the sale then don't use that distribution platform Excuse my frank speech but that's *absolute bollocks* and lacks any understanding at all of how a monopoly works.

Calling it a monopoly. They didn't lobby to have the market share. They have competitors who can't make a product as good. Just calling it a monopoly because you think it's an easy win in an argument doesn't just make it a monopoly.

This is not how a monopoly is defined in any civilised country.

If a dev loses substantial access to the market if they don‘t use a service, this service is a quasi monopoly. They are forced to use Steam, customers are then forced to use Steam if they want the game. Steam charges astronomical fees, that is their monopoly exploit.

Brother I already buy things on GoG lol. Steam is great and all but ownership is far more important to me personally

Great! Not everything’s available there unfortunately. Some games release on Steam only even. So you probably are affected either way. 90% of people buy on Steam. And they do that because their entire libraries are on Steam.

You are straight up just using your opinion to justify a point and i won't have any further part of the conversation.

Translation: agree with me or you are wrong.

Earth is round.

What he’s saying is so blatantly wrong and easily verifiable that now you’re the contrarian.