So can developers just 'create' steam keys out of thin air that can be used to activate their game on steam? Does Valve get paid when the keys are created or activated? Or not at all? Seems fair maybe if it's using all of Steams infrastructure, considering developers can distribute the game themselves without steam keys.

Ok be honest you're trolling right?

What the fuck are you talking about? It's well known history that the right wing in the United States saw how successful the word was in leftist movements and aped it as their own word. If that's the kind of research you do you make people dumber. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism Libertarianism in the United States (1943 - 1980s) H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock were the first prominent figures in the United States to describe themselves as libertarian as synonym for liberal. They believed that Franklin D. Roosevelt had co-opted the word liberal for his New Deal policies which they opposed and used libertarian to signify their allegiance to classical liberalism, individualism and limited government.[166] LITERALLY YOU WERE INSULTING PEOPLE FOR NOT READING WIKIPEDIA

In what way are they not, or what actions should be taken?

> Alan Wake 2 wasn’t profitable until EGS exclusivity expired Well yeah, because EGS sucks. If you look at Steam's competitors, none of them are really developing their feature set. So even if customers were dissatisfied w/ Steam, who is actively trying to earn their business? > aren’t you worried that having one good option is being one good option away from having no good options? Sure, I'd _love_ it if another platform stepped up to actually compete w/ Steam. My expectations are fairly low: it needs to work well on Linux. Heroic largely resolves that for EGS and GOG, but I'm not particularly interested in supporting a platform that only works because some community project has done the work for them. So if GOG supported Galaxy on Linux as a first class citizen, I'd probably still use Heroic, but I'd buy a _lot_ more games from them. But as it stands, GOG is one update away from blocking access to my games through a launcher, and dealing w/ WINE/Proton directly is a pain. EGS is so far away from what I care about that I don't think they could ever earn my business, but who knows, maybe they'll surprise me. But the fact that we're even _having_ this discussion is a testament to Steam's success. Heroic probably wouldn't be a thing w/o Valve's investment into Proton/WINE, so GOG/EGS wouldn't even be a consideration for me at all. But since that work _was_ done, I now have more options. I've played some GOG and EGS games through Heroic, so it's not even theoretical, they are realistic alternatives. It's important to note that at every turn, Valve has earned my trust. When games are pulled from their store, owners of those games still have access (e.g. I bought Rocket League on Steam, and when they went EGS exclusive, I _still_ had the old version of the game). They have a solid refund policy, and they have gone out of their way to make things more pleasant for their customers. Even if they didn't have a dominant market position, I'd probably _still_ choose them just based on the user experience. So yeah, not having a realistic alternative isn't great, but I don't think it's because of anything nefarious Valve has done, but instead lack of interest by their competitors.

Valve will never IPO, yes! I don't care *why*. Platforms that IPO universally get worse and worse as they wring every drop of shareholder value from their users to feed the infinite growth machine. Platforms that have shareholders (which includes Epic and CDPR's GOG) have a primary motive of "being more profitable than last year". If, let's say, Epic made ten billion dollars in profit last year but *also* made ten billion dollars in profit in 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023, it'd be a *failed company*. I'll happily take the only company in the PC gaming space that's content with *one* money printer over every other option that's always thinking about how to make a second one, or reduce the ink costs, or blah blah blah. It's just a happy coincidence that in the PC gaming space (unlike pretty much every other space), the shareholder-free thing is *also* the most popular, and best thing. I'd use the worse less-popular thing if that thing were the only thing free from growth capitalism. If a game dev doesn't value their presence on the Steam store higher than the cost of Steam's service, they don't list on Steam. Simple as. It's just that a lot of dev studios consider "visible on the Steam store" to be very valuable indeed. That's what they're paying for, not the stuff about Steam that benefits the user (client features like Input, Workshop, Cloud, Community, etc).

You are insistent on not changing your perspective on it being a monopoly because you want it to be one. It's not like your scenario. Other people have figured it out. Epic game store is right there and so is GOG and others. People do buy from them and some prefer them. The problem is that you want it to be a monopoly as an excuse for why people are using the service more than others. That is simply not the case. You ignore that people do shop around sometimes and others don't cause it's easy and not everyone is how you think of them. You are Don Quixote yelling at the windmills thinking it's gonna save the country. Have an actual alternative you want instead of just being upset how things are.

So is the issue that Valve kicks you off the platform if you sell your game cheaper somewhere else? That does seem a little troublesome. I don't think Apple or Sony has those restrictions? Apple takes 30% as well, right?

Yes, that is the big thing many people are missing. Valve takes a 0% cut from Steam keys sold outside of their platform. The 30% does not apply. The only rule Valve sets out here is that you don't sell those Steam keys for less on other storefronts. Which imo seems fair enough if Valve is doing the distribution and asking for nothing in return. The big sticking point is whether the 30% cut isn't too high in the first place.

Sorry that my mean words hurt you more than Valve abusing you.

> Valve will never IPO, yes! I don't care \*why\*. Wow.

Your requirements are extremely niche, most gamers don’t care about Linux. Maybe they should have an option of a store that doesn’t charge 30% but is Windows only. Again, it doesn’t matter if Valve got into a monopoly position fair and square. The moment their monopoly is self perpetuating is the moment we no longer are in a free market where quality and price are main considerations for consumers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition_of_anarchism_and_libertarianism Dang. What now.

Plenty of explanation for this in this thread already, why waste this guys time too.

i’m still not sure you’ve read that page

No, you can go through my post/comment history and see that those are my long-held beliefs that I support with arguments/facts unlike people I discuss with.

You haven't put 1 factbto support an argument. Telling people they are wrong isn't a fact, it's a statement. You know nothing haha

Weird that none of you will answer a plain question.... Almost like you don't have actual reasons.

Ok, I’m not entertaining sealions.

i’m still not sure you’ve read that page