Yeah that's a pretty important distinction. I can buy Rimworld from the Steam store, or I can buy a Rimworld Steam key straight from the Ludeon website for the same price or I can buy a DRM copy for less I just won't get Steam features like automatic updates, cloud saves, or the mod workshop. Seems reasonable they don't want you using the platform for distribution while undercutting the storefront price.

You are not the hero here. Just another jerk.

In 2025, a company that is just looking to make a shitload of money is enough to automatically "win". Valve: "What are you selling?" Video games, video game hardware without vendor lock-in, and in-app purchases. "Who are you selling it to?" PC gamers. Literally everyone else in the space except for Itch, which is decidedly focused on too-indie-for-indie games and is small enough to be acquired if it ever gets popular: "What are you selling?" The promise that we'll make more profit next year than this year. "Who are you selling it to?" Shareholders or a corp that'll buy the whole company. It's an absolute no-brainer. Until *anyone else* can answer these questions in the same way Valve does, Valve is automatically the best player in the space.

A store charging 30% has zero impact on the end user if the price is the same, which it is in many cases. And popular titles pay 20%, not 30%. > The moment their monopoly is self perpetuating is the moment we no longer are in a free market That depends on your definition of "self-perpetuating". To me, it's only problematic if Valve is anticompetitive, such as paying for exclusives (like Epic does), preventing cross-play, or charging a subscription or something for users to keep having access to their games. Just having a better product isn't anticompetitive though. I've laid out my requirements for a viable competitor, and I'm sure other gamers have their own. If a competitor wants our business, they need to meet our requirements.

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

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

I'm 100% sure they haven't.

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

Ok, I’m not entertaining sealions.

Gaslighting.

And there is it, you have no argument so you go insults. You can't accuse people of sealioning if you have 0 evidence to support your argument.

Your point being? You need to use words, not vague accusations.

I’m glad big game publishers managed to bring it down to 20%, they need all the money they can get after all. Any monopoly, unless it’s a state monopoly in charge of a limited resource, is a bad time for consumers because there is no competition.

I would take a shitty store with 10% cut if it had all the games Steam does and if I could take my games with me. I don’t care for what Steam provides but I have no choice.

I’ll just block you, ok? You’re littering my notifications.

Most favored customer clauses are not uncommon in the retail world.

But there *is* competition in PC gaming, GOGA, EGS, and Prime (and others) exist. One player being dominant isn't an issue if that player isn't being anticompetitive. The closest thing I've seen is the policy that you can't sell for less than on Steam, while allowing for sales to happen separately from on Steam. Publishers can even generate keys for free and sell them without any profit sharing elsewhere, and customers can still use those keys on Steam. EGS is acting more like a monopoly than Steam and undercuts Steam on fees, Prime bundles its services, and Microsoft has an inexpensive subscription for unlimited games, yet Steam is still more popular. Why? People prefer Steam's service, and publishers are willing to pay a premium to sell on Steam, all without anticompetitive behavior. Valve is a shining example of how to handle having a commanding market share: they invest in their products so customers want to stay.

Steam has about 90% market share. That’s a monopoly even if niche competition exists.

Sure, and that's because: 1. Nobody bothered competing with them for years 2. Those that did eventually compete didn't get anywhere near feature parity I think EGS and GOG could get most of Steam's features with 2-3 years of solid development effort, but instead EGS whines about Steam having unfair market share and GOG just refuses to innovate on their client. That's not Valve's fault, what is in their control is whether they use their market position to kill off competitors, and they don't do that.

> …no I won’t name the reasons why. Do your research Oh. Oh no. I will explain the reasons why, because it’s important to understand this without sounding like the antivax equivalent of a white knight. First, forget the word monopoly. It’s a red herring. We are going to talk about *trusts*. A trust is any kind of organizational structure (one *or more* companies) that control or seek to control a market through centralized leadership. Trusts can *lead* to monopolies, but they are distinct and do not need to be (and rarely are) monopolies. The key defining feature of a trust is the use of market capture strategies that are unethical, anti-competitive, clandestine, underhanded, etc (“legal” or not). Valve is neither a monopoly nor a trust, by definition. While they control a huge portion of the PC gaming market, they operate with transparency, do not sabotage competitors, share their technology freely with potential competitors, and do not push any anti-competitive policies (like exclusives, rules preventing offering products cheaper on other outlets, etc). There is healthy competition in the PC game space, but Valve has held the lead by offering the best, most attractive platform for *consumers*. From social features and integrations, to regular discounts and sales, to a healthy and robust community review system, to automatically elevating great new content that might otherwise be missed, to enabling new platforms and technologies (VR, Steam Deck, Linux)… they provide things that customers and sellers love. Compare their competition. GOG is great but their DRM free policies (which are great) limit their use by sellers. Publishers all have their own stores now, but those are unattractive for a wide variety of reasons - splitting your library, using even more proprietary software to access your content (new stores and launchers), and for all that inconvenience you don’t even get a discount when Valve isn’t taking a cut. Finally, there’s Epic. Market share is Epic’s game to lose, and they are losing on their own merits. Their product lacks basic consumer features that Steam users expect (social features, performant storefront, trustworthy reviews, etc) and they *have* repeatedly engaged in anti-competitive behavior through the use of exclusives. At one point, Stardock’s Impulse platform was well on its way to becoming a legitimate competitor, but then came the fateful decision to sell out to GameStop, who destroyed it. Steam is no monopoly or trust. They are simply successful because they are well liked and they are well liked because they give customers and sellers what they want. Nobody else is even trying to compete with Steam right now. Epic could, but they aren’t, and only Tim Sweeny could tell you why.