But they could release their own installer like CD project Red and other studios do. They don't want to miss out on the ease of the installer that enables a larger market share. That's not a monopoly. Literally.

No. The vast majority of potential customer will only buy if it’s on Steam. This is not about features, it’s about market access.

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?

Right but that's an ease of purchase thing. They could buy elsewhere. The option exists, there is no lack of viable options and people still take it. Not by definition a monopoly. So you are angry that people are lazy and don't shop around too much. Your issue is with the consumer so you want someone to step in and force them different because you don't like their actions?

If a monopoly exists because the competition is incompetent it is still a monopoly. If someone offers a teleport service and it is the only one on the market because no one else can figure out how to do it, it is still a monopoly. I don’t want anyone to step in, I want customers/users to not defend the monopoly like it’s their favourite football club, to think about what can happen if they rely on the services of a monopoly too much and yes, to „shop around more“.

> If I don’t like what Comcast charges I don’t do a class action lawsuit. That's a poor example, because in many markets, Comcast (or another cable provider) is the only option, or there's only one other option with much lower top-end speeds (e.g. DSL). So a class-action against Comcast _may_ be a reasonable idea, since they're an actual monopoly in many markets. The games industry is different. Steam _does_ have a commanding share of the market, but there's no real lock-in there, a developer can choose to not publish there and succeed. Minecraft, famously, never released on Steam, and it has been wildly successful. Likewise for Blizzard games, like Starcraft and World of Warcraft. Maybe a better comparison is grocery store chains? [Walmart has something like 60% market share in the US](https://www.foodindustry.com/articles/top-10-grocers-in-the-united-states-2019/), yet I have successfully been able to completely avoid shopping there.

Sure. Not being able to sell literal Steam keys on other platforms for less on other platforms for less according to the terms is the same as being prevented from selling on other platforms for less at all, *nevermind that Valve gets a 0% cut on Steam Key Sales made like so.* Also, there is no mention of said policy in either the OP article, nor the separate article about the lawsuit it links to.

No, it is where it is because Valve decided it wanted to invest in it outside of it being a launcher/updater for Valve games. And it's not really the first. The first was probably [Battle.net](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle.net) by Blizzard, which initially was a way to connect players (chat and join games) back in the mid-90s. It wasn't a game sales/distribution service for many years, but it got there w/ the release of the dedicated desktop app in 2013 and had some of the core features that makes Steam special (chat and match making). In fact, I had the desktop app _before_ I had a Steam account, which I created in ~2013 when Steam came to Linux (I switched to Linux in ~2009, and had played games on Windows for years before that). Blizzard was never interested in becoming a game distribution network, so Battle.net remained largely exclusive to Blizzard titles. I wouldn't have bothered w/ Steam if it didn't provide value. I was fine managing games individually, and I bought many games from Humble Bundle and directly from devs for years before Steam became a thing. I only started _preferring_ Steam when it provided features I couldn't get elsewhere. These days, it provides _so_ much value since I'm a Linux user, that I honestly don't consider alternatives, because everything else is painful. Heroic launcher closes that gap substantially, so I'm actually considering buying more from GOG (outside of a handful of old games I can't find elsewhere). If another launcher provided better value vs Steam, I'd switch in a heartbeat. I use both Steam and Heroic, and I still prefer Steam because it has great features like controller mapping. But if, say, GOG supported the features I care about _on the platform I use_, I'd probably switch to GOG because I also care about DRM-free games. But they don't, so I largely stick to Steam.

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.

> Is there a monopoly though?\ Other store fronts exist. Monopoly does not mean no other businesses exist.

Sure but it means there is no other competition though. That could be price collusion but epic takes a completely different cut amount and other stores have different prices for games. Just because other definitions exist doesn't answer the question, it avoids it by saying something else entirely. Is Steam a monopoly?

> Sure but it means there is no other competition though Not correct either. Do you think Google has no competition?

Only if you are selling a steam key elsewhere, they ask you to treat them equivalently but that doesn't mean you can't do sales for your products on other platforms. It's a little weird cause it would be like buying an apple app on android to use on apple but apple doesn't get the 30% anymore so they ask you to at least price it about the same so people don't avoid buying from them completely.

This is a whataboutism. Is steam a monopoly and how?

No valve means no steam controller, no proton compatibility layer (don't tell me to use wine I was there already) no steam deck, no freedom to game on any PC OS I want. You know nothing, Jon Snow.

I don't think you understand what a whataboutism is. I don't know why you keep asking me this question when I already answered it in my first comment. Yes, Steam is a monopoly, because they hold the overwhelming marketshare of PC gaming.

Okay so if Steam takes 30% and Itch takes 5% then the same game could be sold for approx $64 on Steam and $47 on Itch and the developer would take the same-ish amount home? But if they priced them the same they would make more money from Itch And if you sell Steam keys separately then the user would still go to Steam to download and Steam would make sure that it goes to one person's library and a bunch of other jazz.

Your first comment in this chain that I am responding to is > Excuse my frank speech but that's *absolute bollocks* and lacks any understanding at all of how a monopoly works. Which is not a definition and thus why I am asking. You have not yet defined it yet seem insistent that it is. And a whataboutism is when you bring up a parallel or comparable topic in an attempt to shift it. You brought up google in a discussion about Steam/Valve. That very much is. Having a large user base is not a monopoly. Hershey doesn't have a monopoly on chocolate for being the popular choice. People can and will at any time use competing products.

You know that Proton is just streamlined and better funded Wine, a project with decades of history by now? If you’re looking for someone to thank for funding it, it’s CodeWeavers. How’s your freedom to resell your games? Console gamers still have boxes and second hand market. Valve killed that on PC. Gamers are Microsoft for attempting that, Valve somehow got away with it.

So Battle.net started selling third party games when? Man, think your argument through before committing to paragraphs. Valve supports Linux just to safeguard their monopoly. They killed native ports because they pushed Proton so hard. Alyx supported Linux natively even but check now. All of this is pointless for most of the consumers. You’re making an argument that because they care for this niche it’s worth paying 30% cut. Most people would be fine with something to download and update their games with.