i mean, sure, they can, but they will get angry emails from Valve

So? Maybe they should put more focus on improving their own platforms instead of whining about Steam, then they could sell their game exclusively there without issue.

I don’t know I can make it any clearer; Steam has a big market share because people choose them, not because they use any hostile tactics to push out the others. Ubisoft and EA, among others, have for years done everything in their power to lose any good will from the player base in favor of their shareholders.

My guy. I deliberately left out GOG in my comment because they fill a different niche in the market, DRM-free and generally older games. The bureaucracy of refunds is probably alot less complicated.

You’re probably the first person I’ve heard say Steam has bad customer support.

They are not making “their product accessible”, they are making other people’s games accessible by providing an open OS for gaming outside of the Microsoft Windows system.

Again, having a large market share because you simply provide the best service is -not a Monopoly-. How do they in any way dictate prices? Ubisoft are free to sell their game for half the price on their store front if they want to.

I’d happily pay 30% to Steam for all the service they provide over 100% to Ubisoft’s reskinned, buggy, unoptimized quarterly “games” or EAs microtransaction simulators any day.

Are you saying Yes, it is the legal definition; or Yes, Google is a Monopoly?

“give us your money or let us install cookies” yeah no I’d rather not read the article then.

Yeah but why do they have that market share? It’s not forcefully. They aren’t buying up competitors. They don’t own all the publishers and can dictate who sells their games.

People choose Steam. Why? Because Ubisoft Connect it horrendous to navigate. Because EA App is slow and, when it launched (as Origin), left a bad taste in people’s mouths because it bordered on spyware. Epic Launcher is kinda getting better but when it launched it was extremely bare bones, it didn’t even have a cart to buy multiple products at once, you had to buy things individually, which is absolutely ridiculous for an ONLINE STORE .

This so-called monopoly is not a product of predatory methods, quite the opposite. Valve may be a corporation but they constantly set standards in favor of the consumer:

• Generous refund policy
• Unparalleled customer support, as opposed to their competitors basically giving the finger to users asking for help.
• Actively working towards wider support and accessibility, i.e. SteamOS, Steam Deck, and their runnable-verification markings.
• Just recently announced the “real requirements” stats from players sharing a games’ performance on their actual hardware rather than the developers Recommended Requirements which we all know are complete bullshit. They are literally forcing developers to stop cranking out half-assed games with non-existant optimization for $70.

Definition of Monopoly according to Merriam-Webster:

exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action. specifically : exclusive control of a particular market that is marked by the power to control prices and exclude competition

None of this applies to Valve/Steam, all they’re guilty of is setting policies in favor of the consumer. People tend to choose the consumer-friendly seller.

Who’d’ve thunk?

Monopoly implies there are no alternatives. There are plenty of alternatives. People just choose Steam because the other ones are (mostly) crap.

You do have a point there, yes. My backlog of games I want to play is … Long …

Well, you still need something to play it on. And since GPUs and RAM costs about a child and a half these days, I’d say it’s quite expensive.