And PC gaming would be much, much worse without Steam. It would go to some publicly traded company. They would gain a monopoly anyhow, and then slowly start making every single part of the service worse and worse to increase shareholder profits.
Dominant and successful, yes. Monopoly, no.
It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors.
Valve isn't putting any pressure on anyone in this sector. There is still competition, but Valve has simply been more successful than everyone else. Mainly because the alternatives are so, so much worse like EA and co who are actively malicious and predatory.
Valve hasn't done anything to pass an antitrust sniff test.
I've never understood this point.
Other developers can just make their own platform or distribute games themselves individually. Nobody wants to do that for obvious reasons.
There's clearly a network effect similar to Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and the likes. But apart from regulating for service interoperability, there's nothing you can do.
It's like claiming that Skype had a monopoly between 2008 and 2014. Just... Install something else then?
Valve is not buying other store makers nor actively sabotaging efforts to do so.
GOG proves you can still have a solid business in the space. Steam is dominant but not necessarily a monopoly. For all of its faults, Steam is still better than most competitors.
Better Valve/Steam than Microsoft, EA, Ubisoft, Epic or the rest.
Gambling / trading aside, they're doing a pretty fine so far.
It doesn't feel that way to me, I know I could probably buy a game through another digital distribution service, maybe for a bit cheaper, but it's just not worth the hassle of installing another program, signing up, and configuring things
I spent years (and too many hundreds of euros) building a steam collection, only to recently discover that the games I have paid for can’t be used on multiple computers at once in my household.
No doubt that’s buried in the T&Cs, but with some games at €80, wtf?
This scummy licensing model needs to die. The DRM can restrict to a single use of an individual game at any one time, so why also restrict the account.
I have since bought a couple of switches (last gen) and have been buying and selling my used gamecards using online services. I’m saving money due to resale value and now can share games within my household (or even outside!).
I was curious who exactly would commission and/or publish said study - turns out it’s a grey market key reseller
yeah no shit their clients are concerned that Steam is the only storefront that people trust
Key distinctions between Steam and similar contenders in other spaces (google play store, the apple app store) are that:
1. Steam isn't bundled with the OS, it must be installed.
2. Steam isn't a gatekeeper to installing software (as the app store is and in a somewhat different way as google has proposed doing with their plans to require app signing).
At least the US, and I assume most legal schemes, require an attempt to monopolize, simply being the best player in town isn't enough. Perhaps if the steam deck, etc. achieved a high level of market dominance you could argue that bundling steam was anticompetitive, but I don't see it yet.