There's a study that says 72% of developers view steam has a monopoly.

[PhaseJump]

I had a longer post written but considering Steam basically gets 100% immunity from the "corporations aren't your friend" argument in all cases, I'll just say this: Once Gabe croaks from his lifelong obesity induced high blood pressure and Steam is hoisted off (possibly by even his own son) to the private equity firm(s) that have had offers ready to go off even before the body is cold...

Then this statement will genuinely be the funniest fucking thing in gaming ever.

 

[Tetronomicon]

Fair. I just don't like (overwhelmingly) relying on a single source for something and hate how powerful network effects can be. It is what it is.

I also don't really want to get into a debate about this topic because I've already seen all the arguments and counter-arguments to know how it will go.

 

[iamthemilkman]

There are alternatives but no one wants to use them. Not even free weekly games can motivate people to leave Steam. It's #1 because it's the best at what it does.

Post automatically merged: Nov 7, 2025

it is a monopoly and you have to play by its rules, by it's algorithm and by... less than welcoming community of review bombing manchildren. It is what it is, competitors get ridiculed or hated, GOG isn't exactly popular for modern games and Microsoft Store is equally a joke as Epic Games.

The only option for your game to be somewhat successful is Steam and that's a gamble either way.

Review bombing exists regardless of the platform. Happens on Steam, Xbox, Metacritic, etc. That's not a Steam thing, that's a human thing. I'm not bothered by it, though. Review bomb away. Who cares? That's what happens when you release something to the public. Criticism is fair game, whether you agree with the criticism or not. That's just how it goes.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

Once Gabe croaks from his lifelong obesity induced high blood pressure and Steam is hoisted off (possibly by even his own son) to the private equity firm(s) that have had offers ready to go off even before the body is cold...

It's lowkey sad that Steam is one of the rare remaining example of why private business can be a force for good (The CEO can just brute force policies that benefit his employees & consumer base) and we're all bracing for when Steam goes public and shareholders ruin the service.

Going public is an exorcism for the morality & soul of any company.

The hundreds of competing share holders won't care about you, public businesses always collapse into bureaucratic malice. Hi Amazon & its subsidiaries. We're a long way from the bookstore aren't we.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I mean they're literally owning the best digital storefront. GoG has the DRM-free aspect but that's still below them.

 

[Badseed Badseed]

That may be true, but think of all the small developers that would have no other way to get their game to a wide audience. What, are they going to use itch? I have no problem with Steam, they are a whloe lot less douchy than Nintendo, Playstation, Microsoft and leave Epic for the little kids playing Fortnite

 

[Deleted member 660650]

There are alternatives but no one wants to use them. Not even free weekly games can motivate people to leave Steam. It's #1 because it's the best at what it does.

The thing it is not realistic to expect people to use only one of them, but considering how lazy humankind is they populated Steam because it was the first of its kind and never left. People built their library, gamer friends and their customized profiles and shit so of course they won't leave Steam. At most they will use Steam with other alternatives but I don't ask other alternatives keep pushing double DRM and stupid exclusivity shit like Epic Games Store did. But then Steam is only the best just because it is the only useful one for the overall gamer experience. But from price point in outside of America and Europe building your PC game library from non-Steam platforms makes sense more like on Microsoft Store and Epic Games Store because for a long time Steam has enforced $ anymore for tons of countries instead of keep using their local currencies and these platforms still care to use local currency and they are aware of your local economy that Valve ignores. So Steam was best for them but not anymore, fatty Gabby can suck their dick instead lolol.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

One more hot take:

less than welcoming community of review bombing manchildren..

Review bombing doesn't exist, it's an anti-consumer term designed to gaslight the public into not trusting nor leaving negative reviews.
When overwatch 2 launched on steam it overwhelming received negative reviews by hundreds of thousands of users with proportionally low player time... Because they all played it on Battlenet for years where feedback wasn't allowed.
That "review bomb" was years of pent up frustration finally given a release.

Stop giving corporations an excuse to silence criticism.

If thousand of people hold a negative opinion on a product, it's for a reason.
You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback. Stop feeding into anti-consumer practices.

 

[Deleted member 660650]

One more hot take:

Review bombing doesn't exist, it's an anti-consumer term designed to gaslight the public into not trusting nor leaving negative reviews.
When overwatch 2 launched on steam it overwhelming received negative reviews by hundreds of thousands of users with proportionally low player time... Because they all played it on Battlenet for years where feedback wasn't allowed.
That "review bomb" was years of pent up frustration finally given a release.

Stop giving corporations an excuse to silence criticism.

If thousand of people hold a negative opinion on a product, it's for a reason.
You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback. Stop feeding into anti-consumer practices.

I actually hear around that AAA companies and indie developers are very against negative reviews because they believe negative reviews reduce their potential profit. Years ago one of the indie video game developer team actually announced their new games won't be on Steam because people leave stupid negative reviews like they believe the game lacks a feature but it actually exists in the game. However IDK why they believe people have no negative thoughts about their game as long as they cannot read negative reviews lol. It is just unrealistic to expect everyone mostly will drop heartwarming positive reviews about your game. IDK why they started to believe people necessarily wanna troll, just nitpick to shit on you, they are haters so they hate and overall whatever negative review means "null stupid opinion" anymore even when negative review is truthful and actually mentions about big problem of the game many agrees yet the developers ignores. Naturally you cannot satisfy anyone but it's Business 101 to realize any negative review has a use for you to use it to your advantage by realizing how you can make a better business.

Sometimes negative reviews are overall drama that companies bought up that actually makes their next game a trivial mess. For example they made fun of GTA San Andreas for having cartoon graphics, as a result they focus on stupid realistic graphics that lacks meaningful content anymore. Perhaps they also made fun of how stories in Rockstar games sucked hard and they decided to make Red Dead Redemption 2 a stupid Korean drama outside of what you would want from a cowboy game. They complained Witcher 3's story mode is too long and it made CDPR made story mode of CyberJunk 2077 stupidly too short and meaningless. They turned the game into "just be done with side content and ignore story mode" shit. Perhaps they complained how Witcher 3 was a good RPG that have fun gameplay and that's why CP2077 released as pseudo-RPG and real FPS with RPG elements. But I know how virgins cried for dating sim shit and that's why the game has shit focus on dating sim elements instead of actually providing a meaningful adventure to provide lol.

In the end you gotta listen to negative reviews only to figure out if you did something you never realized and thus you may learn how you can improve yourself. For example if you had developed a game like Metal Gear Rising that's whole purpose is enjoying its real-time realistic cutting gameplay and when people complain it doesn't have enough sexy girls, dating sim features and epic 200 hours story you can just say "dude it wasn't the point of the game" and most people would ignore such comments for spamming clown emoji on Steam reviews. It doesn't hurt your sell. Also many people have a brain so when they read a hater comment they ignore such comments despite how true it may be. When a person mention the bugs they experience it is just a possibility you gotta risk while you playing the game. For example when people complain tons of bugs and performance issues on many new games I actually rarely have a problem, and most people is aware of it too because some people cannot use a PC properly and they expect their quantum PC to run a game ok when 60+ tabs are open on Chrome, it runs multiple movies in the background, they download around 100+ porns and then "why the game stutture" my ass lolol.

And then sometimes negative reviews can be the reason for me to buy a game for many reasons I won't name each. For example in a forum someone complained in Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet they created a character and entered a game, and then during the story suddenly another character creation screen popped up. They thought it was a bug so they created the same character again but it turned out it was character creation screen of your companion NPC the game failed to make it clear so they had to replay the game again to create the companion NPC properly. So the user cursed at the game for how stupid the shit was but it was like a positive review for me and why I bought the game and actually loved the game for decent fashion statement choices and cool stylish gameplay lol.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I actually hear around that AAA companies and indie developers are very against negative reviews because they believe negative reviews reduce their potential profit.

AAA devs are being paranoid and would say to their team that if the game gets a good metacritic they'd give them a salary bonus so it makes them work harder.

Indie devs don't do that but I heard that one popular youtuber giving a negative review could almost kill a game.

On the other hand Epic Game Store exclusivity has almost killed their profit compared to Steam/GoG/Humble Store.

 

[moonbits]

One more hot take:

Review bombing doesn't exist

it does, your example is a reasonsble instance of criticism but other games get bombed for extraordinary mediocre reasons, most that have nothing to do with the game.

 

[DjQuick2008]

If consoles wouldnt remove games from their store after a couple of years then they would be in business. I love the fact i can find games from 2011 onwards on steam. I only played ps3 from 2010-2019

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

If consoles wouldnt remove games from their store after a couple of years then they would be in business. I love the fact i can find games from 2011 onwards on steam. I only played ps3 from 2010-2019

Even Steam games can get delisted.

 

[trickybus]

No different from any other store front, if your PSN, Nintendo, Epic, Xbox account is banned you lose all access your games.

Oh, I'm aware. I've just had the misfortune of running into Steam users who don't realize this. A certain section of video game enthusiasts like to assume best company practices even when there's no evidence supporting it.

Hot take:
We will never "own" raw data, only the physical storage of data.

Legally, no. Illegally? Sure, if you're willing to take the steps to separate the game data from the software that locks games to specific platforms. This is already possible with Steam games.

Post automatically merged: Nov 8, 2025

I had a longer post written but considering Steam basically gets 100% immunity from the "corporations aren't your friend" argument in all cases, I'll just say this: Once Gabe croaks from his lifelong obesity induced high blood pressure and Steam is hoisted off (possibly by even his own son) to the private equity firm(s) that have had offers ready to go off even before the body is cold...

Then this statement will genuinely be the funniest fucking thing in gaming ever.

Quest-posting is on-brand, as usual

Hard agree on the immunity double-standard; folks forget that Steam is just a company and like every company, isn't immune to greed and corporate malfeasance. Once funny, meme fat man dies, Steam is going straight into the shitter

 

[Mitochondria]

I got several question 72% of how many ?? 100 dev´s or 1000 ??
Also are these dev´s from companies that failed with their own shitty launcher EA, Ubisoft, Amazon ??

Steam may have monopoly but that´s because nothing else good exist except gog but I use gog as it was original ment to be for Good old games.

Steam has great sales, Steam is saving out asses from shitty companies like EA, Amazon and so on. Steam saving us from AD´s in games because steam does not allow games on steam that has AD`s which is a good thing because EA and such know with out steam their games will LOSE big.

People that say steam is trash and evil and does people are people we should be afraid of they are the people that wan´t gaming to die they are the people that wan´t to put unstoppable ads in your 70-90 dollar games.

Steam is big and powerful because they don´t hate their consumers they don´t suck ass. With out steam gaming would be riddled with ads and concored to hell and back and honestly modern gaming would be dead.


People shitting on steam are people that knows jack shit and sniff glue for a living.

I honestly wish I started using GOG earlier, but back when I first encountered it, it was still relatively new so I didn't trust it that much. Now, years later, I got 400 games on Steam. I'll still be mainly using Steam, but I'll also be building up my GOG collection (mainly older games that aren't on Steam).

 

[PhaseJump]

Nothing is guaranteed other than death and taxes. Steam is still the best gaming platform.

When Lord Gaben ascends to the next dimension and Valve's money printing regime is run by somebody else, they too will become meme'd.

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

other games get bombed for extraordinary mediocre reasons, most that have nothing to do with the game.

*Ahem*

Stop giving corporations an excuse to silence criticism.

If thousand of people hold a negative opinion on a product, it's for a reason.
You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback. Stop feeding into anti-consumer practices.

 

[trickybus]

*Ahem*

Consumers are not immune to criticism and stating that their reason for criticizing a game is moronic isn't "silencing" them. If consumers choose to stop criticizing a product due to backlash, that's on them. If they're going to have an idiotic take on modern gaming, the least they can do is have a spine and commit instead of cracking under the slightest push-back and crying censorship

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

Consumers are not immune to criticism and stating that their reason for criticizing a game is moronic isn't "silencing" them. If consumers choose to stop criticizing a product due to backlash, that's on them. If they're going to have an idiotic take on modern gaming, the least they can do is have a spine and commit instead of cracking under the slightest push-back and crying censorship

Considering steam is the only digital store front to offer public reviews within mainstream gaming sphere.
And services such as Netflix & Youtube removed public user reviews to "stop harassment" and "protect creators" we're well past corporations hypothetically using "hate" as an excuse to silence consumers.
They've been getting away with it for a solid decade now.

Stop giving corporations an excuse to silence criticism.

If thousand of people hold a negative opinion on a product, it's for a reason.
You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback. Stop feeding into anti-consumer practices.

I'm going to have this engraved on my tombstone.

You may disagree with that reason, but that does not give you the moral high ground to demand the end to consumer feedback.

There will be people who will criticise a product for reasons you may consider "moronic". They are still allowed to share that opinion, as are you. Because odds are they consider your criticisms "moronic".
If some one receives backlash for refusing to buy a product, that's a horrific, arguable dystopian example of hostile consumerism.
No one should be obligated to support a product simply because it exists.

Corporations are already silencing consumers whether you acknowledge it or not,

 

[trickybus]

Youtube removed public user reviews to "stop harassment" and "protect creators"

I can't speak on Netflix because I don't use the service but YT's nonsense has never been about silencing criticism. What Google is protecting is their bottom line and that requires making their acquisition as "child-friendly" as possible. Keep in mind that this is the same company that promised not to target minors with predatory advertisements and then did exactly that. Google-flavored censorship has always been about maximizing profit at the expense of YT's youngest and most vulnerable audience

 

[Ezri_Muldoon]

I can't speak on Netflix because I don't use the service but YT's nonsense has never been about silencing criticism.

Per the 2021 Google press release, and from the BBC:

Weaponizing "hate" to silence consumer criticism has been the default PR Move when defending the removal of public reviews.

Google-flavored censorship has always been about maximizing profit at the expense of YT's youngest and most vulnerable audience

It's easier to get sponsors when a platform can claim there's been no negative reactions to content.
Again, no one should be obligated to support a product merely because it exists.
But here we are, where you can see something that you morally disagree with. But your view still counts as support to the algorithm. After all, you can't complain so you must be happy.

Pardon my steadfast resolve to not lose any further ground under the false pretence of "preventing hate".
My rights as a consumer shouldn't be so easily curtailed by corporations.

 

[Deleted member 660650]

Considering steam is the only digital store front to offer public reviews within mainstream gaming sphere.
And services such as Netflix & Youtube removed public user reviews to "stop harassment" and "protect creators" we're well past corporations hypothetically using "hate" as an excuse to silence consumers.

Yep. And they have no excuse for not allowing negative reviews, even IMDb and whatnot websites don't publish a review unless they allow it, and often only reviews that are "worthy to read" are published. Since it is the era of AIs they can have AIs check if the review is nonsense hate shit or actually a decent worthy read under your comfy blankets drinking a nice cup of tea lolol.

But then stupid companies believe negative reviews are bad for them. Even a negative review can work way better than their stupid ad lol. But then people can always review bomb on social media which actually makes things so bad it can involve people unrelated to gaming but have enough power to end the developer/company. When people wanna drop a negative review better allow them before the negative review turn into murder threat or some shit lol.

 

[trickybus]

Per the 2021 Google press release, and from the BBC:
View attachment 126256
Weaponizing "hate" to silence consumer criticism has been the default PR Move when defending the removal of public reviews.


It's easier to get sponsors when a platform can claim there's been no negative reactions to content.
Again, no one should be obligated to support a product merely because it exists.
But here we are, where you can see something that you morally disagree with. But your view still counts as support to the algorithm. After all, you can't complain so you must be happy.

Pardon my steadfast resolve to not lose any further ground under the false pretence of "preventing hate".
My rights as a consumer shouldn't be so easily curtailed by corporations.

What Google says and what they intend are almost always at odds. The article you linked points out a glaring error in Google's logic: how can this be a win for "bullied" creators when they can still see the dislikes? The users most effected by the criticism and allegedly being "protected" by this move are still getting the full brunt it. If Google is trying to silence criticism this way, they are doing the shittiest job imaginable.

You're not wrong for wanting to protect your right to criticism as a consumer. I just think you're simplifying the issue too much. Review-bombing and corporate censorship are not mutually exclusive.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

That’s not technically correct, but it is true that Steam have a lot of zealot fans that will defend whatever they do. Lets not forget that this year there was that problem of the Steam accounts not being inherently by ToS, but nobody said anything.

It is also true that you average consumer don’t use anything else than Steam. All people praise this and it is nice because the platform is great, but this can only lead to bad places. When GabeN retires, or dies the next people in charge will have practically all PC gaming sells AND a bunch of fans that will allow them to do anything

 

[What's His Face]

The term "monopoly" is used in economics and laws and they can mean different things but Steam is not a monopoly in either of them:

Steam used to be a monopoly just because they had no rival but they lost their monopoly status a long time ago. Now it's unrealistic to say Steam is a monopoly (economically) because they are not the only power that decides how the entire video game industry should be and they cannot actually do what AAA companies should do in the context of online video game distribution services. That's why Ubisoft and EA sells their own games on their platforms and our fatty Gabby cries about it on his private yacht lol. For Steam to be a monopoly they would need to be the only company sells video games online, however there are already major significant players in the market like Microsoft Store, Epic Games Store and GOG. And then we have Green Man Gaming, Humble Bundle and tons of minor global and local online video game distribution services that can be specific for an entire country like an ISP having a service to sell video games for their customers. We can accept that Steam is a dominant market leader and there are a significant number of players in the market and that's why instead of calling Steam a monopoly we call it a dominant market leader in an oligopolistic market structure and that's why since oligopoly exist in the market there cannot be a monopoly in the market. Easy peasy eggs are tasty lol. What monopoly simply is like there is a huge cake and our fatty Gabby eats the whole cake while other kids can only count how many times fatty Gabby had to chew to eat the entire cake. However what actually happens in the PC market is our fatty Gabby eats 2/3 of the cake while 1/3 is shared among tons of kids and that is what we call oligopoly and that's why we call Steam the dominant cake eater™©℗® in oligopolistic cake eating event lol.

In law being a monopoly is not illegal but monopolization (intentional act to use unlawful ways to be a monopoly) is a crime because when people try to have the monopoly it ruins tons of laws that protect society to make lawful and fair business and it can collapse society and economy that threatens the social life of the entire world for people to actually survive, money can flow and people can find a job. It can lead to another The Great Depression period that forces 99% of society have to dance in front of rich people for 18 hours just for $1. To prevent it companies are protected as much as customers. Since our rule 4 here forbids politics all I can say in the law context is major part of the world actually accuses Valve for using its dominant market leader position to break laws to be a monopoly by unlawfully trying to destroy the established fair and legal oligopoly in the market and therefore currently Steam is accused of trying to be a monopoly in law content. Since my uncle doesn't work in Valve I have no idea if they are really guilty so as far as I know Steam is not a monopoly (illegal one) by law because they are not punished by it (but it seems they likely will be).

When we look at it socially what monopoly means is subjective therefore it is trivial. We cannot decide what objective words and scientific terms means, all you can do is to obey the dictionary lol. Yet we may talk about Steam losing its potential to stay as a dominant market leader because society pukes at the idea of DRM so they demand games to be sold on GOG instead. And then Steam turned into porn shit that it got harder to explore its store to actually find a decent game. And then Steam removed regional pricing, instead they use adjusted $ prices that ruined personal preference of tons of gamers around the world considering how taxes and bank fees may work in their countries and therefore as a result they started to prefer Microsoft Store and Epic Games Store more to not feel like a sucker buying games on Steam when they can buy the same game cheaper on another platform. And then Steam is bad for many indie developers because they ask too much $$$ to sell the game on their store and they ask too much % from every sell you make. Considering the economy suck and Valve doesn't care, people started to prefer itch.io and Epic Games Store more. As a result Steam risks being customer-friendly in the entire world by adjusting itself to be "only for rich people" more than it already is right now. It causes weakness for Steam and it is what Epic Games Store wanna exploit to win hearts of non-rich people in the entire market. Steam started to ignore being a global market, they only focus on Americanos and Europeanons for a long time, and subjectively you can even say Steam's objective status on being a dominant market leader doesn't matter and it has null effect on most of the world where they stopped using Steam long time ago. So subjectively either Microsoft Store, Epic Games Store or even GOG became the "one and only platform" so many people care about anymore. While I do not think Epic Games Store will exist after a few years, if they play their cards right, keep regional pricing, implement no DRM, better social features than Steam has in terms of custom profile and backgrounds for their profile page, way more gamer friendly features to ease streaming games via Youtube, Discord and Twitch, game rent system (you may choose to buy and keep your game but you can also rent your game to play within a time limit something akin to Game Pass), even dating feature to match people according to their gamer profile to make it work like a Tinder shit no one can stop popularity of Epic Games Store!!! lolol

So instead of turning the shit into Korean and Indian drama to play on victim mentality you gotta think as a business-person and accept to make a significant profit Steam should be your top 1 choice to sell your game. As a customer you may pick whatever platform you want, but to make business naturally you will pick what most customers prefer. However it is stupid to just pick Steam, so better pick every platform you may sell your game on because it is important for you to respect the personal preference, financial reality and legal restrains of your customer. So from a business point, for example, EA and Ubisoft not selling their game on Steam can only serve as butchering their potential profit and customers' subjectivity to actually find it okay to buy their games. In every period they don't sell their game on Steam they risk being forgotten, making customers make a stance against them to not buy their games for feeling resentful, and customers may forget they actually exist when people won't waste their time browse every available platform when they can barely browse main page of the Steam to keep up with what new game being released on. For example if you pick Steam but not GOG you will lose die-hard GOG customers who pukes at the idea of DRM, if you pick only GOG but you don't sell the game on Steam your game will be less likely to be known around. In the end how the Steam is and the fact that Steam is a dominant market leader is not a bad thing for you, on the contrary it is good for you to make a profit. You gotta be glad that there is a platform that is actually that popular and PC market is being kept that alive so you have a greater chance to make profit. However yes the way Steam requires too much money to publish your game and it asks too much % from your every profit to actually make a meaningful profit when you are not an AAA company sucks but still it is better choice to make sure your game is on Steam.

Thank you. I was about to post something exceedingly similar. You saved me quite a bit of time with this.