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

[mistymermaid]

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.


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


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,

From an ethical standpoint, that may be. Which presents a new problem; it conflicts with the concept of "freedom of association". No one is obligated to host, transmit, or otherwise convey another person's speech.

 

[Blackhwk13]

MORE than 72% of people commenting here don't know what a monopoly is

 

[BigTony]

Steam is definitely a Monopoly but not a malicious one like Google or Amazon. They've definitely done some greedy and stupid shit over the years but nothing agregius or illegal.

 

[Marmax80]

Ultimately, the space could serve well from a direct Dev to Player space, maybe something that strictly offers a clean, no quirk storefront with a smaller split and less drm woes. Chicken and egg and all that.

 

[trickybus]

MORE than 72% of people commenting here don't know what a monopoly is

No one here seems to get that monopolies come in different forms and that monopolistic competition is one of them.

 

[Aziamuth]

I don't think Steam is a monopoly. It's the best choice because the competition is laughable.

Epic Games Store is awful. The performance of the Store is as good as stepping on LEGO, and the interface itself is very incomplete. I'm also a bit skeptical about the "free games every Thursday" thing.

uPlay, Origin and other similar stores don't count. Aside from being horrible on their own, they focus on their own games.

GOG is the only proper competition because it has its own niche. In fact, I think it's better than Steam, because you actually get to own the games. However, it came too late for me. I'm way too into Steam now to make the change. Had it surfaced when I got into PC Gaming, I'd be using GOG only nowadays.

I don't know other stores, but they probably don't matter.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Also yeah, I agree about comments telling that monopoly doesn't mean being the most popular.

That would be one if there weren't Uplay, Origin, GoG Galaxy, Humble Store nor Battle dot Net.

In the same way that even back in the 80's Nintendo wasn't a monopoly because Sega and NEC were making and selling hardwares. It could even be Sega who were probably a monopoly in Brazil.

 

[diet_orange]

Yeah, I'll agree that Steam basically has a stranglehold on the PC games market and I'm not particularly happy about DRM (though it's much less intrusive than say Denouvo) but at least they do sales fairly frequently and hey, at least it's not Windows Live

Post automatically merged: Nov 10, 2025

GOG is the only proper competition because it has its own niche. In fact, I think it's better than Steam, because you actually get to own the games. However, it came too late for me. I'm way too into Steam now to make the change. Had it surfaced when I got into PC Gaming, I'd be using GOG only nowadays.

GOG is amazing for older titles and that's what I like about them the most. I wish they did that exclusively, but it's probably not keeping the lights on