The conversation is longer then two comments. It’s highly debatable if valve has a monopoly per the FTC definition, not being sued by them isn’t the bar. You don’t need to have 100% market share. You can have legal monopolies, but that wouldn’t make the gross hoarding of wealth (which is the underlining thread) defendable.

There is no doubt in my mind that they have, in common talk, a soft monopoly at minimum and are colluding and keeping the percentage taken high. If they were actually competing, he wouldn’t be able to afford all the boats.

I interpreted it as profit.

The gaming market is much larger than PC gaming.

And Steam does not have an 80% market share on PC gaming, so who’s lying?

And finally, who the fuck do you think you are that I owe you a response?

Both things can be true. They make good products while also making millions from kids gambling.

Minecraft, Star Sector, Dwarf Fortress until recently. Stores like Epic and GOG and itch.io.

Plus Steam gives you content distribution, discussions, patches, all for free.

To be fair, Valve only has around 350 employees. The other companies have thousands more.

You don’t even have to release your game on pc to sell… Some don’t at all. Sticking to only consoles.

That’s how you go from sustainable to unsustainable due to chasing constant exponential growth then eventual enshitification that hits consumers to try to recoup all the lost money.

You’re describing the shitty business models of publicly traded companies that hire thousands then lay off thousands and keep trying to do whatever they can to raise stock prices due to not targetting a sustainable stable company for the longterm but quarter by quarter profit targets.

That steam has been more conservative with hiring is probably why they’ve been able to have the resources to go into hardware even if it flops unlike EA, Ubisoft, and Epic despite having way more employees.

Fuck valve too. Gabe has over a billion dollars worth of boats. Fuck him to hell and back

You are correct, though it bears stating that they make millions from kids gambling and they make billions for their software distribution platform, as one indicator of Valve’s priorities as a for-profit company.

Have you ever considered that different people can interpret things differently? Why are you jumping down someone’s throat for clarifying an ambiguous title?

Amazon tried and failed, too.

Eh, that could also include sales revenue, of which Valve pays out 70% to right holders.

Which is surprising, considering how much money they generate off amazon store.

All it takes is to give a good service like Valve does. But somehow, as in Zippy’s pic, competition keeps shooting themselves in a foot. Probably due to shareholders that Valve does not have.

Tbf, I wouldnt even touch Amazon with a kilometer long pole even if the game was free.
I order on Amazon only if the physical item is the cheaper AND easier option to order from (usually because I can only get thing A but not B).
If I can avoid it, I will try to.

A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, ‘single, alone’ and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, ‘to sell’) is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller’s marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.[1]

Steam is not the only supplier of particular goods, they do not own the market, they have not the highest price and do not lack competition. It is just that their service is far better than whatever competition offers. Nothing stops Microsoft, EA and Epic to implement same features Steam does. Like, literally nothing. These companies have money to do so. They just chose not to.

I see what you’re going for, but most people seem to choose money over doing the right thing. Which brings us right back to capitalism ruining everything, again.

If I’d say to my publisher „but I don’t want to publish on Steam“ I can look for another publisher. You don’t need to defend Steam, I didn’t attack it by stating that you need to publish on the biggest platform.

You’re right, the 80% figure I read was from a small poll, it seems 75% is the more accurate figure.

That’s honesty. You don’t “owe me a reply” but replying selectively is dishonest. It’s pretending you haven’t heard any contrary information, when you have.

Now given the 75 is quite close to 80, I think calling Steam a monopoly in the market of pc video game distribution is quite fair, don’t you? The honest thing to do would be to change your mind in the light of what you didn’t know before.

I can’t wait for your company to do the same. You know, because it’s not hard. Heck, I invite you to do the same with 10 employees, since it’s so not hard.