The question is, is it a monopoly because they are doing something to force their way into that position, or does every other offering just suck?

And what is the solution to said monopoly? Because as far as I can tell, the only way to give the other shitty stores a chance is to deliberately make the steam experience worse.

There’s also the question of if this is even a real problem. For instance, if two people are trying to sell lemonade on their street, and one is just throwing a lukewarm cup of haphazardly crushed lemons at you for $2, and the other is charging $3 but giving you a cool glass of carefully squeezed lemons… the second one may have a monopoly, but that’s because the first isn’t competent. Should the second be punished in some way because of that?

Is discovery a dumpster fire? I mean sure it could be better but I dont think its a dumpster fire. It seems there are constantly new small team indie games doing wild numbers on the platform. If discovery was truely bad we would be seeing the charts dominated by big studios.

I feel like they’ve earned it because they’ve put in the most work. They are the best in the game because they make the user experience the best there is. EA, Ubisoft, and Microsoft have/had their own storefronts or launchers but they are clunky and unpleasant to deal with and the only benefits they had were exclusives. They’ve never put any effort into user experience and were mainly doing it to make themselves more money and it definitely showed. The only one that’s ever been a real competitor is Epic Launcher. And while it has gotten better over the years, the user experience is still not anywhere near Steam. And even now the Epic Launcher is still unpleasant to deal with in a lot of cases unless you just use it to play Fortnite.

With Steam everything just works and is basically seamless. Not only that, before Steam the modding community for most games had an immense learning curve and most people just avoided it save for Minecraft. And as far as I can tell you can’t even mod games you buy on the Microsoft Store because their file structure is atrocious.

The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It’s not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it’s hard not to get stuck with them once you’ve started.

The question is, is it a monopoly because they are doing something to force their way into that position, or does every other offering just suck?

And what is the solution to said monopoly? Because as far as I can tell, the only way to give the other shitty stores a chance is to deliberately make the steam experience worse.

There’s also the question of if this is even a real problem. For instance, if two people are trying to sell lemonade on their street, and one is just throwing a lukewarm cup of haphazardly crushed lemons at you for $2, and the other is charging $3 but giving you a cool glass of carefully squeezed lemons… the second one may have a monopoly, but that’s because the first isn’t competent. Should the second be punished in some way because of that?

And it will last til Gabe dies. Then I guarantee it enshittifes so fast it will make your head spin.

Larian isn’t wrong, Steam mostly works. Stable client, refunds, workshop, Proton, massive userbase and tools that actually help developers and players. A lot of other stores still feel half-baked next to that.

But deserved != harmless. Valve has way too much power, discovery is a dumpster fire, and their communication and policy decisions can be arbitrary. Dominance like that rewards sloppiness and makes it harder for better alternatives to gain traction.

So yeah, Steam earned its place, but I do not want any one company owning PC gaming. Competition keeps them honest, and right now we need more real contenders, not just storefronts throwing money at exclusives.

The only storefront I wish was better/more popular was GOG. It’s not bad and has a lot of benefits (Like no DRM and offline installers), but Steam just makes everything so easy it’s hard not to get stuck with them once you’ve started.

Well the no DRM/offline installer part is the most important part. I buy a game, I download and install it. If I need more features I may be better off with Steam anyway.

As far as I know the Steam DRM is not mandatory to use for developers.

I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don’t give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I’m all in for supporting competition when it’s good competition.

Devs are still free to sell their game outside of Steam and charge whatever price they want for that version

Devs are still free to sell their game outside of Steam and charge whatever price they want for that version

And it will last til Gabe dies. Then I guarantee it enshittifes so fast it will make your head spin.

Is discovery a dumpster fire? I mean sure it could be better but I dont think its a dumpster fire. It seems there are constantly new small team indie games doing wild numbers on the platform. If discovery was truely bad we would be seeing the charts dominated by big studios.

Competition keeps them honest, and right now we need more real contenders, not just storefronts throwing money at exclusives.

Then the competition should put in the work.

Larian isn’t wrong, Steam mostly works. Stable client, refunds, workshop, Proton, massive userbase and tools that actually help developers and players. A lot of other stores still feel half-baked next to that.

But deserved != harmless. Valve has way too much power, discovery is a dumpster fire, and their communication and policy decisions can be arbitrary. Dominance like that rewards sloppiness and makes it harder for better alternatives to gain traction.

So yeah, Steam earned its place, but I do not want any one company owning PC gaming. Competition keeps them honest, and right now we need more real contenders, not just storefronts throwing money at exclusives.