The others have been improving for a bit but GOG and itch have been focused on niche markets while Steam has grown broadly using the money from valve’s early successes. If they want to step up to the kind of scale steam operates at, it will take a lot to overcome the innate loyalty of ‘I already have 1000 games worth of time and money invested in the steam system,’ and grow their repertoire outside their niches. Epic and Ubisoft also have tried, but they’re still trying to catch up to where steam has been plugging along for ages. Epic has tried to build out their own version of the ‘1000 games’ moat by giving out constant free games but their moat still isn’t that big, and ubisoft has been relying mostly on having a few exclusives, but that hasn’t really been a winning plan either because it’s not enough to get people to think ‘I want a game,’ means ‘go to origin,’ instead of ‘check to see if i already have it on steam.’

It’s 6 sentences.

Technically, Lemmy was a person.

Being a sole distributor of a specific product does not make you a monopoly by any stretch.

God so many people dont understand what a monopoly actually is. Listen carefully: despite the name MONOPOLY DOESN’T MEAN ONE!

You boot licking capitalist just can’t get past this. God i wish the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt could arise to beat some sense into all of you.

I have 3 degrees

They’re not benevolent in the slightest.

And this is not an argument.

Another round of bootlicking Lemmy’s favourite megacorp. Good job, guys.

I’m still surprised anyone bothers watching him at all. He’s absurdly grating.

Damn never seen a sober man so confidently wrong on something so straight forward.

Every game iv bought on steam doesn’t require the client to launch expect for one. So not sure how well that point checks out…

That is not true. Valve requires that you do not sell your games cheaper on other platforms, hindering competition.

They are a monopoly 100%, just believe me bro.

I think so too, but they are a fairly small company/group with a stable (50+%) owner & basically don’t bother with much (neither publisher or consumer side). Eg GOG is smaller but fights DRM a lot more actively (and achieving DRM-free deals even before Steam).

I hope before Gabe goes Gaben’t he makes Valve a proper nonprofit - bcs the service they offer is like a mass infrastructure thing (which are always scary).

As to why devs think they have a monopoly - it’s hard to succeeded without Steam, especially if you arent a AAA studio (and even a small mistake on Steam part for their game’s visibility on Steam Store can cost them everything), and Steam isn’t really fighting over devs to offer them a better deal than the competition, it’s the other way around (it’s clear who has the power).

So yes, they have quite a fair bit of monopoly.
Modern, especially tech, monopolies aren’t a single-provider-locked-in type of thing, look at Google, they hold a monopoly over so many markets without those prerequisites. And they fought, shaped the markets intentionally to eventually get to that position (that’s why they were valued that high even before the revenue kicked in).

That applies if you’re selling steam keys, it does not mean that steam has to be the cheapest platform at all times

I guess then MS doesn’t have an OS monopoly, because you can not only buy an Apple computer, but also install Linux.

That has never been true.

You can even “buy” open source software on Steam that is available free from the home website.

You’re referring to the case with the developers of Lugaru, and they’ve been doing a great job of painting their fuckup as Valve barring platform competition.

Um… Yeah. Microsoft absolutely doesn’t have an OS monopoly, as much as they’re trying.

This is exactly why it’s important for people to learn about how capitalism functions instead of how to identify morally condemnable behaviour. A liberal with think Steam is fine so long as they remain “horizontally” organized and Gaben remains the special boi he is, but will only be bad if it the company gets “greedy.” There is no benefit to PC game distribution being controlled privately; any media distribution.