Steam

You don't say.

They don't have a monopoly. They just have the best platform. It offers a lot of quality of life features along with the games and rarely causes issues. I can't even recall them ever doing anything anticompetitive. There are other platforms available to purchase from if you don't like steam. GoG for instance. Or Epic if you want to support assholes.

Being the most attractive platform doesn't make them a monopoly. It does however irritate me anytime I have to use a different platform that often functions much worse, like EA or Blizzard.

72% of devs work for some giant corp or doesn't know what monopoly means. Gotcha.

The number of people in this thread claiming that Steam is not a monopoly is too damn high. If actually you’re interested in the evidence, the Organized Money podcast recently had a great interview with pair of lawyers whose full time job is suing Valve as a monopolist on antitrust grounds, and winning over and over on behalf of their clients.

Sure, but it's well earned. The rest doesn't do shit. When Microsoft dominated, they made things worse.

To me, the amount of excusing from the gamer community is incredible. Stuff like “they’re not a monopoly because they’re ethical and I like Steam.”

They are, in fact, a growing pseudo monopoly. They take anticompetitive measures, with their APIs and storefront policies (like dictating pricing on other stores). Set aside the 30% cut, and no, it’s mostly not enshittified on the consumer side…

Yet.

How can people type that out on Reddit + Windows 11, or on their phones, with spam and ads in their face, without seeing the future danger? The irony is tremendous.

Don’t mistake me, I like Valve and the storefront they’ve run so far. I happily use it. But I don’t trust them as far as I can throw them, and am waiting for the shoe to drop.