What maintains Steam’s dominant market position is user lock in, not any policy they enforce or any monopoly laws they violate. The only thing that would break user lock in would be allowing migration of licenses for games between platforms, and making friend/multiplayer/mod-management systems interoperable across platforms.

Valve has made no effort to implement these kinds of systems. BUT NETHER HAS ANYONE ELSE. (Well except gog and DRM free games, but that’s only part of the issue.)

The fact that one privately owned company has such huge control of the industry is a huge risk, undeniably. But breaking up valve wouldn’t solve the problem, it would just let someone else take their place.

I see 2 main points against steam in this comment section.

1. Steam is doing price fixing for games: False, this accusation came from Epic Games CEO, but the actual steam policy only blocks the selling of steam keys for a lower price, not the game itself.

2. Steam is a monopoly and monopolies are bad: I agree that monopolies are bad, but in my opinion only if they take action to harm the user and the market. From my knowledge steam is pretty known as being pro customer and haven’t taken any monopolistic actions to block other stores from growing.

The reason why the games are not usually cheaper on other platforms is because publishers practice standard prices, so the game publishers take the extra profits from a lower store cut.

I am not trying to be a fanboy, I am just trying to look objectively at the facts, if someone can prove me wrong, I am willing to change my mind.

While the actual monopolies actively making the world a significantly worse place keep getting away.

People constantly dooming steam are punching themselves in the face instead of pushing for anything better. If they wanted a more competitive market do two things. Buy games on other storefronts. They exist. There have been digital storefronts since before Steam. Second is direct your complaining to competitors to improve their services. Like go complain on every EGS press release for Linux support and a gamepad friendly interface. Something equivalent to Steam input and remote play that isn’t using third party software like Sunshine/Moonlight. Something like steam curators and other social features. User reviews. The complainers of Steam are pretty much campaigning for Steam to be worse so others can compete without having to improve as much

When I think of monopolies, I think more of telecomms, of Wal-Mart and their selling at a lose to kill off competition, Microsoft purposely hindering the ability for competing software, and other examples. Unless I’m missing something, Steam didn’t do that, they were just first in the game and built a better product than the others did. Offering a better service that attracted customers. Now do I think it’s too large and would welcome competition, absolutely. But monopolies typically aren’t though just having larger market share with a better product.

If Steam did something like oh, pay developers/publishers to be exclusive to their platform, then yeah you’d have a good argument there.

Jesus fucking Christ in blue skirt, y’all have your nose full of Gabe’s juice gagging him so much.

I truly enjoy all of you morons cicle jerking “eat the rich” but bending over Valve and paying for the lube.

“But think of how much he did for Linux gnagnagna”. Fuck that shit. Wake the fuck up. Torvalds does not own a 500 millions yacht.

Lemmy is truly going full retard and speedrunning Reddit clusterfuck as fast as possible.

Remember when steam introduced the 2h refund policy out of their own volition rather than being forced by multiple governments? Yeah me neither.

alright, lets compare game platforms(this may contain Opinions).

1. Steam, probably the only good platform on here(also some stupendous features like a clock/alarm,note taking,browser,etc), but people should remember they are a monopoly(not the worse monopoly i have seen, look at something like Google or Microsoft), and they are still AAA company(Gabe Newell is a billionaire and the 106 richest man according to Forbes).
2. GOG(why is it not being shown in the meme), Dont like their stance on being Pro-AI(if the LLMS was only used on One banner or smth or it had a fair reasoning, i would have been content with LLM usage.) and subpar features(maybe?),no DRM guarantee is nice.
   but i like their program where they make older games Legally playable(IIRC Steam used to do the same?).
3. Ubisoft store,EA Store,Epic Games Store,Microsoft Store(due to Xbox logo),itch.io. they all have subpar features, and am pretty sure itch.io has more of a focus on UGC content.
4. Console(Playstation,Nintendo,Xbox): I personally dont like the Video Game choice, and paying for a sub to play online.

i know there is stuff like DLSite aswell,but i never used them(the only Video Game franchise i know that sells there is Touhou Project)

1. Being a simp for a multi billion dollar company is never a good thing. It’s not good for you as a consumer and, frankly, is just incredibly cringe.

2. No, it’s not, the main point of the lawsuit is that Steam does not let game Devs sell their game for cheaper on any other platform.

So if you don’t like that Steam takes a massive 30% cut of your sales so that Gabe can buy his 27th mega-yatch, and you decide to also put your game on another platform that takes a fairer, smaller cut, then chose to pass on those savings to the consumer, then valve will kick you off the platform and you’ll lose access to by far the biggest market in PC gaming.

Fuck valve and fuck you brain dead fanboys simping for a billionaire and making everything worse for the rest of us because your entire worldview comes from memes.

move to linux really paying off then

Leave the multi billion dollar corporation alone

Not true. Look at how they handled their anti-gambling lawsuit. They essentially did away with cases and keys, and now you can “open a terminal”. You aren’t gambling according to steam anymore, since you can decline the offer, but because this decline accept mechanic is baked into a dynamic pricing, you are now required to pay steam an average of 1700 usd for a pair of digital gloves, if you even get the offer.

They got rid of “gambling” for something much worse

Which lawsuit is this about?

Do not pass Go, do not collect $200

God I hate steam fanboys so fucking much. There is no such thing as a corporation which cares about you. Every single action is done to keep profits up.