I disagree, many of the competitors do what is necessary just fine.

There is a strong sentiment with many gamers of just not wanting to use an alternative and it is basically a non starter for many other stores. Many complain about the very idea of not all of their games being in the same place.

This isn't necessarily anything monopolistic done on Valve's side. But it would be very hard for another store to make any meaningful impact regardless of how they are.

> the competitors do what is necessary just fine

But that's the issue. The competitors are fine. They aren't significantly better though. The only one with a compelling USP is GOG with their "no drm, download the installer, own the game even after we go under" pitch. Everyone else is just a steam clone with some exclusives and freebies. Without a compelling advantage network effect makes Steam the clear winner. It's where your other games are and it's where your friends are.

But that only holds true while Valve doesn't screw up. Their competitors can't be much better than Steam, but Steam could absolutely make horrible decisions that cause people to leave. But they don't. Their organizational inability to make decisive action without wider support has lead to an incredibly stable, predictable platform.

FWIW, there are tons of DRM free games on Steam as well, it's just not a given like it is on GOG.

Many of these alternatives failed because they were forced onto users who had already paid over $60 for a game, and they were incredibly slow and clunky. They might have improved over time, but people still remember how bad these stores were at launch.

> Many of these alternatives failed because they were forced onto users who had already paid over $60 for a game

I really doubt that hurt their adoption. Yes, it pissed people off, but that doesn't mean it suppressed adoption. Being slow and clunky, sure, but you're probably not going to get anywhere without some high value exclusives.

Isn’t that exactly what Steam did with the Orange Box? They just did it in the 2000s, years before anyone else.

There was no competitor like Steam at the time.

Yes, that's the effect a monopoly has on the market.

Not really. When Steam was the only digital distribution marketplace in existence, it didn't have to be better than any other digital distribution marketplace to convince users to switch to it, by virtue of being first. The followers who look at Steam's profits and want to capture that for themselves have to do so. It just happens that it seems every marketplace since has attempted to compete for developers (particularly in the vein of trying to achieve exclusive games) and generally ignored competition for users except as a byproduct of developer competition.

And the result is that users overwhelmingly prefer to use Steam, with alternatives largely relegated to at best grudging acceptance for those games that require alternative launchers. Since companies are reluctant to post numbers, it's hard to tell what the exact situation other than "Steam is well over 50% of the market", but the next largest is probably GoG, especially if you exclude self-publishing from statistics (if you include it, the popularity of Fortnite might push Epic Game Store into second place). And note that GoG is pretty much the only store that offers users a specific value proposition to use them over Steam: GoG is DRM-free (better publisher/distributor split is a value proposition for developers, not users).

You're replying to a chain about how valve got steam started, are you suggesting that the market was existing in a state of monopoly prior to their actual existence of the product you say held that monopoly?

No, of course not. I should have been more accurate by saying that they were able to do this because there wasn't a monopoly at the time.

That only explains a couple of the stores but not all of them.

Xbox and Epic don't fall in that category. I don't believe EA does either, but not 100% sure.

To be clear here. I am referring to the being forced after buying a game. None of these, to my knowledge, you were forced to use after buying the game on Steam. Unlike Ubisoft.

XBox and Epic absolutely do fall in that category. People, myself included, detest using either of those stores, because of their poor implementations. They're slow and unwieldy. The Xbox store on PC is actually so bad. I bought Forza as a chill on the couch and relax kind of game and it is one of the most regrettable purchasing experiences I've ever had. The Epic store is just outright unpleasant software.

The Epic store will only show me prices in Rubles. Never tried to debug it -- who needs it, anyway? -- but always thought that was somewhere between bizarre and hilarious. (US computer, US IP address, no VPN, en-us locale.)

The Epic store might not've been slow, but it was missing so much. It was launched with almost no features, not even reviews. They also didn't have any communities/forums/groups.

I agree.

I’ve met countless gamers who will simply not buy or play a game if it isn’t available on Steam.

Myself included, and all of my gamer friends.

I never really understood this mentality, especially when on the console side people seem just fine with the idea of buying multiple consoles for exclusives. (not that I am agreeing with that either).

There isn't a cost to having multiple stores, you don't even need to keep them running at all time. I get the concerns over the Epic app, but Heroic exists.

Personally I have games on Steam, Xbox (cross buy between xbox and PC), Epic, and EA. Plus Game Pass.

The only annoying part is when I go to install or buy a game, finding where I have it or making sure I don't already own it somewhere. But there are launchers like Playnite to address that.

But it does feel like I am in the minority with this opinion.

For me, I don’t like launchers constantly updating and running at startup. Inevitably, they end up breaking something or popping up a modal when I’m trying to do something else.

I tolerate steam on my laptop because they were the first. I hate Epic and other launchers when I just want a game.

I will wait until it gets to steam. And have even skipped free games because I don’t want the mental load.

When you say "people do this" and "people also do that contradictory thing" you're making the mistake assuming that the word refers to the same people.

I didn’t mean to imply they were the same people.

But it is interesting that we have 2 groups of gamers.

One that is so used to and accepting of a practice to not only sometimes buy 2 nearly identical boxes to play exclusive games but also complain when one of them does the right thing and is ending the practice (see drama about Xbox).

One that complains about installing another piece of software with no cost.

Why do these 2 groups of gamers have very different opinions on this.

Software, especially if installed on my Windows PC, always has a risk of causing security problems, running spyware, agents that slow things down, taking up HD space, weird new DRM, screwing with the registry, etc.

One reason I’ve heard is the stats and Achievements consolidation.

Cross play solves this somewhat but it’s not consistent.

PC is my main platform but I also have an Xbox (NHL games not available on PC), everything else is on Steam.

I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.

> One reason I’ve heard is the stats and Achievements consolidation.

I have not seen that referenced much so I am curious how many people that is the reason vs just some weird loyalty to Steam.

But, as someone who is mostly a couch gamer so my console of choice is Xbox. I can see that, I have a PS5 but all of my cross platform games is Xbox.

I have my PC for a lot of games that I would prefer that setup (for me its a game by game decision), but with game pass and cross buy it already didn't make sense for me to go all in on steam, but some games are only on steam.

So what was the harm in adding other stores when it made sense.

> I wouldn’t buy a PS5 for an exclusive. TBH exclusivity is annoying and I don’t want to reward it.

I don't want to reward it. But I also view myself as a gamer first before any platform loyalties. If I want to play something, that takes priority. So annoyingly I have both under my TV.

rant I am so annoyed at the people complaining about Xbox going Multiplatform as if it isn't a good thing for consumers to not have to buy nearly identical hardware. I don't care that it is how the industry has ran for so long, it's still anti-consumer. end rant

>I have not seen that referenced much so I am curious how many people that is the reason vs just some weird loyalty to Steam.

Yeah, probably a healthy mix. The achievement and stats consolidation is via word of mouth and conversation I have had over the years. I don’t have data to back that up. I’m sure the /r/pcmasterrace folk would have something to say about it though.

I totally agree with your rant. It’s ridiculous that folk want to complain about this.

At this point, sunken cost into a Steam library aside, I won't buy a game if it isn't on Steam and at least SteamDeck supported.

Valve alone has made it possible to game full-time on Linux as a first class citizen and has greatly improved a lot of the Linux desktop experience which is more than enough for me to be willing to continue to only buy games from them.

About Epic, they're 35% owned by Tencent (with its inevitable unseen CCP entanglements) and 8% by Disney. That's plenty to put people off.

GOG's great but they're not big enough to move any needles.

Steam puts some of that 30% to work making wonderful things like the SteamDeck, and as a game dev I get a big audience and amazing things like free access to the Steam Datagram Network. So when I want to buy or sell a game, they're overwhelmingly my first choice.

In my opinion, GOG is phenomenal and hands down the best digital game storefront now, but it's not what consumers care most about. Many people already have extensive libraries on Steam, too.

Yeah, these days I check GOG first, and sometimes wait until the game is available there.

This is what's crazy to me. It feels like other PC game stores haven't caught up in feature parity to Steam from over 10 years ago.

Both of these can be true, and it’s far more likely to be self reinforcing. Because it’s such an unimpeachable monopoly, the competition that doesn’t put forth billions are doomed to fail.

People talk about feature parity, but that’s irrelevant when slashing Valves cut by 1% is enough to get the vast majority of publishers and developers to stay on board.

They are such an unimpeachable monopoly that Microsoft, makers of the OS that Steam predominantly relies on for consumer spend, also bows to them. After all they’re large enough to get a new cut from the normal distribution terms.