this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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Despite Steam's concerning domination over the market, one of the things that I love about it is the ability to continually comment on other people's Steam reviews. (lemmy.zip)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by Prathas@lemmy.zip to c/games@lemmy.world
38 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I think by default the option is disabled, but it's just excellent that it offers such a feature at all. You can't even do this in Google Maps, Google Play, Walmart, Amazon, or Target, or almost any other platform. But on Steam, unlike GOG, Itch, or other platforms of which I know, you can have an entire conversation with the reviewer about the validity or details concerning their review, where you can flesh out, "Hey, this person actually has no idea of what they're talking about," or, "Hmm, this is actually a valid point that I hadn't considered before," and even defend the reviewer from other critics in the comments.

I still get concerned about Steam's incredible dominion over digital games today, but it also blows my mind why other platforms don't try to copy even just some of its elements more.

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[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Its not a force monopoly situation, just grew organically. Also it is an open platform where anyone can have their games or launcher and shop without Steam, and we have them: Epic Games, GOG, itchio in example. Then there are launchers for specific companies and even specific games. The biggest games on PC aren't even on Steam, showing they don't need Steam at all: Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, League of Legends and in the past it was more. Steam doesn't even enforce or do deals to get exclusive contracts.

And that's not all. You (and I mean by you as if you were the publisher or developer) can sell games on other shops in form of Steam keys, without relying on Steam shop and not even giving money to them (no price cut), but still use the Steam features, client and infrastructure at no cost.

All of these factors show that saying "its a monopoly" is a little bit disingenuous. Market dominance is the right term, not a true monopoly. It doesn't even come preinstalled on Windows, the most used operating system on PC. Compare this to the monopoly of Play Store on Android, or worse, the Apple Store for iOS. Or any game console! Those are true monopolies.

[–] 64bithero@lemmy.world -1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You’re leaving out the gambling …

[–] thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Yeah, because that point (my biggest gripe with Valve) isn't really point of this discussion.