this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2026
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So people put their games on Epic, GOG, itch, Xbox, PS5 and whatever else for funsies? Definitely not because people buy their game from those places. They can even put their game up on those other marketplaces without any penalty from steam. Almost like there are alternatives available. Having the largest market share and having large influence in a market does not equal a monopoly.
quasi monopoly
Saying it again doesn't make it less wrong. They are in a position where they could possibly use anticompetitive practices to become a monopoly or close to it. Currently they are not, and are not a quasi monopoly either. They simply have created a well rounded service that is preferred by a majority in the PC space.
If you want the store front to take a smaller cut then you can sell on itch. If you want to buy games without DRM then check out GOG. If you like shitty service, venture capitalists, enshittification, and AI slop then Epic has you covered.
It's not a quasi monopoly for me, the user, but for publisher who want to sell games. They have to go through Steam if they want to sell on PC. This would be an absolute no-brainer if it wasn't tangled up in some bullshit culture war.
So World of Warcraft isn't a game that exists? How about Fortnite? League of Legends? Genshin Impact? Minecraft? Those games never sold well and didn't make any money.
This isn’t about it being impossible to circumvent steam as a dev. This is about Steam being so powerful, that they can do whatever they like. That’s why they’re a quasi monopoly, not an outright monopoly.
Not putting your game on Steam is only viable for very few developers these days. Besides, WoW, LoL and Minecraft released and gained traction in a time, when Steam was not nearly as bis as they are today.
Back then a most games still shipped on DVD with either disc based copy protection or a number of other launchers (Ubisoft Game Launcher, EA Origin, Games for Windows Live, Rockstar Games Launcher), which do mostly still exist in one form or another but drifted into irrelevance as Steam grew to the near insurmountable power house they are today.
Or do you think EA, Ubisoft and Rockstar would put their games on Steam, paying a 20-30% cut of each game sold to the store, if they wouldn’t lose more money telling people to get their games on their own, existing distribution systems? (something AA and indie devs do not have)
And I’m not saying Steam didn’t earn its crown. They are feature complete, mostly pro consumer and have a less shit interface than its competitors.
But if they decided tomorrow, that devs had to pay 10% more per game sold, most devs would have to budge or sell significantly less games.
And they might, when the day comes that Gaben isn’t in charge anymore. And we’ll all have to take it because their competition is either too small (GOG) or too stupid (Epic) to properly compete. And I don’t like that. I’d much prefer Epic didn’t suck.
I cannot do that if there is no existing customer base like in those examples.