WHERE STEAM FRAME??? (Credits go to a friend)
this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2026
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What's your proposed solution? Open source can't really fix this - distribution of proprietary games isn't really geared towards FOSS. If all competing products are worse, why would anyone switch? Valve isn't using any underhanded tricks to keep users on Steam, they don't need to. Their competitors actually could catch up, theoretically, valve hasn't pulled up the ladder. It's just a matter of, y'know, making a product nearly as good as Steam, which is a monumental undertaking.
The idea that they don't use tricks is not true. Valve’s "Price Parity" rules stop other stores from competing on price. For instance, if a dev tries to pass their 12% Epic savings onto the customer, Valve can kick them off Steam, where 75% of their revenue lives. That is a massive underhanded leverage.
Also, it is not just about making a better product. It is switching costs. Because our libraries and social circles are locked into a proprietary ecosystem, we aren't choosing Steam every day. We are just stuck there.
The solution is not for a competitor to build a "more perfect Steam," that is impossible because Valve has a 20 year head start on our data. The solution is mandated interoperability.
We need a system where:
We did this with cell phone numbers (you can keep your number when you switch carriers) and the EU has been doing this with messaging apps. There's no reason we should not do it for our multi-thousand-dollar game libraries.
We did this with cell phone numbers so you could switch carriers without losing your identity. They are doing it with messaging apps in Europe so you can text a WhatsApp user from a different app. There is no reason we should accept anything less for a digital library worth thousands of dollars. The goal isn't to kill Steam, it is to make Steam actually compete for our loyalty every day instead of just relying on the fact that we're too locked-in to leave.
Edit: fixed final paragraph.
First of all, yeah, price parity sucks...but also the only thing it changes is that simply being cheaper isn't an option. From my PoV all it does is it forces competition to compete on features. Which they all fail to do.
Friend, steam literally alows you to load games outside of steam. You absolutely can still rely on steam friends when playing even pirated games. Steam literally allows you to do it. And having more than one store installed, while not comfy, isn't a sin - we are choosing steam due to it's services - controller support, linux support, inbuilt forums, friend network, robust review system, robust return policy, great user support, and probably even more that I don't know about due to being more niche.
Again, bull. Let's look at competition, sans "We only sell our own games" stores.
And just to be clean - I am not against your interchangable library idea, although I am not really for it either. I just really disliked how you described steam as some monstrous entity holding people by ransom.
I appreciate the civil discussion, but I think you’re confusing "convenience" with "freedom."
You mentioned adding non-Steam games, but that's just a shortcut. You lose the "Join Game" buttons, the cloud saves, and the lobby invites. That is the definition of a social moat. You can leave, but you’re socially penalized for doing so.
As for competition, the fact that GOG and Itch.io have to hide in tiny niches just to survive proves my point. When the #1 player has 75%+ of the market, they don't have to be perfect, they just have to be too big to leave.
My solution of mandated interoperability is exactly how we fixed the phone industry. You can switch carriers and keep your number. We should be able to switch launchers and keep our friends and games. If Steam is truly as perfect as you say, they should have nothing to fear from a system where users are actually free to leave. A benevolent gatekeeper who refuses to unlock the gate is still a gatekeeper.
And it's exactly how I mentioned it. It's simply a way to use some of steam features - for free - even if you use different shop. Their controller support, friend list, library access. A limited amount of access but nonetheless, yet again, something they provide that they don't have to and other shops (except GOG I believe?) don't support.
Cloud saves should be handled by whatever alternative you choose, and both join game and lobby invites should be ideally handled by game - that's how it began, didn't it? Steam simply offered option for games to extend it to friends chat out of the game. And hell, today even Discord of all things has something like this.
I admit, bad wording on my part. But while Itch relies on niche, in GOG's case I meant their initiative of saving old games. Other than that, they are really competing as a full alternative. And...I just learned GOG does not publish it's number, huh. But they are constantly growing from what I saw published, so evidently, you can throw gauntlet at Steam and do well. And I just learned that they aren't really that far on feature parity, with library integration being something unique, huh. No wonder people on lemmy praise it xD
I just want to underline, again, that this is the first time I am facing that point and thus, have no opinion of my own yet formed, so I am not gonna say anything as it would simply be reductive. First reaction is mixed from me - number is one thing, forcing a store front to suddenly have to change contracts with game providers, clash with legal and all that to essentially allow you to carry over hundreds of products seems iffy. On the other hand, these are just copy keys at the end of the day so the only question is how easy would it be contract-wise? Dunno. And that's why I am witholding forming an opinion as of now.
At the end I wanna mention only that our talk made me look up some stuff about both GOG - which I now appreciate a lot more, they really are closing in feature-wise to steam - and phone operators. The second one especially was a weird thing to discover. I was a kid when the number carry-over came to be and, honestly, believed it was some weird marketing strategy...fun to know it was one of early EU thingies.
It is awesome that you looked into the phone number carry over history! That is exactly the kind of forced change that everyone thought would be impossible or "iffy" until it became law. Now, we can't imagine a world without it.
To your point about the difficulty: the reason it feels "iffy" is that we’ve let these stores build walled gardens. The EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) is already solving this for other tech sectors. It mandates that gatekeepers provide APIs for Real-Time Data Portability.
If Valve was designated a gatekeeper, they wouldn't have to hand out keys manually, they would just have to allow a secure, standardized way for you to prove to GOG or Epic that you own the game.
You are right that GOG is doing great work, but the reason their Library Integration is often buggy is that they are scraping data that Steam doesn't want to share. My point is that we should not have to rely on GOG's clever workarounds. We should have the legal right to our own data.
If we move from a world of stores to a world of protocols (like email or phone numbers), the best product wins because it is actually better, not because it is holding a $2,000 library hostage.
We could have real regulations if most gamers weren't busy being bootlicking fanboys. Stop defending billionaires and their money extracting machines, they actively hate you.