Gaming

I'm mad about their massive gambling profits. Otherwise they've been pretty great for consumers. Though it's likely they won't always be.

Not a monopoly. Only people mad at Steam are competitors. Competitors focus on shareholders, Steam focuses on gamers, you know, their customers.

Which of the other launchers have or are compatible with proton/wine?

Bad take. The competition is literally constantly shooting themselves in the foot by offering a worse service and doing nothing to make gaming better.

It's not steams fault that companies like EA, Epic MS etc. are rotten to the core with their business practices and no one wants to use their storefronts.

GOG is the only one i might consider an alternative that isnt completely rotten.

Other Launchers don't feel like tools. The other stores feel like a fucking nuisance.

The only other usable options are itch.io and GoG.com, who allow downloading the games directly on their websites, without the need for any launcher.

Valve treats me like they actually want to earn ky business and they use their vast wealth to make cool shit. Valve is also the reason I no longer have to deal with Window's bullshit to keep playing my favorite video games.

Yes, I would love to see more altruism, but Valve is, at the bare minimum, the epitome of moral neutrality as a business. So there's nothing to really be mad at them about, and rather I have some gratitude for how they've used their money.

On the flipside, as others have pointed out, everyone else keeps shooting themselves in the foot. The only one thar hasn't (to my knowledge) is GoG, but they're never going to reach Steam status in a Capitalist society. And their social features are unavailable on Linux.

The next closest after that is Epic, who's shitty, buggy ass launcher and storefront is so horrendous that when they give games out for free, people buy said games on Steam instead.

So... Why would we be mad at Valve for their competition being shit?

its not monopoly if competition doesnt want to compete and isnt prevented from doing so. steam provides better service, which makes it de facto choice. should i be mad that only option i have is good? it just makes me worried that what if valve goes bad one day, but can't do much about that.

For me the difference is there is nothing stopping competitors, Valve is not locking them out of the market in any way. If they don't want to spend the time to build a good competing product, that's on them. And additionally, PC gaming is just one platform for gaming

Because the other options pictured suck ass and having a million launchers is so god damned tiresome

If Steam is a monopoly, then explain how alternatives or competitors still exist. This entire "Steam is a monopoly" is bullshit because competition did and still does exist.

Weren't they literally being sued over it?

No it isn’t.

Because “gaming” is bigger than PCs. Steam has their own hardware and it sell like 1/100th of a PS5 or a Switch.

So Valve has a lot of room to compete with.

Used to prefer GOG over Steam. GOG did nothing for Linux gamers though, they didn't even release their Galaxy client for Linux. Will prefer GOG over Steam again when this changes (they said recently they want to change this, but only after Valve has already invested a lot into making Linux gaming a real thing with almost zero friction). That's also basically the best thing that Valve has done - they really did help to make Linux gaming a reality, and Linux gaming is an important step towards toppling Windows' dominance. They deserve a lot of credit for that. But there are also plenty of other things that you can criticize about Steam.

If you're on Windows though, you should definitely always prefer GOG over Steam because it's DRM-free (you buy it, you own it). Of course, there are many more games only available on Steam, so it might not be possible all the time, but at least you should prioritize your choices.

We also have plenty of other monopoly problems, one of the biggest is YouTube.

what difference not having shareholders has

Monopoly is when you purchase other actors of the industry to extinction, and annihilatr competition this way. It has never been about having big market share due to superior service.