Not OC, duh.
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It’s still a monopoly though. The misconception is that calling Valve a monopoly, is somehow an attack on Valve or blames Valve. It’s just a description of Valve’s position in the market.
Also, shame on whoever thinks Valve won’t ever abuse this position at some point in the future.
Funny meme tho, just being pedantic
It’s still a monopoly though.
No, it is not. You and the other commentators need to stop repeating that propaganda lie by the true monopolists of PC gaming (Epic, Microsoft,…).
All of Steam combined makes up a fifth of the PC gaming revenue. A fifth! That’s a very good percentage but a fifth of anything is not a monopoly and that’s not even including mobile and consoles where Valve isn’t even competing at the moment.
Fortnite, Rocket League, Valorant, League of Legends, Minecraft, still World of Warcraft, Roblox,… are where all that PC gaming revenue is concentrated but a few mid-tier games sell best on Steam (because the same priced copy on EGS offers worse value) and suddenly everybody keeps repeating the lie of the true monopolists that the company that isn’t classified in the EU as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act is a monopoly (but Microsoft is).
I know you didn’t make this graph, but what was whoever-it-was smoking when they put the line for VR all the way up there? It should be slithering along the bottom right like a snake.
You’re misreading how the graph is laid out. The y axis is the combined total revenue of the entire video game market, with each new piece of the market being added on top of the older ones over time (although arguably arcades are the oldest form and should be below consoles). VR is the newest niche, and so it goes on top of everything else as it adds its revenue to the gross total of the entire market, despite only being a tiny piece of that sum.
In your layout, consoles/arcade would be at the top with everything else underneath them.
Even that don’t make no sense, boss. If that were the case not only should consoles and arcades be swapped, as you say, but also the VR line should be slipped in between handhelds and mobile. Dactyl Nightmare came out in 1991 and certainly wasn’t even the first VR experience, but it was the first commercialized one I can think of — and played myself, believe it or not. I can’t imagine VR as a whole made anything other than chump change until 2018+, but it was indeed there and chugging along quietly.
I can’t imagine VR as a whole made anything other than chump change until 2018+, but it was indeed there and chugging along quietly.
The graph specifically calls out the Oculus Rift as the start of what it considers the VR segment.
I would consider things like the Virtual Boy as VR to some extent as well, but I do see the logic as to why they only started the line with the Oculus. Before that it probably wouldn’t even show up as the money there was a drop in the bucket of a tenth of a percent of anything else, but it’s also widely considered that the Oculus and the Vive were the first really viable commercial VR headsets that started the VR game niche/genre. Before that, VR could probably be considered as niche as eye and head tracking hardware for sim games, and I don’t think that I’ve ever heard somebody mention those when talking about money in the games industry. Or even mentioned them in general outside of conversations like this. I don’t think most people even know that that kind of stuff even exists.
I know you didn’t make this graph, but what was whoever-it-was smoking when they put the line for VR all the way up there?
From what I’ve learned from buddies who are into VR, it’s a really weird subculture of super high end headsets, sometimes even full body suits with force feedback, and other shit. Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised if all that revenue is A) real and B) relying on a few big spenders.
That’s not the issue. The issue is the callout on it says the VR market is only $5 billion at its peak, which is well below mobile, which the gold VR line is drawn above, correlating with the position of being greater than $180 billion on the Y axis on the chart. Which is not how line charts work.
which the gold VR line is drawn above
That’s your issue? A minor cosmetic thing? And I thought you meant that the VR graph should be way thinner and that its numbers are an overestimation.
Well, I think it’s a well readable graphic which is why I like citing it. It doesn’t require zooming in to get it but you can zoom in to read who’s responsible for the graphic (“Art direction + design: Clayton Wadsworth”).
Damn, handheld virtually nonexistent since 2020
Only because they don’t count the Switch as handheld. Nintendo was pretty much the entire handheld market.
Only because they don’t count the Switch as handheld. Nintendo was pretty much the entire handheld market.
I don’t know what would be left by how they lay out the numbers. Switch (2) is console, Steam Deck is PC. The Chinese “boutique” handhelds by Ayaneo, Ayn,… use existing game ecosystems (either PC or Android).
I guess Playdate and whatever Atari sells these days. Can’t think of any other dedicated handheld with its own ecosystem.
Microtransaction-laden cell phone games very infamously oozed in and ate that entire market’s lunch. It turns out for short duration video game adjacent distraction on the go, people would much rather use the device they already have with a “free” (only up front) option rather than pay for a Gameboy/DS/PSP and games to go with it.
Square discovered this the hard way when they tried to release their various Final Fantasy remakes on smartphones in the early days as if they were regular games, i.e. pay $4.99 or whatever and have access to it in theoretical perpetuity and to the nearest decimal point, no one bought any of them. It turns out consumers respond much more positively to downloading a game for “free” and then coughing up several times more in microtransactions over time than buying any given title outright would cost, and/or being incessantly bombarded with ads as they play. Obviously the industry has figured this out and now everything you can play on your cell phone is feemium pay-to-win microtransaction hell built around slot machine mechanics, but it doesn’t matter because it apparently prints money.
It would have helped if they did a better job on the port.
You are on lemmy, a decentralized and open source platform, nobody here think microsoft is good. If a bunch of evil corporations control the entire videogames market that still count as a monopoly, all of these are shit including Valve.
They also lied, it’s not a fifth, it’s 3/4
Wait, a fifth? My bad, that’s insane. I don’t know a single PC gamer who doesn’t have most of their games in Steam, me included. Can you hook me up with a source for that?Turns out you are the one lying. Everything I find says Steam has 75% ish market share.
Where the hell are you getting your numbers? Everything I see says that Steam made a record 16 billion in 2025 while PC gaming as a whole made 43 billion. That would put Steam somewhere around 27% of the PC market.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gamesindustrybiz-presents-the-year-in-numbers-2025-year-in-review
https://www.eteknix.com/steams-revenue-surpasses-16-billion-in-2025-new-estimate-shows/
https://discuss.tchncs.de/comment/25526042
I posted some sources here. I might be misinterpreting how that number is arrived at?
Turns out you are the one lying.
You are obviously completely unaware about the concept of citing sources. I did not make that graphic and you did not care to follow the cited sources at the bottom of the graphic.
At the very worst you could accuse me of citing a source that’s 2.5 years old by now because its newest numbers are from late 2023 but then you made up random numbers without even backing up any of it, so my standpoint is still more valid than yours even if the numbers cited by me are not as recent as the numbers cited by @EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
The “source” is just a name, I was hoping for a link. Again every source I find says 75%.
https://zipdo.co/steam-gaming-industry-statistics/
https://coopboardgames.com/statistics/epic-games-store-vs-steam-market-share/
I’m open to being proven wrong
The term monopoly does not apply here. Not only do we lack any evidence of anti-competitive practices, there literally are competitors, they just suck and they are very unpopular.
There is mild vendor lock-in. If all my games are on steam, why would I buy my games elsewhere. Not to mention the steam client contains the steam store and advertisements for games in said store, so anybody in the steam ecosystem is incentivized to stay there. Games bought in Steam aren’t trivially launched without launching Steam.
All of that is true, but I still think “monopoly” is not the right word. It’s a bit of a unique situation. Ideally we’d have laws that make Steam provide a downloadable copy of the game that can work without Steam… but we’re so far from that.
fair enough, no point arguing about definitions anyway
True
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service[1]. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller’s marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
A monopoly is just an observation of the market landscape. Doesnt require ill intent or anti-competitive practices. Steam is just a benevolent monopoly. Until its not…
There is competition. And the term “monopolize” is used as a way of saying someone took action to stomp out the competition so I would say that 99% of people would assume intent whether or not it’s technically a part of the definition, because 99% of the time a monopoly exists it’s not by accident. But again, importantly, there IS competition.
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service
So like Epic in case of Unreal Engine and Microsoft in case of Windows. Steam makes up a fifth of all PC gaming revenue and EGS has a wide installed based because of Fortnite, Rocket League etc. People just choose not to spend their money there for games that are available elsewhere. That’s different from EGS not being able from supplying goods and services because they were pushed out.
Valve just shipped a controller that only works in steam 🤣
agreed, i will just hope they dont abuse the monopoly like Google or Microsoft. (this will be wishful thinking)
I fear for my game library the moment Gabe dies.
Will they? Probably. The thing is the others already did, and they even tried to hurt Valve in bad faith. The meme is good, but they took their shots at Valve before shooting themselves in their faces. I just hope GOG wakes the fuck up with Linux support, so I can buy more from them.
But it is still the best launcher on market all others are crap especially epic. And despite being dominating player it still didn’t abuse this power, meanwhile you hear only bad things about other launchers, delisting your games, insane telemetry, lack of reviews etc.
I hate most of other launchers not because they are bad but because they are required for playing some games: rockstar etc.
Gog found good niche in DRM free games which is great.
I mean, yes.
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Steam is a scary monopoly, getting scarier.
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It’s not their fault the industry (minus GOG) comitted mass seppuku.
Both can be true. One can worry about Valve, and use them hesitantly, while laughing at everything else like it’s a cartoon.
agreed, i still dislike GOG’S AI take.
GOG’S AI take
What happened, exactly?
All I can find is someone used an AI image for some kind of marketing.
I remember for a job requirement they want The developer to use AI or Smth
I wouldn’t classify it as “scary” quite yet.
Our benevolent yachtlord for life won’t live forever. Next guy (or group of owners) may not be quite content with simply having a billion dollar yacht, might enshittify for more yachts quicker.
Point being, GabeN is no saint, but he shows restraint with his greed, if you can even call him greedy. Next guy might kill the golden goose and then we’ll all have a fun time because all our games are all on Steam. That’s the scary bit.
I would still wait until we know who the heir apparent is to worry.
It’s not. You can still buy from the others if you want to be treated like shit, excepting GOG, in my opinion. Consoles are true monopolies, because you can only choose if you want to buy a console and marry to its store, now that physical media is becoming a rarity.
They have a big fraction of the market because they are efficient at selling what people want. I don’t like it, I believe Newell, specifically, is profiting greedily from Valve’s situation, but shit, this is not even a natural monopoly.
It ain’t a public company. Nothing scary about it.
People don’t change in a dime when you get to gabens age. You tend to become stubborn and set in your ways.
What’s scary is what the guy after gaben will do. But so long as gaben is around and the company is private we are fine.
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Lol gog with the propeller hat in the corner
hahaha yeah.
I get that we shouldn’t be happy about any type of Monopoly but Steam occupies the PC gaming space similar to how Linux dominates the server space.
You can’t really complain that almost every server running Linux is a bad thing. Granted Steam is not open source, but you have to imagine how little effort it takes to not make a shitty marketplace/platform as a competitor.
The fact that such a low bar cannot be surpassed by multi billion dollar companies is all you really need to know, especially when GOG successfully exists.
Steam is a closed source market place blob that takes 30% middle man tax. Valve however has understood FOSS, and the contributions they are making are immense.
When a true FOSS project is dominating this means the people are in control of it. Not corpos nor is it a monopoly. People have voted by donating work for it to be the most successful thing in its applicable area. Dominating FOSS projects also suck up and integrate a lot of innovation greatly reducing duplicated effort.
FreeBSD is alive and well, and it even benefits from Linux’s DRM GPU drivers.
Although the drm gpu drivers are mostly of a corporate effort, we are seeing an occasional interventions by the people “no, not like that” to keep the sometimes shoddy quality up.
/<this is a bit too high effort post.>
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to ask “are other companies bad?” when trying to determine if a company is a monopoly. One thought experiment I like to do is pretend the CEO dies and is replaced by Satan. How much damage could he do? If it’s a lot, then probably you’ve got a monopoly.
Suppose Gaben dies, and he’s replaced by Satan. Could he do damage to the gaming community by doing something exorbitant, like charging a 30% cut of game sales from the folks who actually develop the games? Could they do anticompetitive vendor lock stuff like only allowing you to purchase DLC through steam? Only time will tell. And it will, because at some point Gaben will die, and he will be replaced by someone less magnanimous and angelic than him.
They do have competitors, they competitors just aren’t very popular. There is the colloquial definition of monopoly, and a different legal bar for being declared a monopolist under US law.
To be declared a monopolist requires that a company already has destroyed or is actively seeking to destroy competitors through anti competitive behavior. Even if people mix terms, the general idea is that they’re not doing anything unreasonable and anti-competitive to gain their position in the market. They have competitors, they’re just not popular, and steam has not done anything to make them unpopular.
The real danger is that if steam decided to suddenly start being externally anti consumer, like many of it’s competitors already are, it would be difficult for people to migrate away due to a lack of interoperability between services. Users can’t transfer licenses to play games between services, nor can they easily interact with social features on other platforms. But that’s not really steam’s fault, that’s how all the competitors (for the most part) work as well.
There is the colloquial definition of monopoly, and a different legal bar for being declared a monopolist under US law.
The US legal bar for being a monopoly has been a joke since Reagan. But even aside from that, legality is not an interesting concept in discussions like these. Slavery was legal. The real question here is whether this situation has the potential to cause serious harm to society.
The real danger is that if steam decided to suddenly start being externally anti consumer, like many of it’s competitors already are, it would be difficult for people to migrate away due to a lack of interoperability between services. Users can’t transfer licenses to play games between services, nor can they easily interact with social features on other platforms.
Exactly, this is the problem. This is anticompetitive behavior.
But that’s not really steam’s fault, that’s how all the competitors (for the most part) work as well.
Yes it is, this is a deliberate choice they made. No one held a gun to their head. And it is precisely this kind of stuff that antitrust laws were supposed to protect us from. And you can see that in countries which do still have reasonable antitrust laws, Steam is being sued for precisely these practices.
Exactly, this is the problem. This is anticompetitive behavior.
It’s not anti competitive if it is litterlay also what all the competitors are doing, and have been doing since the very dawn of digital markets for software. It also dubious if they could legally even set up such interoperability even if they wanted to, as it could potentially violate parts of the DMCA.
They’re not doing anything to destroy their competitors, they’re not a monopolist, and the repeated failures of court cases against them all over the world shows that. There are a few on going cases against them, but, there are far far more cases that have already finished that failed to show any monopoly seeking behavior.
That also makes no sense. Literally any large company could do great deals of harm even if they have countless competitors if they set out for the goal of just doing harm.
There is a serious fundamental difference between a monopoly and a general market preference.
If every single one of your competitors all decide to be stupid and you don’t you arnt a monopoly. You just are the only one not being stupid.
That also makes no sense. Literally any large company could do great deals of harm even if they have countless competitors if they set out for the goal of just doing harm.
Surely you understand that the amount of harm that a company with no serious competitors can do is much higher and longer lasting than the harm that a company with competitors can do.
If they start being stupid, they’re suddenly on par with the competitors already being stupid. Suddenly they have viable competitors.
A monopoly is when all competitors have been destroyed, not when competitors aren’t particularly competitive. At least, under the letter of US law.
Yes, an evil ceo could do much harm by turning steam into the companies shooting themselves in the face. However, they are currently one of the only ones not doing that, so that’s where gamers will go.
There’s a difference between a monopoly that exists because all other options are shit and a monopoly that exists because of anticompetitive practices.
Tbf they already take a 30% cut, I dont have a huge issue with it though.
Dude… What? Just pass the blunt pls
Haha love this post. I find it astonishing how “leftist” lemmy can’t see this and keeps defending this obvious Monopoly just because the current CEO is an intelligent greedy guy… Happy suckers all around I guess…
Both Sony and Nintendo have been consistently posting record revenue numbers in the past few years. Neither are that far off Valve.
Regardless, this whole Steam circlejerk reminds me of the early days of Android, when people still believed that Google wasn’t “evil”. Let’s hope I’m in the wrong here.
Google isn’t privately owned. It’s hard to be on the stock market and not be evil. I think Costco is the only one that has managed it for any appreciable length and that is under threat of death from one of the co-founders.
In fairness Google was just becoming evil at that point. It was a fantastic company when the founders ran it.
I didn’t realize we were still in the early days of a platform that launched in 2003.
I’m old enough to remember the uproar because Half Life 2 had Steam as a hard requirement to be activated, even for physical copies.
Steam was born as Valve’s DRM.
As am I. I admittedly didn’t see the point of it at the time.
The difference was that people pretended like Google ever had an option to “not be evil”. At the end of the day, they were a publicly traded company, and thus, line must go up, or else the collective hive mind of the public market would vote the leadership out and replace them.
Steam is private, thus, the current leaderships can ignore the demands of the public market hive mind. Private companies can be evil, but it depends on who owns them. They’re not guaranteed.
Fundamentally you can’t compare a private and public company. Private companies have a legal requirement that drives them towards becoming shitty for the consumer. While a private company isn’t.
Steam is literally a mom and pop shop. A huge one but it is. They have no legal pressure to enshitify they have no legal requirement to put money and share holders before customers cause they have no shareholders.
Private companies have a legal requirement that drives them towards becoming shitty for the consumer. While a private company isn’t.
Umm… I think I’m confused now
The first word of that sentence should probably be “public” - then it makes sense.
Public companies do not actually have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder value. That is a myth based on a misreading of the Dodge V Ford decisions. That specific reading of the precedent of that decisions has never actually been used in a court case to charge a CEO.
Competition actually exists, GOG, Epic, itch.io. More used to exist but they were shitty, inferior products and died out because of that. Steam grew up to being the standard it is now and we come to expect it. It’d take same or better to unseat them.
yeah i know,but i feel like Steam’s competitors are inferior.
(personal opinion though)Save for Epic the other two set out with what they intend. GOG wants you to buy games without DRM that you can download installers for whenever you want to install them. Generally more consumer choice.
ItchIo wants to be a place for small, indie developers to get a spot in the market without having to rely on Steam. Smaller games and media for consumption that I don’t think takes a big of a bite out as Steam does.
Steam has some legitimate criticisms to it certainly, and Gabe is part of the class of people I don’t like. But certainly not a monopoly.
They don’t allow ads in games. Support Steam.
really?
Once steam goes to shit we will all sail the seven seas but multiplayer will suffer
am probably gonna rebuy all my video games on alternative platforms, or imma play open source games instead.
i can also take the games outside of Steam.I mostly play mmos tbf but I want to download and safely store a copy of wow classic servers and clients and mods in case we have an apocalypse event lol
kinda like me, i mostly play TF2. (but i have to wait hours for my servers to start.)
multiplayer will suffer
Good. It’s a cesspool.
Just playing with friends might get harder
“Luigi wins by doing nothing!” ahh company 😭
fr
It’s not being a monopoly that is illegal — if it were then all of “big tech” would be screwed. It’s using a monopoly toward anti-competitive ends and enshittifying everything that is illegal…which is funny, because even that really doesn’t seem to be illegal when you look around these days.
The law only matters if it’s actually enforced.
Fun fact for those of you who stream from a gaming pc to laptop/steamdeck/whatever: you can add 3rd party games (like those off GOG) to steam and stream them without buying them on steam.
You can also install the playnite launcher and launch all your games from one place without having to add them to steam
i know that,pretty useful though.
None of the competitors have great linux support and great gamepad support. I have no love for steam, for me it just happens to be the best platform from a technical point of view.
one of the reasons why most of the games i buy are on Steam
After hearing his connection to Musk I am starting to wonder. All is not what it seems.
Steam is a shitty business. They run a gambling scheme for children, they take a huge cut from devs (blabla industry standard blablabla), they make billions and basically employ less people than an indie studio. The fact that so many gamers would take a bullet to protect this billionaire dude is beyond me. Of course the guy is super right wing, you don’t run that type of business without being.
Yeah, I am definitely guilty of giving Steam a free pass because I used their service a lot.
There’s no such thing as a good billionaire. Some are less bad than others, but none are good.
I can get wanting to have enough money to live comfortably. But that line is crossed way before the “billionaire” mark.
They have more money than they could ever hope to spend in 10 lifetimes. So it is a conscious decision they make, to say “Instead of putting everything I don’t need to a good cause, I’m going to hoard it and buy a few more yachts instead.”
who, David Baszucki?
Musk v. Altman lawsuit exposed that not only are Musk and Gabe on speaking terms, but they also share a lot of opinions about AI and brain to computer interfaces.
It is the first crack in Steam I have seen, and if life has taught me anything, where there is smoke there is fire.
Gabe is a billionaire. He collects yachts.
The cracks have been there for years, we just wanted to believe that they weren’t because when we do acknowledge them we acknowledge that all of our money has gone to the parasite class.
Edits: words are hard, can’t decide how I want to say this — you get the picture.
You are right, of course. I think modern day media and it’s propaganda has been unbelievabley effective into duping everyone into believing a divided society of haves and have nots is acceptable.
t is the first crack in Steam I have seen,
Anyone who really wants to understand Valve should at bare minimum watch the 2 coffeezilla videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6jhjjVy5Ls
but why doesn’t Valve shove AI down everyone’s throat
I wouldn’t bet on that, but I do hope you are right and they keep AI off the platform.
True
What are all those blue & white squares on the top right? I recognize every other logo, but I have no clue what that’s supposed to be.
Roblox
Ah, gotcha. Heard of it, never seen it.
![Steam competitors be like. [Extended?]](https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/8d2d46eb-234c-41bd-b7c1-fb9c4c9f2508.webp){kind=link}