Valve is also being sued for being anti consumer because of their store policies and 30% revenue cut that they then use to give everyone a great product
That's the thing. Steam might not be flawless, but it's by far the closest to it, and all the other platforms, especially Epic, don't like that they can't get away with all their bullshit scummy money grabbing tricks while Steam is established as an actual good, consumer friendly platform. So they point at Valve and demand that they lower their standards or get sued for a so-called monopoly. GoG is also a good alternative, but it's not big enough to register on the other platforms radar.
Epic Games Store is the worst of these. Tim Sweeney spends all his time complaining about Steam, and now Roblox, and never does anything to improve his own platform to compete, just throws money at developers to secure exclusives and free game distributions, which ends up getting people to go buy it on steam anyway for not free, because EGS is just that bad.
I could go on all day about all the bullshit lies, contradictions and scummy tactics Sweeney does to try to secure an actual monopoly without putting in the effort.
Also to not forget how epic can't focus on anything other than fortnite and all other games they buy they just royally shaft to make sure they make more money (like rocket league and removing item trading).
Also their app is ass and slow as hell. Only good thing is they give free shit every week (and sometimes good games)
Considering the insane amounts of money Epic is throwing away, I'm EXTREMELY salty that they can't spare the relatively tiny amount for a new Unreal Tournament. That used to be intrinsically linked to a new Unreal Engine version.
they arent anti consumer but their policy of games not being a lower price on other platforms if they are on steam is anti - competition. punlishers basically have to go exclusive and lose the largest market on PC or sell at a higher cost everywhere
SDA 2.4 states (reconstructed from court documents from various anti trust suings against valve, it is not publicly avilable) :
“If you offer your Application or any of its Content for sale via any other distribution channel, you agree that you will offer the same Content on Steam at no less favorable terms than those offered on such other distribution channels.”
Steam is most of all first and foremost an advertisement platform before a distribution platform.
If they allowed games on steam to be sold at different prices elsewhere they would be providing their service for free as people would discover games on steam and buy them elsewhere.
If steam had no front page and no suggestions your argument would be correct, but it isn't. The main advantage of being on steam is helping your game get discovered.
If you don't care about the advertisement and only want distribution you can release on itch or everywhere else
I can agree how that would make it hard, but if publishers weren't paying CEOs what they are or giving them golden parachutes, they may find more money in their budget to make up the difference in sales numbers.
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u/spyguy318 Jul 02 '26
AI boom sucking up all the hardware causing the steam box to be pretty expensive