Steam competitors be like. [Extended?]
2026-05-01 10:00 UTC
Replies (24)
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@PotatoesFall@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-05-01 10:17
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
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@Noodle07@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 10:41
Once steam goes to shit we will all sail the seven seas but multiplayer will suffer
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@TallonMetroid@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 10:07
Lol gog with the propeller hat in the corner
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@FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 11:33
Is that a stickman vomiting at roblox’s collapsing share price in the top right?
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@Serinus@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 13:22
30% of your gross income for advertising and hosting is a scam. It’s a scam when Apple does it, when Google does it, and yes, when Steam does it. There’s a reason Gabe can afford that yacht without breaking a sweat. Just because Steam is the best of the software monopolies doesn’t exclude it from the group.
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@TheAristocrat@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 13:24
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.
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@Tiral@lemmy.zip 2026-05-01 14:37
No shit. It kills me when people play on console. I mean I get the simplicity and all, but they try to use the “it’s cheaper” angle and yeah, bullshit. It’s initially cheaper, then you’re paying what $20 a month to just play online, then games are $10 off at most on their respective stores and then you get to rebuy them when a new console comes out. Steam games are like 50%-90% off constantly, and Epic has free games like every week. I’ve had games for over 15 years through steam. So yeah I paid $1,000 for my PC but after 3 years console owners have spent $1,500+ after monthly fees and buying games.
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@wpb@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 23:26
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.
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@brucethemoose@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 16:39
I mean, yes. Steam is a scary monopoly, getting scarier. 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.
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@mlg@lemmy.world 2026-05-02 06:14
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.
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@brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 2026-05-01 19:04
Valve is truly one of a kind company, their marketing has been so effective that they managed to create a culture of idiots that go around the internet defending their products
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@Warm_Bowl_of_Peas@lemmy.world 2026-05-02 01:25
“Luigi wins by doing nothing!” ahh company 😭
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@Doomsider@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 15:33
After hearing his connection to Musk I am starting to wonder. All is not what it seems.
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@mabeledo@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 20:55
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.
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@AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 2026-05-01 13:06
Me playing steam games on an arm handheld right now cause you can just install an arm build of the steamos frontend on any arm linux device and with a little tweaking my games just work. Its actually amazing, modded terraria, trackmania, schedule 1, etc just work.
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@BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-05-01 14:22
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.
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@uberdroog@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 23:56
They don't allow ads in games. Support Steam.
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@Beethedude@sopuli.xyz 2026-05-01 23:59
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.
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@LightYagami@lemmus.org 2026-05-01 16:42
Is it a "good" monopoly though?
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@NGC2346@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-01 23:47
hey its me again to shit all over your post, so its not a shitpost when you actually mean the shit you're trying to convey. Yours truly
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@MattW03@lemmy.ca 2026-05-02 21:47
Accurate
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@dreadbeef@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-01 20:58
Chrome and blink's not a monopoly guys!
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@JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 22:00
Only because they don't count the Switch as handheld. Nintendo was pretty much the entire handheld market.
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@dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2026-05-01 17:13
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.