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Steam is basically a PC gaming monopoly, so why isn’t anyone mad?
(www.digitaltrends.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2026
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Are they a monopoly? They're definitely huge, but a lot of the games on Steam are non-exclusive, and they don't actually control the rights to the games. Like, they don't own the IP, they don't restrict content to their platform, and they have some pretty functional if smaller competitors like GOG and Epic. They also make their platform compatible with game keys that weren't actually sold on their platform.
They're definitely something with substantial market dominance as a platform, not I'm not sure monopoly is really the word.
Monopoly is definitely the word, but they also don't appear to be overly abusive about their market position.
They take 30% of all PC game sales. If that isn't abusing their position, idk what is.
You lost 60% when selling physical media in stores, 30% was an amazing deal when steam launched
what a funny and in this context ironic typo
They allow devs to sell on other platforms and provide them steam keys for free, bypassing that commission.
I see this point come up all the time when it comes to Steam, but I have yet to see anyone really propose an alternative. How much should it cost to host your game on Steam? It obviously can't be free because of hosting costs, and you're also paying for marketing and discoverability, so what's a good price for it?
Until recently, 30% was the industry standard for large software stores. Google is apparently lowering its cut after losing their recent battle with Epic, so it's possible that the industry standard changes. I'd hope that Valve adjusts with it.
Valve's cost of hosting is pennies. They're one of the most profitable companies in the US. They could lower that number to 5% and still have plenty of margin, I'd bet.
Surely you can't mean this literally. They host downloads of hundreds of GB that get served to tens of millions of users. The bandwidth costs alone are going to be insanely high, putting aside the storage costs as well.
But anyway, I'd love to see them lower it to 5%. I think if they can afford to do that, they should take the lead.
I guess they meant "pennies per game sale", in which case 30% could be quite a generous cut. But, of course, buyers can download the game many times, and forever, so it's really hard to measure what's a fair cut.
To me, it's not a monopoly because Steam doesn't require exclusivity, and there are other stores (including physical a stores).
You'd make that bet, but I wouldn't. And only one of us is guaranteed to have money walking out of the casino
Retailers demanded a piece to put games in their stores as well. There has always been a price paid for going to market using someone else for it.