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this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2024
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Games
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I brought Epic just as an example of an actual competitor actually trying to compete against Steam, sorry if I I was a bit unclear about that.
So lots of entrepreneurs get rich when they make a product that solves people's problems in one way or another and it sells with a profit - let it be a small profit or a large profit. The thing with capitalism is, if you make your profit too large, eventually a competitor will come and provide an equal or better product with slightly smaller profit or they figured out a way to make the product cheaper and still maintain the same profit margin with a lower price gaining a market share.
The problem with Apple, other large tech companies or some grocery chains in some parts of world (this is the case where I live actually) is that they are not allowing a healthy competition in the first place. If a competitor appears on the market, they will buy them before gaining too much traction, or if that's not possible, they will do everything they can in their power to drive them out of the market by lobbying politicians, or if they control some valuable aspect of the market, restrict access to said market.
Valve hasn't practiced any of those shady tactics as far as I know of and that's why people actually think of them as one of the "good guys" even if it is somewhat unhealthy. You shouldn't try to beat down the people playing with a friendly rule set of capitalism because they are the ones driving the competition forward.
Valve has enough of the market that they don't need to do that because they're the default option, just like Microsoft doesn't need to fear macOS or Linux or anyone that would try to jump in the game and create a new OS (hell, they even had up finance Apple in order to create competition). They don't practice these shady tactics (although that's disputable and they're getting sued for it) because they don't have to to win, they can just wait it out and let potential competitors ruin themselves. Even if someone came and offered everything Steam offers and more, people wouldn't switch because their games are already on Steam. Just like people who are used to Windows and have bought programs compatible with it won't abandon everything and start over with another OS.
So "too big to fail" or something?
I don't know if you lived through the Internet Explorer era, but that was exactly the same situation in browsers back in the day. Internet Explorer was preinstalled in every Windows computer, so in pretty much every computer, and it was deemed as "unbeatable" because people were too lazy to install anything else. In retrospective, it didn't take too long for Google Chrome to beat IE market share and nowadays pretty much the whole world uses Chrome and nothing else. Now, with IE, EU had to step in and force Microsoft to present their users a dialog to choose their browser in a fresh Windows installation which did have a role in that market share change. With Steam there isn't a need for that, because every user has to go and explicitly install Steam client to their computer before using it. Same goes with Chrome.
Although, vendor lock really is a real issue, and I do agree with you that if one has thousands of euros/dollars worth of games in their Steam account, it's purely convenient to keep on buying their next games on Steam as well. What I don't agree with is, that if there was a new competitor that was better in every way imaginable and they were able to sell the games on their platform for, let's say, -5% constantly, people wouldn't start using their service. You have to remember, that there is also a constant stream of new gamers (young people) that haven't even created a Steam account, and nothing is preventing them from choosing another service for their first game purchase. It's just that there isn't a real alternative to Steam currently.
You know this person didn't live through that era. They're waaaay too young for that.
An alternative that allows you to add friends, instant message them in-game whenever, that also hosts social hubs for each of its thousands of games; where people can post guides, fanart, videos, and discussions?