72% of devs meaning 72% of developers = people or 72% of developer studios = a bunch of suits?

75% of respondents were senior managers of C-suite level.

Ah ok, so pointless people. They could ask an AI...

Monopolies are just an effect of capitalism in its current form.
I'm more concerned with the games companies who aren't even monopolies, and are already seen as shit services run by shitty people (unless anyone actually likes Ubisoft, EA, and their launchers???)

Gamers have respect for Gaben, and I've heard more faith and less worry about his son taking over than practically the entire team of owners from Valve's competitors. They have a monopoly because it's a good service, and the fact that it's has a user base as big as it does shouldn't surprise anyone: they seem to be doing things right enough to not be a bother. That's what matters more than the inevitability of a business getting big - there's a lot more Nuance and that doesn't just magically happen, nor is just pointing it out helpful in sensible critique.

Steam has a monopoly: yes. Steam, like apple, takes a cut from all payments in the store, and micro transactions. Considering how Steam is a company, and could just be evil, and bad, like Google, it's:

-Contributions and implementation of the opensource software Proton-Ge, which lets me just download a windows game and play it, off steam, and is also available, free & opensource on other platforms like Lutris. -Regular deals which make it the best place to buy games, if you choose to do so. -Steamdeck

Make it a (mostly) positive force, imho. However, a billion dollar company being able to do discounts below any small game distribution companies, is bad.

From the article, "Atomik Research, surveyed 306 industry executives across the UK and USA" Executives are likely removed from the opinions of the actual developers, are they not?

Boo fucking hoo. Market can try and compete instead of using shady ways to agitate players to join their subpar service.

Nobody hates on Steam being a monopoly. Devs should thank Valve that their policy decreases piracy drastically.

If all monopolies would be like Steam, we would have no arguments against monopolies.

I love Steam, but I don't like how their rules seems to biased against Japanese games.

There are plenty of JP games outright refused by Steam despite have zero have adult content, and perfectly fine on being released on GOG, (edit: and also Nintendo!) or other digital platform.

Especially with visual novels and games with psychology theme.

they do, and it's all going to shit the moment gaben dies and is replaced by investor vultures.

I find it fascinating that Lemmings suddenly turn off their critical thinking skills when it comes to Valve. We really need to study this.

wish that would be true, then all thess games would be not windows exclusive anymore. And i could like get like an linux game console to play fortnite.

In this one case, I'm okay with its monopoly as long as Gabe is in charge. I have bought tens of thousands of dollars in games on the platform and it's crazy I can still hit download on games over 20 years old in my library AND have my save game data imported from that time.

So far, Valve has been fair to their users. Hell, they heard concerns over gambling and just took a sledgehammer to the CS2 skin market. I don't think any other company would devalue their digital assets to a tune of -3 BILLION dollars. Valve is the GOAT.

It's amazing how many people don't actually understand what a monopoly is. Every time the topic comes up you see people say things like "well there's more than one store therefore it's not a monopoly." That's never been the actual use of the word in practice. If that were true it would be so stupidly easy to circumvent monopoly laws and regulations. I mean more than it already is of course.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly