If you're a game developer, then the ability to sell games does buy food and housing, and you sell a lot more games on Steam than anywhere else.
You're using a different definition of monopoly from what I'm using. To quote Wikipedia:
In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.
I'm using the latter of those definitions. I don't think it's particularly useful to only consider it a monopoly when there are literally no competitors. I think it is useful to consider it a monopoly when it has dominant market power. Steam's estimated 75-80% market share is dominant market power.
It's true that I am not a lawyer, so feel free to not take what I say as what the law says. I think that the law certainly should consider Steam to be a monopoly with its level of market power, even if it doesn't currently.
From what I have heard from actual lawyers, monopolies are not currently illegal under US law anyways. They're only illegal when combined with anticompetitive practices. That's my best understanding as a non-lawyer, anyways.
That is totally fair. That's your preference.
Whether something is a monopoly or not is independent of anti-competitive practices. It's about market power.
I'm pretty sure that that only applies to steam keys being sold on other sites. If it's being distributed in some other form, it can be cheaper.
Gacha games are indeed gambling. If you consider all gambling to be irredeemable, then calling them trash as a whole is reasonable I guess.
However, it is inaccurate to say that gacha games as a whole are just gambling. They have other qualities as well, with varying levels of investment and care put into them. Sometimes the effort they put into everything else is minimal and they are basically just gambling with a thin veneer of game on top. Other times, they put an absurd amount of investment into the game, story, and music.
MiHoYo, the developer of HSR (along with Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero) are the later type. MiHoYo has more money than God, and it shows in their investment into their games. Their games are absurdly high-effort productions with more polish than any AAA game studio. They also have very good LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent rep, especially considering they're based in China.
Personally, I am very averse to risk and uncertainty. I dislike the gambling aspect of gacha games (not just on principle, but also in my enjoyment). However, I still play some gacha games because I enjoy other aspects of them. So they're not just gambling. But they are gambling, and it's fair if people avoid them for that reason (especially people prone to problem gambling).
I think there is a distinction to be made between being a monopoly and doing anti-competitive behavior.
Steam hasn't done any anti-competitive behavior that I am aware of, but they do have enough market power to be considered a monopoly. Consider how companies like EA and Activision tried to maintain competing platforms but caved because those platforms were not viable compared to Steam. That's monopoly power.
I think it qualifies as a monopoly because of the network effect of having so many users and so many games on it. Especially on the developer side, it's basically mandatory to release your game on Steam because the number of users you can reach is so much higher than any other platform.
That being said, it's not a monopoly that most people have a problem with because they generally continue to serve users well even though they have enough market power that they could enshittify things. If they were a public company they almost certainly would have done that by now.
I have done this sort of apology many times in Helldivers.
Heh, I know what Star Rail is. Specifically, Honkai Star Rail, one of the biggest gacha games. It's a turn based RPG, like Raid: Shadow Legends but anime and with way more production value.
Huh, I guess it should have an extra "e". I never knew about that variant.