[embedding-shape]

> with no meaningful alternative

Steam (which I'm guessing you're talking about) is nowhere close of being a monopoly. There are loads of alternatives out there, in wide use by people already. World of Warcraft, League of Legends, Minecraft, Roblox and more are all examples of big time successful games that never been available on Steam.

[LadyCailin]

I would even go further, and say that this logic applies not just for massive games from massive publishers, but platforms like GoG works well as an alternative for indies.

[simoncion]

Plus, consider the software distribution situation in the pre-Internet world. There was getting someone to arrange for very-limited-time distribution in physical stores (and paying out the ass for the privilege), or paying to advertise your mail-order distribution, or encouraging BBS operators to distribute your shareware that includes a "Mail $AMOUNT to this address and we'll mail you a full copy." message inside.

Of those options, the BBS one is probably the lowest cost, but -"shockingly"- that option is still available today... and is probably way easier for people to find your software than it was back in the day.

There are astroturfers out there who pretend that Steam is The Worst Thing Ever, but they distribute your game, dev-selected old (and pre-release) versions of your game, promotional materials for your game, and host forums and a news feed... forever. Valve also pretty clearly chooses to distribute games that are in the intersection of what's legal to distribute in the US and what the busybodies at MasterCard and Visa permit them to distribute.

If we lived in a just world, because of MasterCard's and Visa's enormous size, they'd be declared as something like "payment processors of last resort" and required to process transactions for anything that's legal to sell in the US, and subject to enormous fines if they so much as suggest to any merchant that MC/Visa will stop processing that merchant's payments for any reason other than a clear and obvious history of fraud.

Alas.

[bmitc]

Steam has a 75% share of the PC gaming market. The mere existence of alternatives doesn't negate a monopoly. Whether it's a monopoly or not depends on whether Valve uses its market power in a pathological way.