TL;DW: execs assume monopoly from market dominance, without taking into account other stores could contest said market dominance.
this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2025
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It literally could have been a 2 minute video. Not sure why they dragged it out for 10 minutes saying the same thing over and over.
afaik youtube promotes you more based on viewed minutes. So longer viewing per video -> more pushing to frontpage.
YongYea has habit of first going over all the opinions and written stuff in articles before giving his own opinions and conclusions. It's... Just the way he does things. Some people consider that an in-depth overview.
I think it's... Alright. I usually don't finish watching his vids when I get the point.
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It's not stupid. Monopoly does not mean there's no competition. Google has been legally declared a monopoly and they have tons of competition.
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Steam does a lot of shitty things — including using gambling mechanics on kids and failing to moderate the neo-nazi clubhouse that are their forums — but they are not a monopoly and do not behave in a monopolistic or anticompetitive manner whatsoever. Their success and market share is genuinely earned on merits.
Personally, I would prefer GOG, but many games don’t release there, or release there much later. Epic could compete, but their heart is clearly not in it as they refuse to give customers features they want out of a platform and do engage in anticompetitive practices.
God so many people dont understand what a monopoly actually is. Listen carefully: despite the name MONOPOLY DOESN'T MEAN ONE!
You boot licking capitalist just can't get past this. God i wish the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt could arise to beat some sense into all of you.
A very "gamer" headline and title card. Not in a good way.
Steam is 100% a monopoly, they just happen to be a benevolent monopoly... but like all, that can change.
I think the issue is, that if we're going to call steam a monopoly (and maybe they are), then we've got to call Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo monopolies.
What I don't want to see is legal attacks against steam while letting worse behavior off the hook.
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Oh look, yet another person who doesn't understand what monopoly means.
A monopoly is a market structure with a single dominant seller in a particular industry.
Sounds like Steam fits that description pretty well. I agree that steam isn't a strict monopoly, there is competition, but they are so far and ahead they still function as a monopoly in their area.
Since you'd rather throw mud than talk terms, I guess that’s where this ends.
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I think so too, but they are a fairly small company/group with a stable (50+%) owner & basically don't bother with much (neither publisher or consumer side). Eg GOG is smaller but fights DRM a lot more actively (and achieving DRM-free deals even before Steam).
I hope before Gabe goes Gaben't he makes Valve a proper nonprofit - bcs the service they offer is like a mass infrastructure thing (which are always scary).
As to why devs think they have a monopoly - it's hard to succeeded without Steam, especially if you arent a AAA studio (and even a small mistake on Steam part for their game's visibility on Steam Store can cost them everything), and Steam isn't really fighting over devs to offer them a better deal than the competition, it's the other way around (it's clear who has the power).
So yes, they have quite a fair bit of monopoly.
Modern, especially tech, monopolies aren't a single-provider-locked-in type of thing, look at Google, they hold a monopoly over so many markets without those prerequisites. And they fought, shaped the markets intentionally to eventually get to that position (that's why they were valued that high even before the revenue kicked in).
They're not benevolent in the slightest.
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If we call Steam a monopoly, then we also shall name Nestle a monopoly.
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