I don’t know if valve are or aren’t abusing their monopolistic position. I am not a lawyer and i don’t have a horse in the race.
I was just answering to someone who said “if you don’t like valve policies, dont publish your games there”, which would be true for a normal business, but specifically not true of a monopoly, which steam is, unquestionably
Epic can do things much more freely, because they dont hold a monopoly on pc games
fyrilsol@kbin.melroy.org 16 hours ago
It's hard to really call Valve a monopoly when, there is competition. If there's no competition, then Valve would clearly be a monopoly.
It's not like back in the 90s when Microsoft bundled their Windows OS with Internet Explorer that edged out Netscape back then. Because there really wasn't a lot of browser alternatives available to have made it where competition was there. Microsoft was considered a monopoly back then because competition was very little during their peak then.
In the digital PC gaming landscape, it's entirely different. There are numerous marketplaces for digital games. And they're big enough to where Valve is just simply an alternative and can go without if someone chooses.
Valve doesn't force anyone to use Steam or strong-arms people to buy games from them. They just exist, the people have spoken both by their own loyalty and their wallets. And that made companies like Epic mad and jealous. They just came late into the game when Valve was developing itself.