Comment

Comment on Steam - new record for concurrent players online (37,185,128) on 19th May, 2026

GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

After killing the competition with exclusivity deals and shoehorning itself into physical copies as DRM.

I know you weren’t born when that happened, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.

Sort:hotnew top

thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
Steam / Valve doesn’t do exclusivity deals.

source
- GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
  Except they kinda did.
  
  They pay publishers to use Steam as DRM for physical releases.
  
  If you wanted to play the game on PC, you needed Steam.
  
  source
  - thingsiplay@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Where do you get that Valve pays publishers to use Steam as DRM? And therefore forces them a kind of exclusivity deal? No, Valve does not do that.
    
    source
    GeneralEmergency@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    They did.
    
    They don’t need to anymore because they killed the market of physical discs for PC games.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - ampersandrew@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Got a source on them paying publishers for that?
    
    source
  - doublah@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago
    Publishers used Steam for physical releases because Valve takes no fee for CD keys, so it was cheaper for them.
    
    source