this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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Steam

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Steam is a video game digital distribution service by Valve.

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[–] imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Boo fucking hoo. Market can try and compete instead of using shady ways to agitate players to join their subpar service.

Nobody hates on Steam being a monopoly. Devs should thank Valve that their policy decreases piracy drastically.

If all monopolies would be like Steam, we would have no arguments against monopolies.

[–] ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

Nobody hates on Steam being a monopoly

That's the problem imho. Right now they are "benevolent monopoly" for most of it's users, except:

  • currency conversions (famously Poland has the highest game prices on Steam in the world because Steam does not want to update the currency rates).
  • innovation (Steam does not innovate Steam, they r&d othe products)
  • accessibility (no way to make fonts bigger) (Those are my issues with it, there's definitely more)

We know since at least 70's, that when a company hits 4% market share, it stops innovating and competing with other companies, because buying the competition out and increasing the market share is safer and higher return (every 5% increase was 10% increase in profit, because they have to compete less).

[–] tb_@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)
  • innovation (Steam does not innovate Steam, they r&d othe products)

But do they not?
Proton is a clear innovation they've implemented into their store front.
They have new lab experiments every so often, currently there's a release calendar.
Family sharing.
Game recording.

For some of those you could argue it's an already existing concept, but even so. The implementation is certainly novel. And they are certainly continuing to improve a store front unmatched in features by any other.

[–] FruitLips@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

There was vr/gaming handhelds, but the Index and Steam deck made huge waves in the tech world..

Embracing Linux, opening up most of their UI to the people, allowing projects like Decky Loader, which has among other crowd sourced addon projects: CSS Loader which then has its own collection of crowd sourced addons, including two or three that could likely solve their font problem.

Those trading cards tied to achievements (ok, I have no idea what it's for.. but I like that it's there, lol)

I can't see how OP so strongly formed their opinion.

edit: grammer: comma conservation

[–] ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

Proton

I stand corrected