this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2025
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i think we’re missing the forest for the trees here by arguing wether valve should’ve allowed the game or not.
the fact that valve is in such a dominant position that them refusing to sell a game can mean not only the game’s failure, but the shutdown of the studio making it, is a big problem. and it’s not just this game, after the payment processor affair, VILE: Exhumed (a game about sexual assault, among other things) was banned from steam (for being about sexual assault), before it could even release
game devs shouldn’t have to rely on just one vendor’s approval to sell their stuff, it’s an unhealthy ecosystem.
But this game is getting distribution through GoG and about a half dozen other platforms listed in the article.
Do most people game through steam? Yes. But centralization of the marketplace isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's a reason why people complain when they have to use other game stores an launchers. It's the "I have 50 different streaming services" problem.
If Steam starts abusing that market position, then yes, we should care about that and they should suffer backlash. Which makes the question of "did they do the right thing here," very much relevant.
there is another way, games shouldn’t be tied to the store you bought them in
like, for physical objects, you can buy a thing from one store and another thing from another store, and they’ll be in your house no problem, you won’t even have to think about which store you bought which thing from (unless you need to return it or for customer service). it’s fundamentally decentralized. why shouldn’t digital distribution work that way too? it’s entirely possible, but obviously vendors benefit from locking you to their platform (that goes for steam, but also to epic games and, to a lesser extent GOG as well)
there should be no company with power to abuse in the first place. steam refused to sell your game? alright, you can sell it in other places and it’ll be fine. but that’s not how it works right now, most people buy on steam, and ONLY on steam, because it has a dominant position. so, if you can’t sell on steam, you’re done for!
and we can analyse each ban on a case-by-case basis (there’s many steam game bans I am glad happened), but there’s also cases like VILE: Exhumed, where steam caved to pressure from payment processors (which are also very centralized, that’s another honestly bigger problem) to ban a game with progressive politics simply because it talked about stuff that makes reactionary prudes uncomfortable.
we can’t just rely on Good Guy Valve to stay good forever
But they aren't tied to a store? When you download a game from Steam, it's just an executable on your box. You could put it on a hard drive and move it wherever you wanted. You don't have to launch games you bought with Steam through Steam. They aren't streamed. They are saved locally to your computer.
You can only download it from that store, sure, but that's not apples to apples. If I buy a game from GameStop, they won't give me another copy for free, just cause I threw away the copy they gave me. Once you download the game, that's what they sold you, and it's notionally your responsibility to keep track of it. Them allowing you to keep downloading new copies forever isn't strictly necessary, and costs them money every time you do it.
And if you can run the games you downloaded without Steam, all you're saying is "there should be other places to buy your games." But there are. Those exist. Less people use them, sure, but what do you propose? Kill Steam because too many people use it to buy their games? Legislate that people are required to shop at other stores?
well, many games are tied to the steam client (through the steam runtimes, steam DRM, steam input, needing a steam account for online play...). for most games, no, you can't just take the executable and do whatever you want with it. you'll need the steam client, and this creates a lock-in effect. because you need steam open to play all your steam games, you won't look elsewhere for games, and you won't see games not on steam, unless they're big enough.
imo, the solution to this is to break the lock-in, have interoperability between clients. there's no good reason why cross-play between steam and GOG, for example, is an exception and not the norm. there's no good reason why the steam client is required for so many games, there should be offline installers. there's no good reason why steam input only works with the steam client. part of the reason why proton is so amazing is that it's open-source, other steam technologies should be the same!
Sure, many games are tied to various Steam services, but that's by the choice of the games developer. Steam offers various built in services that game devs can choose to use if they want. It's not like it's some kind of requirement.
You might as well complain that game devs use Windows binaries, locking their games to only run on Windows. Sure, I prefer it when they target other platforms, but that's 1000% not Microsoft's fault that the dev chose to dev for their platform. I'm not mad at Microsoft for so many games being Windows only. I'm mad at the devs.
And games that build themselves around Steam services are of course going to be tied to Steam. That's a choice the devs made. If they wanted their game to run without needing the Steam client, they trivially could have built it that way. They just would have had to either reimplement all those Steam features themselves, or done without.
And if people want those Steam features, every store client who wants to run those games would have to implement those features in an interoperable way. It's easy to say "have interoperability between clients," but that's glossing over the potentially thousands of dev hours required to implement all of the features needed. And that's assuming they could all agree on a spec.
And to your final point about being open source. First, it gives very "any musician who gets paid is a sellout" energy. But more than that, it doesn't actually solve the problem you have. Even if Steam open sourced their tooling, that doesn't mean other players in the space could integrate it. Steam has grown organically for the past 30yrs, and trying to extricate the deep inner bits and then graft them on to your own solution isn't as easy as it sounds.
There are games exclusive to Epic that do just fine. There are games on itch and GoG that are doing just fine.
If Steam not hosting your game causes your studio to shut down, it's not because Steam is being some unreasonable gatekeeper. It's because you're making something that there isn't any market for, or so little of a market that your only hope is to get it visible to as many people as possible so the tiny fraction of them that are interested can keep you afloat.
Alan Wake 2 took an entire year to become profitable.
It's because the one store everyone uses didn't carry it.
Satisfactory made $11 million in the first year when it was exclusive to Epic (and not available on "the one store everybody uses").
Exceptions mean there's no rule, yeah? Minecraft, therefore, 90% marketshare cannot matter.
when you're arguing that it's impossible for a game to make a profit without Steam, yes
my post was in reply to you listing a single game that wasn't profitable for a year and blaming that on it not being on Steam. If my example is not a valid argument then you shouldn't have argued that way in the first place.
Strawman. It is demonstrably much harder for games to profit, when they're not on Steam. Exceptions are rare viral hits. Alan Wake 2 was a popular and acclaimed game, and it did terribly on PC specifically, because it wasn't on the one storefront that handles an overwhelming majority of PC sales. The difference between PC games not on Steam and iOS games not on the App Store is slim.
So yes, there are games exclusive to Epic that do just fine, but not many. Odds say, fucked. Being unavailable on Steam means most PC gamers will not consider buying it, and may never even be aware of it. We have a word for that.
Exceptions mean there’s no rule, yeah?
Struggling is the rule, not the exception. Most games do much worse when they're not on Steam. Most means more. Do you understand that?
One example does not mean most.
You know being on Steam means crucial access to more customers. To most customers, in fact.
The games that do well, despite being invisible to the supermajority of customers, are the exceptions. Nobody gets dropped from EGS or Itch and goes "oh no, we're ruined, we're only on Steam now." But the opposite happens repeatedly. The reason is not complicated.
Right: there's not a market for AAA torture porn / sexual abuse games.
Apparently there is. But you can't access enough of it unless you're on the one store that really counts.
If only there were words for one company arbitrarily restricting who gets to reach customers.
Freedom of association? Valve is not obligated or required to host everyone's game if they don't want to.
One company restricting access to most customers is a different thing.
And it becomes a problem for everyone.
So what do you propose? Is there some action Steam is doing that they should be legally stopped from? As far as I am aware Steam has the most customers simply because those customers prefer it.
Here's the funny part: it's probably fine. AND YET, people will twist themselves inside-out to deny the premise.
Your root post fully admitted the accusation:
If you're not in this one store, you lose access to most customers.
That's a fucking monopoly.
As I've explained to people, over and over and over and over, anti-competitive practice is a separate thing. Monopoly just means market share. It's enough power to become a problem. It is the ability to fuck people over. We need to recognize these situations, before they ruin everything.
For comparison, Netflix was a monopoly, and I think the entire world would be happier if that was still the case. But saying so doesn't mean they weren't a monopoly. For a good while there, your choices for legal streaming video were Netflix, or lying to yourself about legality. The desirable solution would be multiple services offering all the same shows for competitive... not the exclusivity hellscape we got. And gaming would be better-off if every game was in every storefront, like boxes on shelves, instead of one store being a huge fucking deal and the rest being nearly irrelevant.
Then what have you been going on about all this time? You' been saying repeatedly that it's a problem and now you're saying it's probably fine? Pick a lane.
Customers who want your product can still access it.
Not by the dictionary definition nor the legal definition you cited.
But "it's probably fine."
Which most of them are. For a while Epic was refusing games that wasn't signing exclusivity deals with them, but that ended up not working out for them.
In the past Walmart has refused to sell music of artists with content they disagreed with. Was that Walmart exploiting it's market share, or a business choosing what they do and do not stock?
Again, what should we do about that?
Standard Oil never had an absolute monopoly. Look me in the eyes and tell me they don't count.
Argumentum ad Webster is a fallacy. Words mean what they are used to mean, and what they are understood to mean. The goddang FTC has a page explaining: "Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct." The kind of monopoly we break up still has competition. It's only about market share and power.
When a company dominates any industry, they obviously have power that could easily be abused, even if they do not abuse it. Do you understand that the potential for abuse is a problem, even if it's a different kind of problem than abuse occurring? You can't prevent things by waiting until they happen.
Yes. Obviously. It was preachy corporate censorship on a scale we hardly recognize today. One company being so big means some art doesn't get made.
Walmart's an excellent example for how absolute monopoly is not required. Obviously there's other supermarkets. But some companies drop entire product lines if Walmart doesn't pick them up. This one store represents enough of the market that any investment is immediately considered a loss. Being in or out is such a big fucking deal that products are tailored to that store, rather than to customers.
Practically speaking? Nothing, because this monopoly has not abused its power. They don't seem likely to. And yet: it's still there. Things change. Shit happens. If Gabe's yacht sinks and Larry Ellison buys the company, maybe everyone decides EGS ain't so bad, but there's a world of lesser horrors that wouldn't spook the herd.
But then the issue is not because Valve is vicious company that kill competitor, it's because the competitor keep shooting themselves. It's like Luigi keep wining by doing nothing. What do you expect Valve to do?
Yeah, it's a monopoly. That's not a value judgement. It's not calling them evil or criminal or anything. It is a necessary recognition of their market position. I.e. - they have competitors, but those competitors do not matter.
So not a monopoly.
Absolute monopolies are fiction.
Standard Oil only ever controlled 85% of America's oil.
Monopoly is when your competition does not matter - not when it does not exist. There will always be someone competing with you. But if I open Mindbleach's Video Emporium and move six units per quarter, the impact on Steam is approximately dick.
So is Epic's.
Monopoly:
https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/guide-antitrust-laws/single-firm-conduct/monopolization-defined
Absolute monopolies do not exist. If there's one asshole selling PC games out of a car boot, Steam does not have a literal absolute monopoly. And yet: not even Epic Games, a bajillion dollar company, has any meaningful impact on Steam's superdupermajority control of the PC gaming market. Steam competitors existing does not mean they matter.
So again, not what we're seeing at all.
Epic has little impact because Epic is shit at making a store people actually want to use.
Ability. Not a history of doing anticompetitive behavior, just the ability to do it. Monopoly is a precondition to that abuse.
From the same page: "Obtaining a monopoly by superior products, innovation, or business acumen is legal; however, the same result achieved by exclusionary or predatory acts may raise antitrust concerns." "Finally, the monopolist may have a legitimate business justification for behaving in a way that prevents other firms from succeeding in the marketplace. For instance, the monopolist may be competing on the merits in a way that benefits consumers through greater efficiency or a unique set of products or services."
Is it a fnord? Is there some other word you would understand to mean, there's only one big-ass store people treat as the default, and if they start being dicks, we're all in deep shit?
So you think if Steam decided to cancel all of its sales and double the price of everything people would keep purchasing from them? If not then they do not have the ability. We already know they don't have the ability to prevent competition in the market due to the competition in the market.
We're really not. If they start being dicks other stores already exist that we can use instead.
If Valve bumped their cut from 30% to 40%, do you imagine publishers would rush to EGS? Epic's cut is already 15 points lower than Valve's. It hasn't moved the needle.
Valve kills studios by saying 'no thank you.' They have immense power. They just don't use it in any way that freaks people out. The mere possibility shapes the entire industry. Only niche studios try weird shit, because large studios don't risk poking the bear. Games want to feature nudity and intimacy, but most are so self-censored, they could be televised. The cultural prevalence of nude mods is proof of demand that has been frustrated.
If you'd rather blame Mastercard and Visa openly dictating what art can and can't be sold, by all means, we can talk about their joint control of online payment. But it might get blunt if you insist one store taking Bitcoin means that's not a duopoly.
Back to your earlier point: why wasn't Alan Wake 2 on Steam? Did Steam say 'no thank you'?
If it's such a wide reaching and well known issue, why would any studio choose not to release on Steam? Do you know something they don't?
They they do. Steam has full on porn games on it.
Epic gave Remedy a shitload of money, up-front. All exclusivity these days works like that. Nobody wants to reach fewer customers. Some of them are convinced to - some of them are forced to. Alan Wake exemplifies the former, and there's a good chance Remedy regrets the decision.
So not being on Steam isn't widely known as dooming the game? If everyone knows not being on Steam will force your studio to shut down how could you possibly convince anyone to choose to do so?
'But if not being on Steam means they can't get enough money, how would more money help?'
You cannot be serious.
You've been saying everyone in the industry knows not being on Steam means your game won't be successful and it warps the industry around it.
You've also been saying that Alan Wake 2 was guaranteed to make a lot of money if they released on Steam.
So given these two arguments you've been making, why would a company choose to make less money by not releasing on Steam?
Epic... funded... the game.
Remedy took money up-front, expecting it to be more money than they would make later.
Being on Steam means access to customers, and more sales. You said so. So Epic, to promote the Epic Game Store, estimated how much revenue Alan Wake 2 would lose by not being on Steam, doubled it, and wrote that on a check.
I honestly don't know what the answer is though, since I refuse to buy a game anywhere else. If it's not on steam I'm not buying it.
That's shortsighted as hell. I cma understand not wanting to have multiple clients installed but there's GoG at the very least.
Gog gives drm free installers, no laucher needed. Install it somewhere, go into steam, add non-steam game. Boom. Done.