It’s still a monopoly though. The misconception is that calling Valve a monopoly, is somehow an attack on Valve or blames Valve. It’s just a description of Valve’s position in the market.
Also, shame on whoever thinks Valve won’t ever abuse this position at some point in the future.
No, it is not. You and the other commentators need to stop repeating that propaganda lie by the true monopolists of PC gaming (Epic, Microsoft,…).
All of Steam combined makes up a fifth of the PC gaming revenue. A fifth! That’s a very good percentage but a fifth of anything is not a monopoly and that’s not even including mobile and consoles where Valve isn’t even competing at the moment.
Fortnite, Rocket League, Valorant, League of Legends, Minecraft, still World of Warcraft, Roblox,… are where all that PC gaming revenue is concentrated but a few mid-tier games sell best on Steam (because the same priced copy on EGS offers worse value) and suddenly everybody keeps repeating the lie of the true monopolists that the company that isn’t classified in the EU as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act is a monopoly (but Microsoft is).
I know you didn’t make this graph, but what was whoever-it-was smoking when they put the line for VR all the way up there? It should be slithering along the bottom right like a snake.
You’re misreading how the graph is laid out. The y axis is the combined total revenue of the entire video game market, with each new piece of the market being added on top of the older ones over time (although arguably arcades are the oldest form and should be below consoles). VR is the newest niche, and so it goes on top of everything else as it adds its revenue to the gross total of the entire market, despite only being a tiny piece of that sum.
In your layout, consoles/arcade would be at the top with everything else underneath them.
Even that don’t make no sense, boss. If that were the case not only should consoles and arcades be swapped, as you say, but also the VR line should be slipped in between handhelds and mobile. Dactyl Nightmare came out in 1991 and certainly wasn’t even the first VR experience, but it was the first commercialized one I can think of — and played myself, believe it or not. I can’t imagine VR as a whole made anything other than chump change until 2018+, but it was indeed there and chugging along quietly.
I can’t imagine VR as a whole made anything other than chump change until 2018+, but it was indeed there and chugging along quietly.
The graph specifically calls out the Oculus Rift as the start of what it considers the VR segment.
I would consider things like the Virtual Boy as VR to some extent as well, but I do see the logic as to why they only started the line with the Oculus. Before that it probably wouldn’t even show up as the money there was a drop in the bucket of a tenth of a percent of anything else, but it’s also widely considered that the Oculus and the Vive were the first really viable commercial VR headsets that started the VR game niche/genre. Before that, VR could probably be considered as niche as eye and head tracking hardware for sim games, and I don’t think that I’ve ever heard somebody mention those when talking about money in the games industry. Or even mentioned them in general outside of conversations like this. I don’t think most people even know that that kind of stuff even exists.
I know you didn’t make this graph, but what was whoever-it-was smoking when they put the line for VR all the way up there?
From what I’ve learned from buddies who are into VR, it’s a really weird subculture of super high end headsets, sometimes even full body suits with force feedback, and other shit. Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised if all that revenue is A) real and B) relying on a few big spenders.
That’s not the issue. The issue is the callout on it says the VR market is only $5 billion at its peak, which is well below mobile, which the gold VR line is drawn above, correlating with the position of being greater than $180 billion on the Y axis on the chart. Which is not how line charts work.
That’s your issue? A minor cosmetic thing? And I thought you meant that the VR graph should be way thinner and that its numbers are an overestimation.
Well, I think it’s a well readable graphic which is why I like citing it. It doesn’t require zooming in to get it but you can zoom in to read who’s responsible for the graphic (“Art direction + design: Clayton Wadsworth”).
Wait, a fifth? My bad, that’s insane. I don’t know a single PC gamer who doesn’t have most of their games in Steam, me included. Can you hook me up with a source for that?
Turns out you are the one lying. Everything I find says Steam has 75% ish market share.
Where the hell are you getting your numbers? Everything I see says that Steam made a record 16 billion in 2025 while PC gaming as a whole made 43 billion. That would put Steam somewhere around 27% of the PC market.
You are obviously completely unaware about the concept of citing sources. I did not make that graphic and you did not care to follow the cited sources at the bottom of the graphic.
At the very worst you could accuse me of citing a source that’s 2.5 years old by now because its newest numbers are from late 2023 but then you made up random numbers without even backing up any of it, so my standpoint is still more valid than yours even if the numbers cited by me are not as recent as the numbers cited by @[email protected]
Only because they don’t count the Switch as handheld. Nintendo was pretty much the entire handheld market.
I don’t know what would be left by how they lay out the numbers. Switch (2) is console, Steam Deck is PC. The Chinese “boutique” handhelds by Ayaneo, Ayn,… use existing game ecosystems (either PC or Android).
I guess Playdate and whatever Atari sells these days. Can’t think of any other dedicated handheld with its own ecosystem.
Microtransaction-laden cell phone games very infamously oozed in and ate that entire market’s lunch. It turns out for short duration video game adjacent distraction on the go, people would much rather use the device they already have with a “free” (only up front) option rather than pay for a Gameboy/DS/PSP and games to go with it.
Square discovered this the hard way when they tried to release their various Final Fantasy remakes on smartphones in the early days as if they were regular games, i.e. pay $4.99 or whatever and have access to it in theoretical perpetuity and to the nearest decimal point, no one bought any of them. It turns out consumers respond much more positively to downloading a game for “free” and then coughing up several times more in microtransactions over time than buying any given title outright would cost, and/or being incessantly bombarded with ads as they play. Obviously the industry has figured this out and now everything you can play on your cell phone is feemium pay-to-win microtransaction hell built around slot machine mechanics, but it doesn’t matter because it apparently prints money.
You are on lemmy, a decentralized and open source platform, nobody here think microsoft is good. If a bunch of evil corporations control the entire videogames market that still count as a monopoly, all of these are shit including Valve.
The meme I hate is “Valve wins by doing nothing”. You cannot be any further from the truth. Valve has won so far by doing many things right, they keep doing many things right. It’s like IT or maintenance work, or being God, your work is invisible until everyone dies.
People call Valve a monopoly, and they are right but… is it a monopoly because they wanted to become one? Or because the competitors are completely clueless about what do the customers want? Can we blame Valve on becoming a monopoly when they simply are listening to the customers while the competitors (like Epic) keep ignoring users demands?
EA, Ubisoft, Microslop… they all tried to make their own launchers to move away from Steam and they all failed. Why? Because they wanted to make those launchers their way, while actively telling the users to shut up about their demands on what would make the launchers great.
Epic… Epic keeps throwing fortnite money to EGS launcher but keeps ignoring the most basic user demands.
Like, dude? I’m telling you that, for buying your product, it must have A, B and C. But, instead of offering me that, you make a product that lacks specifically A, B and C. And you expect me to buy it?
It is a monopoly, but because nobody else is even trying. And that pisses me off.
Microslop… they all tried to make their own launchers to move away from Steam and they all failed.
Microsoft didn’t fail. They bought Minecraft and Blizzard / Battle.net, two things that are money printers outside of Steam.
Microsoft ACTS like they fail because they demand higher profit margins from their gaming division to fund their AI investments.
Epic… Epic keeps throwing fortnite money to EGS launcher but keeps ignoring the most basic user demands.
EGS has an insane installed base because of Fortnite and Rocket League alone. League of Legends and Valorant are also available there but not Steam. Same with Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact.
It’s just that these games drone out the other games on EGS and that’s why they sell better on Steam. And what is that droning out usually called? A monopoly.
I agree that Valve has, in some instances, succeeded primarily because they’re not aggressively anti-consumer in a market of aggressively anti-consumer alternatives. However, they are not innocent by any means.
Last I checked, they are still automated when it comes to the majority of their “customer services”. Getting an actual human to consider things is expensive and they don’t want to spend money on that.
They are very conscious the numbers behind their success and the money that their platform and marketplace rakes in. They have worked with literal economists when it comes to their marketplace. Yet they turn a blind eye to the skin gambling issue.
They do sometimes behave like bullies when negotiating with those who want to sell their games on Steam. The proportion of money paid out to devs/publishers is a factor of success and benefit to valve rather than anything else - if your game makes a lot of money (for Valve), you get a discount on the percentage taken. Some of that bullying behavior is also anticompetitive - as has been brought up in lawsuits. Their policies use “most favored nation” clauses.
Basically if you want to benefit from Steam, the dominant marketplace, you have to offer Steam customers nothing less than you offer customers anywhere else. No discounts on another store or your website. No bonus content or service that might make a non-steam purchase feel better than a purchase on Steam.
Finally, they may not be anti-consumer but they have exactly been spending a lot of effort on improving the functionality of services that their platform has. Issues with their friends-related services like voice chat have plagued the platform for a long time, though some have recently been improved. They know they are dominant and don’t spend money when they don’t need to in order to keep customers.
All said and done, I use them as my default though I’ve made efforts to be more dev and indie dev conscious. Unfortunately, greed fuels most of the world and makes it hard to do anything that favors anyone besides those with power.
is it a monopoly because they wanted to become one?
Valve is a for profit company, one of their main goals is to make money.
It is a monopoly, but because nobody else is even trying. And that pisses me off.
It is a monopoly because they hooked everyone to their own proprietary third party software launcher, you should be pissed of about not owning any of your games
Monopoly means it’s the only seller in the market. This isn’t true for PC gaming. You have GoG, Epic, Itch.io, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay, Rockstar smaller websites that host different kinds of games. Steam is the biggest player on PCright now, but there’s nothing about Steam that prevents any other type of competitor from getting into the market and possibly de-throning it.
Market share is not the only determinant, and also yes holding 20% of the market can empower an actor to exert monopolistic power. Maybe learn a little bit before you open your mouth; you sound as stupid as the FTC.
The term monopoly does not apply here. Not only do we lack any evidence of anti-competitive practices, there literally are competitors, they just suck and they are very unpopular.
There is mild vendor lock-in. If all my games are on steam, why would I buy my games elsewhere. Not to mention the steam client contains the steam store and advertisements for games in said store, so anybody in the steam ecosystem is incentivized to stay there. Games bought in Steam aren’t trivially launched without launching Steam.
All of that is true, but I still think “monopoly” is not the right word. It’s a bit of a unique situation. Ideally we’d have laws that make Steam provide a downloadable copy of the game that can work without Steam… but we’re so far from that.
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service[1]. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller’s marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.
A monopoly is just an observation of the market landscape. Doesnt require ill intent or anti-competitive practices. Steam is just a benevolent monopoly. Until its not…
I think the issue is there is the economic concept of monopoly and there is the type of monopoly defined and banned by regulation. They are similar but not the same
A monopoly […] is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service
So like Epic in case of Unreal Engine and Microsoft in case of Windows. Steam makes up a fifth of all PC gaming revenue and EGS has a wide installed based because of Fortnite, Rocket League etc. People just choose not to spend their money there for games that are available elsewhere. That’s different from EGS not being able from supplying goods and services because they were pushed out.
There is competition. And the term “monopolize” is used as a way of saying someone took action to stomp out the competition so I would say that 99% of people would assume intent whether or not it’s technically a part of the definition, because 99% of the time a monopoly exists it’s not by accident. But again, importantly, there IS competition.
No it can already work with anything that accepts SDL input (which is a bunch of software and most modern games steam or not). They upstreamed support for it before the controller even launched.
It’s 75%. It’s not crazy far up on the monopoly scale, but IMO enough to be called one.
But there is no “limit”. If you are the only vegetable seller on the market, you have 100% market share. But as long as anyone else can set up another shop and compete equally, I wouldn’t call it a monopoly.
![Steam competitors be like. [Extended?]](https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/8d2d46eb-234c-41bd-b7c1-fb9c4c9f2508.webp){kind=link}
It’s still a monopoly though. The misconception is that calling Valve a monopoly, is somehow an attack on Valve or blames Valve. It’s just a description of Valve’s position in the market.
Also, shame on whoever thinks Valve won’t ever abuse this position at some point in the future.
Funny meme tho, just being pedantic
I fear for my game library the moment Gabe dies.
No, it is not. You and the other commentators need to stop repeating that propaganda lie by the true monopolists of PC gaming (Epic, Microsoft,…).
All of Steam combined makes up a fifth of the PC gaming revenue. A fifth! That’s a very good percentage but a fifth of anything is not a monopoly and that’s not even including mobile and consoles where Valve isn’t even competing at the moment.
Fortnite, Rocket League, Valorant, League of Legends, Minecraft, still World of Warcraft, Roblox,… are where all that PC gaming revenue is concentrated but a few mid-tier games sell best on Steam (because the same priced copy on EGS offers worse value) and suddenly everybody keeps repeating the lie of the true monopolists that the company that isn’t classified in the EU as a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act is a monopoly (but Microsoft is).
I know you didn’t make this graph, but what was whoever-it-was smoking when they put the line for VR all the way up there? It should be slithering along the bottom right like a snake.
You’re misreading how the graph is laid out. The y axis is the combined total revenue of the entire video game market, with each new piece of the market being added on top of the older ones over time (although arguably arcades are the oldest form and should be below consoles). VR is the newest niche, and so it goes on top of everything else as it adds its revenue to the gross total of the entire market, despite only being a tiny piece of that sum.
In your layout, consoles/arcade would be at the top with everything else underneath them.
Even that don’t make no sense, boss. If that were the case not only should consoles and arcades be swapped, as you say, but also the VR line should be slipped in between handhelds and mobile. Dactyl Nightmare came out in 1991 and certainly wasn’t even the first VR experience, but it was the first commercialized one I can think of — and played myself, believe it or not. I can’t imagine VR as a whole made anything other than chump change until 2018+, but it was indeed there and chugging along quietly.
The graph specifically calls out the Oculus Rift as the start of what it considers the VR segment.
I would consider things like the Virtual Boy as VR to some extent as well, but I do see the logic as to why they only started the line with the Oculus. Before that it probably wouldn’t even show up as the money there was a drop in the bucket of a tenth of a percent of anything else, but it’s also widely considered that the Oculus and the Vive were the first really viable commercial VR headsets that started the VR game niche/genre. Before that, VR could probably be considered as niche as eye and head tracking hardware for sim games, and I don’t think that I’ve ever heard somebody mention those when talking about money in the games industry. Or even mentioned them in general outside of conversations like this. I don’t think most people even know that that kind of stuff even exists.
From what I’ve learned from buddies who are into VR, it’s a really weird subculture of super high end headsets, sometimes even full body suits with force feedback, and other shit. Honestly, wouldn’t be surprised if all that revenue is A) real and B) relying on a few big spenders.
That’s not the issue. The issue is the callout on it says the VR market is only $5 billion at its peak, which is well below mobile, which the gold VR line is drawn above, correlating with the position of being greater than $180 billion on the Y axis on the chart. Which is not how line charts work.
That’s your issue? A minor cosmetic thing? And I thought you meant that the VR graph should be way thinner and that its numbers are an overestimation.
Well, I think it’s a well readable graphic which is why I like citing it. It doesn’t require zooming in to get it but you can zoom in to read who’s responsible for the graphic (“Art direction + design: Clayton Wadsworth”).
Wait, a fifth? My bad, that’s insane. I don’t know a single PC gamer who doesn’t have most of their games in Steam, me included. Can you hook me up with a source for that?Turns out you are the one lying. Everything I find says Steam has 75% ish market share.
Where the hell are you getting your numbers? Everything I see says that Steam made a record 16 billion in 2025 while PC gaming as a whole made 43 billion. That would put Steam somewhere around 27% of the PC market.
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gamesindustrybiz-presents-the-year-in-numbers-2025-year-in-review
https://www.eteknix.com/steams-revenue-surpasses-16-billion-in-2025-new-estimate-shows/
You are obviously completely unaware about the concept of citing sources. I did not make that graphic and you did not care to follow the cited sources at the bottom of the graphic.
At the very worst you could accuse me of citing a source that’s 2.5 years old by now because its newest numbers are from late 2023 but then you made up random numbers without even backing up any of it, so my standpoint is still more valid than yours even if the numbers cited by me are not as recent as the numbers cited by @[email protected]
Damn, handheld virtually nonexistent since 2020
Only because they don’t count the Switch as handheld. Nintendo was pretty much the entire handheld market.
I don’t know what would be left by how they lay out the numbers. Switch (2) is console, Steam Deck is PC. The Chinese “boutique” handhelds by Ayaneo, Ayn,… use existing game ecosystems (either PC or Android).
I guess Playdate and whatever Atari sells these days. Can’t think of any other dedicated handheld with its own ecosystem.
Microtransaction-laden cell phone games very infamously oozed in and ate that entire market’s lunch. It turns out for short duration video game adjacent distraction on the go, people would much rather use the device they already have with a “free” (only up front) option rather than pay for a Gameboy/DS/PSP and games to go with it.
Square discovered this the hard way when they tried to release their various Final Fantasy remakes on smartphones in the early days as if they were regular games, i.e. pay $4.99 or whatever and have access to it in theoretical perpetuity and to the nearest decimal point, no one bought any of them. It turns out consumers respond much more positively to downloading a game for “free” and then coughing up several times more in microtransactions over time than buying any given title outright would cost, and/or being incessantly bombarded with ads as they play. Obviously the industry has figured this out and now everything you can play on your cell phone is feemium pay-to-win microtransaction hell built around slot machine mechanics, but it doesn’t matter because it apparently prints money.
You are on lemmy, a decentralized and open source platform, nobody here think microsoft is good. If a bunch of evil corporations control the entire videogames market that still count as a monopoly, all of these are shit including Valve.
They also lied, it’s not a fifth, it’s 3/4
The meme I hate is “Valve wins by doing nothing”. You cannot be any further from the truth. Valve has won so far by doing many things right, they keep doing many things right. It’s like IT or maintenance work, or being God, your work is invisible until everyone dies.
Don’t be a bastard, and do the right thing. That’s hard to do apparently.
People call Valve a monopoly, and they are right but… is it a monopoly because they wanted to become one? Or because the competitors are completely clueless about what do the customers want? Can we blame Valve on becoming a monopoly when they simply are listening to the customers while the competitors (like Epic) keep ignoring users demands?
EA, Ubisoft, Microslop… they all tried to make their own launchers to move away from Steam and they all failed. Why? Because they wanted to make those launchers their way, while actively telling the users to shut up about their demands on what would make the launchers great.
Epic… Epic keeps throwing fortnite money to EGS launcher but keeps ignoring the most basic user demands.
Like, dude? I’m telling you that, for buying your product, it must have A, B and C. But, instead of offering me that, you make a product that lacks specifically A, B and C. And you expect me to buy it?
It is a monopoly, but because nobody else is even trying. And that pisses me off.
Microsoft didn’t fail. They bought Minecraft and Blizzard / Battle.net, two things that are money printers outside of Steam.
Microsoft ACTS like they fail because they demand higher profit margins from their gaming division to fund their AI investments.
EGS has an insane installed base because of Fortnite and Rocket League alone. League of Legends and Valorant are also available there but not Steam. Same with Genshin Impact and Honkai Impact.
It’s just that these games drone out the other games on EGS and that’s why they sell better on Steam. And what is that droning out usually called? A monopoly.
I agree that Valve has, in some instances, succeeded primarily because they’re not aggressively anti-consumer in a market of aggressively anti-consumer alternatives. However, they are not innocent by any means.
Last I checked, they are still automated when it comes to the majority of their “customer services”. Getting an actual human to consider things is expensive and they don’t want to spend money on that.
They are very conscious the numbers behind their success and the money that their platform and marketplace rakes in. They have worked with literal economists when it comes to their marketplace. Yet they turn a blind eye to the skin gambling issue.
They do sometimes behave like bullies when negotiating with those who want to sell their games on Steam. The proportion of money paid out to devs/publishers is a factor of success and benefit to valve rather than anything else - if your game makes a lot of money (for Valve), you get a discount on the percentage taken. Some of that bullying behavior is also anticompetitive - as has been brought up in lawsuits. Their policies use “most favored nation” clauses.
Finally, they may not be anti-consumer but they have exactly been spending a lot of effort on improving the functionality of services that their platform has. Issues with their friends-related services like voice chat have plagued the platform for a long time, though some have recently been improved. They know they are dominant and don’t spend money when they don’t need to in order to keep customers.
All said and done, I use them as my default though I’ve made efforts to be more dev and indie dev conscious. Unfortunately, greed fuels most of the world and makes it hard to do anything that favors anyone besides those with power.
Valve is a for profit company, one of their main goals is to make money.
It is a monopoly because they hooked everyone to their own proprietary third party software launcher, you should be pissed of about not owning any of your games
Doesn’t matter. Monopolies are bad and should be dismantled.
Then start with actual monopolists:
Yes, we should dismantle all actual monopolies.
Valve is also an actual monopoly.
Monopoly means it’s the only seller in the market. This isn’t true for PC gaming. You have GoG, Epic, Itch.io, Battle.net, Origin, Uplay, Rockstar smaller websites that host different kinds of games. Steam is the biggest player on PCright now, but there’s nothing about Steam that prevents any other type of competitor from getting into the market and possibly de-throning it.
No, a fifth of the PC gaming market is not a monopoly.
Market share is not the only determinant, and also yes holding 20% of the market can empower an actor to exert monopolistic power. Maybe learn a little bit before you open your mouth; you sound as stupid as the FTC.
No arguments, only insults. Pathetic.
Irony
No, not automatically.
You only go around punishing people that do bad things, not everybody that finds themselves in a random situation.
The term monopoly does not apply here. Not only do we lack any evidence of anti-competitive practices, there literally are competitors, they just suck and they are very unpopular.
There is mild vendor lock-in. If all my games are on steam, why would I buy my games elsewhere. Not to mention the steam client contains the steam store and advertisements for games in said store, so anybody in the steam ecosystem is incentivized to stay there. Games bought in Steam aren’t trivially launched without launching Steam.
All of that is true, but I still think “monopoly” is not the right word. It’s a bit of a unique situation. Ideally we’d have laws that make Steam provide a downloadable copy of the game that can work without Steam… but we’re so far from that.
fair enough, no point arguing about definitions anyway
True
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly
A monopoly is just an observation of the market landscape. Doesnt require ill intent or anti-competitive practices. Steam is just a benevolent monopoly. Until its not…
I think the issue is there is the economic concept of monopoly and there is the type of monopoly defined and banned by regulation. They are similar but not the same
So like Epic in case of Unreal Engine and Microsoft in case of Windows. Steam makes up a fifth of all PC gaming revenue and EGS has a wide installed based because of Fortnite, Rocket League etc. People just choose not to spend their money there for games that are available elsewhere. That’s different from EGS not being able from supplying goods and services because they were pushed out.
There is competition. And the term “monopolize” is used as a way of saying someone took action to stomp out the competition so I would say that 99% of people would assume intent whether or not it’s technically a part of the definition, because 99% of the time a monopoly exists it’s not by accident. But again, importantly, there IS competition.
Valve just shipped a controller that only works in steam 🤣
No it can already work with anything that accepts SDL input (which is a bunch of software and most modern games steam or not). They upstreamed support for it before the controller even launched.
Shhh, you will crush their whole world
Has valve ever done anything to stifle the competition?
Nothing I know of
is steam really over 95% of the market? i think that’s where the limit is
It’s 75%. It’s not crazy far up on the monopoly scale, but IMO enough to be called one.
But there is no “limit”. If you are the only vegetable seller on the market, you have 100% market share. But as long as anyone else can set up another shop and compete equally, I wouldn’t call it a monopoly.
No, 8.6 billion out of 45 billion dollars. That’s a fifth.
well… that’s it then. case closed.
That’s the entire gaming market. Steam commands 75% of PC gaming.
Even at 100% of PC gaming, that would be a small part of video games in general. A bit disingenuous to call that a monopoly.
agreed, i will just hope they dont abuse the monopoly like Google or Microsoft. (this will be wishful thinking)