this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2026
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Here's the thing. There are other places. Epic, Amazon Gaming, Origin/Battlenet/Ubi, itch, Microsoft store, gog...
Most suck at discoverability or they don't have the variety of Steam. Some are shitty by design (Origin, Ubi, Battlenet) - intended to only get you to play their games. Others like itch aren't built for scaling out to deliver thousands of big games.
This isn't a thing like Apple's walled garden, I feel like this is Steam out performing the competition.
Steam quite literally provides almost everything you could ever need too, it's so much more than a storefront. It's genuinely mind blowing just how many services steam offers, I don't think anybody, including valve employees knows about every function and service it offers tbh.
I would have killed for Steam Input alone back in the day when I was using xpadder to sloppily translate controller inputs to keyboard keys so the game would recognize it
Epic you get flash banged even when grabbing free games... Their UI is over a decade old. GOG's UI is frustrating to navigate. I love the deals and free promotions on steam, and the UI.
And don't forget GOG fucking still doesn't have a native Linux client.
Because they pretty much said "It isn't worth the effort for just a handful of nerds". They're supposedly on it now, though.
I didn't know that, I am still on Windows 10. Most of my games won't work on linux.
You might be surprised, unless you exclusively play multiplayer games with anti-cheat.
As the other user said, you may be surprised! I swapped to CachyOS in January and it's been rock solid. I play games like Hitman, Last Epoch, and a bunch of indie games without any issues.
Unless you have less than 10 games in your library and they're all the main multiplayer games, I highly doubt that.
Please go check out ProtonDB and check your library. Only 2 of the top 10 most popular games are "borked", 7 of the top 100, 21 in the top 1000, and 349 across the entire catalogue.
Most of the games that are borked on Linux (particularly the top 10) are because the devs specifically want it that way
Around 50+ say borked, or no rating. I have over 1000 games.
"No rating" just means it hasn't been tested yet. Most of those should work, you just have to try them out
I agree. That's not what this is about though. This is about Valve using their market dominance to force price parity, supposedly to "protect consumers" (which is bullshit and doesn't make sense). Yes, they're the better storefront. I'd be willing to pay a little more to use it.
That's one way the competition can compete though. They can't make as good of a product, but they can make a cheaper one. They should be able to charge less, and make less profit per sale. Valve has ensured no developer can do this though by threatening removal if it's cheaper anywhere else, and you can't afford to not be on Steam. This would be good for consumers as it'd drive Valve to compete, either with an even better product or by lowering prices. There's no way consumers lose, and I don't get why people rush to fight for Valve on this.
So like most stores? What do you think MSRP is? A lot of places will pull their product from stores who undercut pricing outside of occasional sales.
MSRP is manufacturer suggested retail price. It is not an enforced price. For example, stores have started selling physical Nintendo games below MSRP as Nintendo has started selling digital copies at a lower price than physical MSRP. (This is also what would likely happen if games are sold cheaper. They'd compete the price down.)
I don't know if I've ever heard of a case of MSRP being enforced. I don't think it's reasonably possible. It means no sales, for example. A retailer buys a product, and then they stock it at whatever price they decide. The manufacturer doesn't control it at this point.
Edit: Also, MSRP is very different. It's from the manufacturer, not another store. The equivalent is Walmart telling a product creator to enforce an MSRP or they won't carry their product, not a manufacturer enforcing one on their own, assuming that happens.
I have seen it being enforced in several stores in multiple provinces. If you've never worked in purchasing, you've probably just not heard about it since it doesn't typically get mentioned to consumers, it's a backend thing.
Wizards of the Coast, for example, is quite strict about it.
Looked into this, found a source: https://steamyouoweus.co.uk/faqs/ points made by @Cethin@lemmy.zip are legit.
I did a quick scroll on that site, but couldn't find any sources or evidence about Valve actually doing this
I don't know why people come here, act like other people are wrong, and haven't done the bare minimum to look into the case. It's literally what this case is about. It's even in the article for this post.
https://www.create.ac.uk/blog/2025/07/01/parity-and-power-steams-antitrust-reckoning-in-wolfire-v-valve/
Edit: Why am I being downvoted. Click the link! I'm sorry that it's against the mega-corporation that you like. They make a great product, but stop defending them for literally anything they do. I can't believe people on Lemmy, of all places, still do this shit. Maybe it's astroturfing? That's the only thing that makes sense.