this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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Valve grew Steam's market share by locking in exclusives.
There were multiple digital distribution platforms in the early days, IGN even had one.
Then Valve forced exclusivity to starve out the competition.
Steam has its Most-Favored-Nation clause to prevent publishers selling games for cheaper on other platforms.
Valve fought against refunds for years until the EU told them to wise up.
Valve only started supporting Linux when needed to sell consoles. They just like most other companies saw Linux gaming as an extreme niche.
Steam didn't employ forced retail exclusivity.
You also don't seem to be fully aware of Valve's contributions to Linux gaming.
They did though by patterning with publishers. Forcing physical releases to go through Steam as DRM. Killing the physical pc gaming market.
They also have their Non-Favoured-Nations clause, meaning a game can't be sold for cheaper off Steam.
Only as they geared up to sell their own consoles.
Not only does this not describe forced retail exclusivity, it's three different statements that are all false in their own ways. Distribution agreements aren't exclusivity agreements, Steam only deals in digital copies not physical copies, DRM implementation is optional, and there are no stipulations barring publishers from making or distributing physical copies.
We've gone from one incorrect statement about Steam to five.
You mean the Most-Favoured Nations clause that five people filed a suit over, based on a a Tim Sweeney tweet from 2019? Not only was that suit silly, it doesn't even make sense as this sort of clause is extremely common in retail and not at all unique to Steam or Valve compared to other storefronts.
You also don’t seem to be fully aware of Valve’s contributions to Linux gaming.
By exclusives you mean their own games? Or are you referring to the time before Steam Greenlight?
Yeah I remember D2D, it had awful DRM and they deleted my account one day without refunds.
No the competition died because they were trash. I used D2D, Origin, Impulse, they were all horrible compared to Steam.
No, Steam doesn't let you sell Steam keys to your game on other platforms for cheaper. That's very different.
I refunded things multiple times for the policy changes. As long as you gave a good justification and weren't abusing the system then they have always been quite reasonable.
No this started because of the Windows Store initiative back in 2012 where Microsoft was trying to consolidate the sale of all software to their proprietary platform. Supporting Linux was Valve's way of hedging against that future.