To add to what you have said:

Valve is an effective monopoly.

A lot of people seem to think 'monopoly' means 'literally 0 alternatives for the consumer', but this is not the case in either actual economic jargon/theory nor in basically any legal definition of it I am aware of.

To be a monopoly you basically just need to be the clear dominant actor in some market. Not the only one, just the main one, such that you can make pricing decisions in a way that other actors in the same market can't, basically.

Its... very rare for a 'true' or 'perfect' monopoly to ever exist for basically anything other than a public utility/service. It almost never happens.

This is the kind of pedantry that is annoying but unfortunately important, similar to how 'Impeachment' by the House on its own is actually pointless beyond a mark of shame unless it is also followed by a 'conviction' by the Senate.

You are correct that in US law, a major factor that is considered is whether or not the company did abusive, deceptive, underhanded stuff to achieve its monopopy status.

But UK law appears to be different:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c5b1e681-5fb5-4161-bebf-823034fab751

You could be doing 'abuse of dominance' whether or not you achieved that dominance by underhanded means.

So... while I am not a lawyer, I would be genuinely surprised if Valve was found in serious violation of existing US monopoly laws, but I would be less surprised if they were found to be in violation of existing UK monopoly laws.

This is a great write up to which I can only add that I know that in the ongoing US case, Valve has been arguing that not only is the 30% cut not particularly onerous, and is actually pretty close to the industry norm...

... they also make the argument that Steam provides much, much more to both the consumer and the prospective game seller that....well they just do actually offer many more features and services than existing comparable platforms.

The DLC thing is an interesting idea, but... oh god, basically, is my database manager brain's response to that.

You'd have to construct like a shared standard of game key liscenses across all digital platforms, you know, the not unlike the kind of thing every single idiot a few years back claimed would be possible with their NFT games.

This is... an interesting idea, but I don't see how you could actually implement this in practice without basically creating a government agency to manage it.

... Which would then also probably mean that said government would now directly know every game you own.

And then you'd have to think about how that would play with things like game key selling sites...

Yeah. This would be a nightmare to try to actually implement.

Now the government would be directly involved in DRM. Like uh, potentially, verify your actual identity with face scan to log in to your game library of any kinds of games... that kind of involved.

There are many other complexities and problems than that.

There's nothing that says game developers can't allow add-ons to be installed from third party stores. Already works that way with games like Gratuitous Space Battles. I've bought the expansions on third party stores and simply put the zips or whatever in the relevant game folder.

I don't know if something has changed since that game, but I don't see addons sold by 3rd parties as a popular avenue for consumers simply because you have to then manually manage it.

Will say it would be nice to own games on one platform and be able to buy and manage the game via steam. Select the platform you bought it from / the install folder and let steam automagically update the DLCs in there for you.

I'm pretty sure the dlc thing is already possible. Guild wars 2 at least works this way, you can buy the game/dlcs either via steam or via their own store and then you can install and run the game either via steam or via their own launcher (although IIRC the steam way still has the launcher).

It's probably more of a case of steam providing a convenient way for developers to not need their own account system, so rather than them creating their own solution that integrates with steam and other sources, they just straight up use Steam's way.

To be honest I'd love it if they forced a way for steam and other shops to allow migrating your games between them, so I could take all the free games from epic but never use it. Currently my compromise is to just never use it and skip the free games.

You can start shopping on another store, like GOG. But also, the add-ons thing feels like these folks have never shopped for video games anywhere else, because everyone does that.

I've been working on my Steam exit strategy for years. It's nice feeling like I could bail at any time without too much pain.

Omg that's a valid concern. This is exactly what xero are doing right now. Finding every little place they can charge and adding fees for developers left, right and centre. A megalomaniac leader has led xero to complete enshitification, and, with the wrong leader, steam could end up on the same place.

We could wake up one morning and find out there’s a $10 monthly fee to access Steam’s “services” including every game you ever purchased.

When did this ever happen on any game console, or service ever? Isn't this some kind of "fear mongering"? Also wouldn't this be illegal? Because we purchased the game and Valve would effectively take all access away for all games. I don't think your argument what could happen is warranted.

I'm hopeful Valve, and by extension Steam, will be fine. The employees are like minded, I don't see it going public and derailing once Gabe has left.

I can‘t find the specific video where it came up, but I remember Chet Faliszek, who worked at Valve from 2005 to 2017, mentioning, that Gaben‘s death is something that has been planned for and won‘t be as much of an issue for Valve as people might think.

It‘s of course in no way guaranteed to work out in the end, I don‘t know the specifics of the plans or if everyone‘s going to go along with them. But seeing how well Valve is doing and also how little Gaben actually seems to steer the company, I‘m somewhat optimistic that it‘ll be fine after his passing. Not optimistic enough not to have my most beloved Steam games backed up somewhere, of course, but still somewhat optimistic.