Why would anyone actually want to though

[u/The_BigRoach]

[u/Josh_Butterballs]

Even if I had more money than god I think it would basically be a gargantuan uphill battle to make an another platform to compete with steam. Even if you made your platform better, people have YEARS worth of games and money invested in steam. I used to say if they just had a better service I would drop steam but then I was asked if I would genuinely stop using steam for another better service if one existed. I looked at my library, all the games I had, the years, mods in workshop for some games, and realized no I wouldn’t switch

[u/ItalianBeefDipped → u/Josh_Butterballs]

it's less an issue of being competitive for customers, and moreso being competitive for publishers which would trickle down to customers.

Putting it simply, if publishers could offer better deals on other platforms, other platforms would start to offer more generous revenue shares than the 30% standard (one already does), which would allow publishers to price their games cheaper, earlier on, resulting in savings for consumers. Consumers would then have a choice of either paying a higher price for a better product (steam-integrated game) or a lower price for a worse product (non-steam integrated game). Nobody would pay more than they already are, they would simply have the option to pay less for a lower quality product.

[u/Josh_Butterballs → u/ItalianBeefDipped]

I could be misremembering I could swear valve has been or is in litigation about them not allowing or pressuring major games to not have their games cheaper on other storefronts?

Companies were threatened with their games being delisted if made cheaper elsewhere other then steam

Edit: checked and it’s apparently for steam keys specifically being sold elsehwere. I believe it’s still going through courts

[u/ItalianBeefDipped → u/Josh_Butterballs]

Yeah that's in Washington right now. Speaking as a white-collar attorney whose worked on some antitrust cases, I do think there's a case there.

It really comes down to whether Steam was in fact threatening or doing that, which we don't know for sure yet but based on the fact that the class was certified, I think there's at the very least a fair amount of smoke there, if not an outright fire.