>Is it a monopoly when no one else is able to compete even on the technical side?
Steam is 20 years in the making, so it is very hard to catch up with them. If you want to compete, you need to offer something different.
Steam is 20 years in the making, so it is very hard to catch up with them. If you want to compete, you need to offer something different.
Assuming they can get their game discovered via some sort of non-store channel (e.g. Reddit, social media, YouTube, Twitch, ads, etc.), the user can simply search the web for the game, find the website, click "buy" and proceed.
Probably a bit more work than publishing on Steam but not that much. Seems worth it for large budget games or games that are very popular in a specific niche discoverable outside Steam.
It's not that easy; Steam brings down dramatically complexity of self distributing and it offers a plenty of Web 2.0 features e.g. reviews, discussions forum, connecting with friends, playing with friends, chatting with friends etc.
It's like asking why Amazon exists when sellers can have their own store page and distribution channel....
Some games that I know that are popular and not on Steam are for example Starsector and Escape from Tarkov. Game devs choose not to publish their game on Steam either because their game is not finished and they do not want to get negative reviewed to the ground and/or they think their game's brand is so strong that they do not want to pay 30% tax to Steam. For example Minecraft most likely wasn't on Steam because of aforementioned reasons.
(Or at least were, these days I don't think they are much more than Steam keys resellers ?)