PC Master Race

"Monopoly" is neither illegal nor immoral. It's a de facto label given based on observation. A "good" company can still be a monopoly.

Steam distributes ~75% of all PC games. It took me less than 30 seconds to find that that was the same market share needed to indict USMC in 1954. This is what happens when you hahave an entire (multiple?) generations who have grown up with gutted anti-trust policies.

ETA from my other comment ITT but worth reiterating:

ETA: Monopolies are generally allowed to exist in the US until they start either harming customers or engaging in flagrant anticompetitive measures. Without either of these, there is no victim class to sue. The Sherman Act makes it much easier to litigate instances of "harming customers."

There are tons of existing private monopolies in the market today that are allowed to exist just because no one's sued for harm. The Govt. doesn't just go around trust busting without cause.

The glass bottle industry is dominated by Owens, which has a ~85% market share but is allowed to continue because they're ostensibly the best for the economy. Glass bottles are cheap to buy and no one's really eager to start a competing plant. If either of those changed then trust busting might begin, but that doesn't mean they're not already a monopoly.

You can argue what kind of monopoly that Steam is, but the idea that it's not is completely unfounded in reality.

It is monopolistic. If I start a brand new company and try to pull that, nobody will respect my pricing scheme. The only way you can enforce such a pricing scheme (if you don't have regulatory power) is to be large enough that ignoring you loses more revenue than it gains, whether or not people want you to be in that position of power.

If Steam charges 30%, then just like Amazon, they don't have to restrict your ability to sell elsewhere for it to be bad for both the studio and the consumer.

If my game is $100, and $30 goes to Valve, and I want to make $100 in profit, I have to raise my game's price to around $143. Even if another storefront offered 0% fees, I would have to sell there for $143 if I wanted to not be delisted from Steam.

Everyone pays a higher price, even if they don't use Steam. Either that, or developers make less overall by keeping prices the same and losing Valve's cut, which means less money for developers, servers, etc.

This is monopolistic because if someone tries to price their game lower elsewhere, making the same profit while paying less fees, and giving their players a cheaper price, instead of that just being regular 'ol competition, Valve gets to remove their main buyer base entirely unless they keep giving Valve a cut of most of their sales.

Other storefronts might not be great, but you don't even get the ability to make a good storefront if your competition can just say "I already have most of the users, if you try to compete with me on price, I'll remove all of your games from my platform and take away most of the market."

Being "good" doesn't mean you're not a monopoly.

~~See: US Postal Service, most municipal utilities.~~

ETA: Monopolies are generally allowed to exist in the US until they start either harming customers or engaging in flagrant anticompetitive measures. Without either of these, there is no victim class to sue. The Sherman Act makes it much easier to litigate instances of "harming customers."

There are tons of existing private monopolies in the market today that are allowed to exist just because no one's sued for harm. The Govt. doesn't just go around trust busting without cause.

The glass bottle industry is dominated by Owens, which has a ~85% market share but is allowed to continue because they're ostensibly the best for the economy. Glass bottles are cheap to buy and no one's really eager to start a competing plant. If either of those changed then trust busting might begin, but that doesn't mean they're not already a monopoly.

You can argue what kind of monopoly that Steam is, but the idea that it's not is completely unfounded in reality.