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this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2026
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Valve doesn’t try and lock in exclusives on their platform like the Epic Store or delete your account with games on it like Origin did. Steam provides plenty of notices about invasive DRM and anti-cheat that other stores don’t. Steam also has an easy refund process that doesn’t require you to call an agent. Valve does a lot to support gaming on Linux while all of the other platforms are almost exclusively Windows only.
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.
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.