How is it “virtually a requirement”? Nothing is stopping any devs from selling their games elsewhere, but most of them see the advantages that steam brings to the consumers and don’t bother trying to compete. If steam was buying up publishers and forcing exclusivity then that would absolutely be monopolistic behavior, but they are just beating the competition by being better.
They aren’t just beating the competition by being better.
They’re beating the competition because they don’t allow developers to sell games cheaper than on Steam if they want to sell on Steam. And they have the market share to be able to make it financial suicide for a developer/publisher to not put their game on Steam.
“You can sell your game anywhere as long as it’s cheapest here” smells a lot like a monopoly.
How is it “virtually a requirement”? Nothing is stopping any devs from selling their games elsewhere, but most of them see the advantages that steam brings to the consumers and don’t bother trying to compete. If steam was buying up publishers and forcing exclusivity then that would absolutely be monopolistic behavior, but they are just beating the competition by being better.
They aren’t just beating the competition by being better.
They’re beating the competition because they don’t allow developers to sell games cheaper than on Steam if they want to sell on Steam. And they have the market share to be able to make it financial suicide for a developer/publisher to not put their game on Steam.
“You can sell your game anywhere as long as it’s cheapest here” smells a lot like a monopoly.
Makes sense to me. Can’t use all of steams fancy features and clout to direct people away from it.
Other stores literally paid for game exclusivity and couldn’t manage to dethrone steam, you really think it’s not a difference in quality?
Makes sense to you. To me, it seems like they want a monopoly.