Amazon tried and failed, too.

It would really help if the would-be competitors focused on consumer-facing features rather than... whatever it is they're doing. GoG is doing a great job of this, but EGS is still missing even the most basic features years later, because they keep trying to get market share through buying exclusives and giving away free games and that's sadly never going to work out. They just don't understand what the consumers in the industry they're trying to operate in want.

I know! There's this great game called Fortnite that no one has ever heard of because you can't get it on Steam. /s

Interesting that first part... Respectfully, no one is entitled to sales on any platform. As a consumer, I've tried other launchers and stores. I hate them all. I choose to only use Steam (for the time being). It's simply choosing the superior option, but it is an option. I can't say the same for my internet, energy, or cable companies...

You can sell your game on Steam, in addition to other platforms as well.

Minecraft, Star Sector, Dwarf Fortress until recently. Stores like Epic and GOG and itch.io.

Plus Steam gives you content distribution, discussions, patches, all for free.

Hey look, the contrarian is back! Wow! I thought you would take some time to reflect after your wack takes.

I think the difference here is that Valve isn't forcing a monopoly in the way our tech overlords like Google and Amazon do through acquisitions and regulatory capture.

Several companies have tried and mostly failed to compete with Steam, I'm primarily thinking of whatever the EA and Ubisoft launchers are. The two closest have been GOG whom I would argue is fairly successful considering what their goals are and Epic, whom I would say is much less so.

A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell') is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.[1]

Steam is not the only supplier of particular goods, they do not own the market, they have not the highest price and do not lack competition. It is just that their service is far better than whatever competition offers. Nothing stops Microsoft, EA and Epic to implement same features Steam does. Like, literally nothing. These companies have money to do so. They just chose not to.

Treat customers right and you get rewarded. They are the majority market shareholder because they have earned it, not through deceptive business practices but through being a great company.

If they were a monopoly they wouldn't allow other game catalogs on their systems, yet I have GOG and Epic on my Steam Deck. In fact, there isn't even a requirement for me to have Steam on my Steam Deck. Just because a company is the market leader doesn't mean they got there through unethical means.

And Steam controls 80%-90% of the video game market?