Steam is where the majority of PC gamers go to play. It's why when we look at a new game's release, we check Steam concurrent user counts. Does Valve therefore have a monopoly on PC gaming? Well, it seems most developers think so.
In a new paper published by Rokky in collaboration with Atomik Research (via Wccftech), 306 executives at game studios were surveyed, and 72% said they believe Steam effectively exists as a monopoly. 53% said they were concerned about their reliance on that single platform.
48% of developers had distributed a game on the Epic Game Store, but as we look to other marketplaces like Kinguin and G2A, the numbers dwindle to 30%. Only 10% of developers had distributed on GOG, with that dropping to 8% for Itch.io. Steam is the biggest fish in the pond, so we can understand why developers are sticking with it, but that only makes its power over PC gaming swell.
It appears that this isn't the biggest challenge PC game developers see in today's market, though, as the rise of free-to-play games was seen as the greatest threat to selling PC games by 40% of developers surveyed. Market saturation and competition was picked as the biggest threat by 35% of developers, and 33% said discoverability is the largest hurdle to overcome.
What do you think of Steam's dominance?