They don’t have a monopoly. Full stop. Just off the top of my head, we have Epic Games Store, GOG, and Itch.io, which may not be as popular as Steam, but are absolutely viable alternatives if Steam ever goes completely to shit.
A real monopoly is like how, in my city in the US, there is exactly ONE company you can buy electricity and gas from. It’s a subsidiary of Avangrid, which is a Swedish corporation, not even on the same continent. They’ve been doing incredibly fucky shit with billing customers for years now and they have the mayor in their pocket, so if you want electricity, you have no choice other than to pay up. There are no alternatives unless you have the money to pay up front for a full off-grid solar install.
They don’t have a monopoly. Full stop. Just off the top of my head, we have Epic Games Store, GOG, and Itch.io, which may not be as popular as Steam, but are absolutely viable alternatives if Steam ever goes completely to shit.
A real monopoly is like how, in my city in the US, there is exactly ONE company you can buy electricity and gas from. It’s a subsidiary of Avangrid, which is a Swedish corporation, not even on the same continent. They’ve been doing incredibly fucky shit with billing customers for years now and they have the mayor in their pocket, so if you want electricity, you have no choice other than to pay up. There are no alternatives unless you have the money to pay up front for a full off-grid solar install.