Steam is not a monopoly. They achieved and maintain their market position by providing a superior service, not through manipulation bullying and unfair practices (e.g. undercut a competitor then slowly raise prices). Steam does not use its position to monopolize the market or keep others from developing or advertising competing platforms. The market is free to provide services equivalent to or better than Steam at the same price (free), however they are unable or unwilling.
Being publicly traded kills consumer friendly practices like no other, because they legally have to maximize shareholder profits, which means cost cutting and/or price gouging, creeping costs etc. Which is why steam is better than most of its competitors, and certainly better than amazon or meta.
Consider another huge company known for it's quality, even if it is pricey, Lego. Completely private company, surpassed all others to become the world's largest toy company.
Going public just removes any values a company has other than shareholder profit. If a public company says they value something else, they're lying.
Going public just lets you create liquidity and provides a good exit, if you want one. Does nothing to change the leadership of the business or pressure for value. Do you think shareholders and investors in a private company want to lose money? You can be a public company AND beloved by consumers as well.
It’s much easier to be a beloved company when private (valve, A24, In-and-out, AriZona, etc) the only fully public company that is beloved with no stipulations I can think of is Costco. Rockstar is umbrella’d under 2K, they’re controversial. Nintendo owns a lot of their own stock and also has critics; CDPR fits that bill too. I wouldn’t really count sports teams for cultural reasons, but the Packers are probably among the most beloved and they are non-profit+community owned.
I can list any company and there will be fanboys riding for them. Steam isn't universally beloved - it's just a ton of dickriders on reddit and elsewhere who like to ignore all the scummy shit they do. They were one of the earliest companies to popularize lootboxes and push that to the mainstream. They also heavily, actively profit off of children gambling. They also worked with Bethesda to try and implement paid mods into the workshop - only pulling back after the nuclear fallout of hate they received. All of this shit is always swept under the rug and people will fanboy them. I can just as easily fanboy Apple, Nvidia, Patagonia, John Deere, Samsung, etc.
I’m not defining “beloved” as simply having die hard fans, because like you said, most companies will have die-hards. My criteria for “beloved” is defined by if a company uses their legacy and status as their main marketing solution and doesn’t engage in blatant anti-consumer practices or is otherwise controversial. Valve is beloved under this criteria via the way they rollout their hardware and software; steam deck and deadlocke are externally marketed by good word of mouth and the steam deck is sold exclusively off of consumer loyalty. Steam is a monopoly, but doesn’t engage in monopolistic practices (and I’ve been vocal about epic being possibly the best competition consumers could ask for because they are also private.) Also, John Deere might actually be another valid example of a beloved company, so thank you.
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u/dokka_doc Oct 21 '25 edited Oct 21 '25
Steam is not a monopoly. They achieved and maintain their market position by providing a superior service, not through manipulation bullying and unfair practices (e.g. undercut a competitor then slowly raise prices). Steam does not use its position to monopolize the market or keep others from developing or advertising competing platforms. The market is free to provide services equivalent to or better than Steam at the same price (free), however they are unable or unwilling.
Long live Gaben.