Valve has an arguably better platform but is more expensive

Yes, I think everyone would agree that Steam is the best PC games platform

doesn’t have some exclusives

Well yeah, that's the definition of exclusive. Sony, Epic, and Microsoft pay to have games not available on other platforms. First parties don't release their games on other platforms to increase the attractiveness of their platform. Valve does this with their first party titles as well (CS:GO, Half Life, etc), but they release very few games.

Exclusives are the definition of anti-competitive behavior. Valve only does this for their first party titles, and other than that is very competition friendly, since they allow devs to release on any other store, as well as make free keys to sell elsewhere.

As a platform, they behave much better than pretty much everyone else, with maybe only GOG beating them due to license transfers and DRM-free commitment. Steam arguably has the best customer service in the industry (or if not best, very close to it), so it's less of a concern.

Valve didn’t figure out how to port Steam to ARM

Why would they? Windows on ARM is pretty much nonexistent, emulating x86 on ARM on Linux has severe performance issues, and the best platform support for ARM is from Apple, where there's even less game selection.

Most games don't work on ARM, so there's little point in supporting it. But Steam does work on macOS on ARM (I think it uses Rosetta still?), where devs are actually going to port their games to ARM. Windows and Linux on ARM are incredibly niche and games just aren't ported for those platforms. I guess they could do a compat layer like Rosetta, but it'll be a terrible experience running a game through a compat layer.

AFAIK, EGS and GOG don't support ARM on anything other than macOS (and phones for EGS), and why would they?

dragged their feet on x86-64

Why does that matter? The main reason to port to x86_64 is to access more memory. Even while Steam was x86, games could still absolutely be x86_64. During the transition, they still needed to support 32-bit, so why do extra work when the benefits don't really apply?

I've helped update to 64-bit, and it can be a lot of work. Why prioritize that?

I'm not sure where that money goes

• Steam features like Steam Input (i.e. all that stuff that makes them stand out)
• Linux support - tons of investment into WINE/Proton, drivers, etc; this is huge for Steam Deck
• hardware development - Steam Deck, Valve Index, etc
• marketing - both their products and other devs' games
• employee salaries - Valve employees are paid very well
• legal fights - e.g. patent lawsuits
• Gabe's yachts - similar to how Unreal Engine profits are used by Tim Sweeney

They're not public, but it's not hard to estimate since they publish a lot of data about the platform.

Steam doesn't have a monopoly, they have a massive market share that they don't abuse. Even on their own platform (Steam Deck), they went out of their way to allow competition by giving access to desktop mode, and you can add non-Steam games to the Steam app, which means I get all the nice platform features from Steam in my EGS and GOG games (Steam Input, Proton, etc).

There's nothing stopping anyone from switching to a competitor, like EGS, GOG, or any of the publisher-specific platforms. EGS even takes a smaller cut, so they can afford to sell games for less, yet they largely don't. PlayStation and Xbox are completely separate platforms, yet prices are similar to Steam, and usually higher for older games.

Valve doesn't set prices, publishers do. If you don't like prices, complain to the publishers, not Valve.

You really need to qualify your argument here that Valve somehow caused higher prices. In fact, if you look at game prices before Steam and adjust for inflation, games are cheaper now.

That's exactly my point, you are taking the stance that people didn't buy alan wake because it wasn't on steam, to a degree that's true, i'm saying that i think a larger proportion didn't buy it specifically because it was on EGS.

If it were released as a game you could buy and play sans-platform, then i'd agree with you. It'd certainly see less sales than a steam release, because steam is where everyone is.

My stance is basically if you remove steam entirely, Standalone Sales > EGS. Add steam back in and you get Steam > Standalone > EGS

Think in terms of food, you're basically saying the it's the fault of the 3.5 star monopolistic countrywide chain fast food place that nobody want's to eat at the recently health-inspection-failing 1 star food-poisoning cafe.

Is there a monopoly, sure, is the competition so bad people avoid it regardless of the monopoly, also yes.

If you were using something like GOG as an example, i'd fully agree with you, but EGS has seemingly infinite funds and they still managed to release something so bad nobody wants to use it, even for "free" games.

It's not even just the platform, epic as a company have a reputation, so they have to also overcome that, which they have not.

That’s a terrifying amount of power that people aren’t bothered by

Historically there's been no need to be worried, generally, i agree that's not ideal, but again name a viable comparable alternative.

even though we’re talking about company that’s smug about selling gambling to children.

You mean as opposed to the company that actually lost a class action regarding loot boxes in their game targeted at children?

You aren't even wrong about this but "People don't buy games from this company who famously lost a lawsuit regarding gambling targeted at kids because this other company who also do sketchy kids gambling things are ..better at PR?" isn't a convincing argument.

Everyone should be better at this, but they aren't.