They're not a monopoly, and they provide good and valuable services to their customers. That's for both gamers and developers. There's a reason why EA Play, Origin, uPlay, Epic Games Store etc... fail to take off compared to Steam, and it's not just the availability of games.

They're also very friendly to indie developers, any dev can make and publish a game on Steam for a fairly small fee compared to what you get.

They also heavily promote and contribute to open source software and Linux in general.

But fuck them for needing to make a profit too I guess?

[–] InputZero@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

Just because Steam is not an evil corporation doesn't mean we can't criticize them too. Both statements can be true, there is no way for an individual person to ethically own a billion dollars and Steam is for the most part an example of a business treating it's customers, workers, and suppliers with respect and dignity. Those statements are not mutually exclusive.