I think in most cases they'd be able to argue that the consoles etc provide competition, where they'd have potential problem is with steamworks and it being a loss leading ecosystem lock in. But Steam like behaviour is potentially illegal without being a monopoly, the only thing it requires absolutely is ability to unfairly manipulate the market. Its exactly the same for PC gaming, many developers are bound to the tools created by Valve and supporting the competition has an additional upfront cost to developers which many simply can not afford. We could do alternatives for OS, and productivity (office) and back end (exchange), but what we couldn't replace was dozens of business systems we needed to use that could only run in a MS environment. I looked at getting our company off Microsoft back in 2008. All those time and cost saving backend API's that developers used. It wasn't windows or office that cemented Microsofts dominance, it was the tools. Assuming you can, since a number of third party tools require it.

Now you've got a choice, if you want to release on Valve's competition you need to spend more time and money coding around Steamworks.

Its not a case of not bothering, for most there are technical or financial limitations that exclude the option of also releasing outside of Steamĭevs pretty much have to release via Steam since its the largest market, since they're doing that they might as well save time and money and use Steamworks (its also needed for all those perks gamers like such as achievements). It's very different from Windows 3.1 and Microsoft Word basically being essential for every business at a certain point in time.

It has numerous competitors, and other than a few titles its exclusives are all exclusive because the companies don't want to bother releasing elsewhere.

StingingVelvet: Whether Microsoft ran a monopoly or not, Valve certainly does not.

Monopoly plus steam crack