Steam breaks records with over 36.3 million people online at the same time

Has anybody heard of a tiny company called Valve? Well, their Steam platform just reached over 36.3 million players online at the same time. Yeah, that number is pretty impressive, no questions about it.

On one hand, I am happy for Valve's success (I have been using Steam since 2009), but on the other hand I cannot help but feel this enormous number proves that Valve are a monopoly. I have spoken about this problem here on Gamespot on several occasions, but unfortunately most PC gamers tend to turn a blind eye to it and try to justify the monopoly.

Please don't give me the whole "Valve has massive success because they have better social features than other launchers" argument. Steam has been a monopoly well before it had any social features worth writing home about. If you look at Steam back in 2004 or 2005, it was just a simple launcher with barely any social features to talk about. Yet that didn't stop them from being a monopoly shortly afterwards.

36.3m of us were on Steam earlier today, and yes, that's another new record | Eurogamer.net

Anyways, congratulations to Lord Gaben on this huge number.

But don't they have competition which customers can choose to use instead of Steam? I thought a monopoly was to have total or exclusive control over a market.

@worlds_apart: A monopoly doesn't necessarily have to be the only player in a market, they just have such a large market share that they can stifle competition.

That said, I agree that Steam isn't one, at least not yet. There are many different game launchers that seem to be financially viable. Although, the fact several publishers with their own launchers have been putting their games on Steam again could be a sign we are heading toward a Steam monopoly.

God damn that's a lot of pirates! Those poor, poor publishers and developer!

Won't somebody stop all these pirates!!!?

Also, umm...PC Gaming is dying!

Ha remember when everyone said that, too? Idiots.

Anyway, congrats to Steam or whatever. Congratulations actually to all those PC gamers if we want to be honest here; it's the best platform because of the community and the options, and Valve and Steam helped drive both those aspects of PC Gaming.

I would argue Steam is less likely to be a monopoly now than they used to be.

10 years ago publishers didn't have their own platforms. 15 years ago Epic Game Store didn't exist. 20 years ago GoG was pretty much for hipsters to buy obscure old games.

But, 20 years ago no one really took the internet that serious, either. Netflix was still mailing you DVD's, and the idea of every channel having a streaming service would have had you laughed out the door by old, ignorant CEO's. Facebook was used by college students and you had to have a .edu email to make an account. Hulu wasn't a thing. Amazon was still a book store! YES THEY SOLD BOOKS IN PHYSICAL BOOK STORES!

Also keep in mind that Steam is not a publicly traded company; they don't need to resort to sinister tactics (though they pull some shady shit occasionally) the same way publicly traded companies like Epic, CDProjekt, EA, Ubisoft, etc. need to. Profit, not unsustainable growth, is good enough for Valve.

Steam dominates because it is the best. I'm waiting for a challenger, I hold no loyalty to Steam beyond them providing me with what I like, but thus far I have yet to see anything other than GoG that warrants me being a fan of them.

This is how capitalism should work. Organically; best choice wins. No stooping to cheating or bribing customers with free games while at the same time practicing forced exclusivity.