this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2024
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You actually can't buy the vast majority of Steam games elsewhere. 18,800 games released new this year on Steam. Do you know any legit retailers that even sell 18,000 games total?
It's something I've been noticing with all the routine seasonal complaining about sales on Steam not being worth looking at anymore... Sure, I don't only buy from Steam, but I do buy more from Steam than elsewhere, because those games--good games--just are not other places to be bought. So on the one hand, I see a lot of value from Steam sales and people shouldn't dis them so out of hand, but on the other, yeah Steam clearly controls the market. And that's not even getting into how Steam deliberately reduces the value-to-the-devs of your off-Steam purchases, so buying elsewhere keeps your purchase and reviews from helping the dev earn much needed Steam visibility.
So it's far from as simple as "You can just buy codes elsewhere".