Game distribution is so much more than Steam, Epic, and mobile stores

Good news! If you own more than 25,000 games on Valve’s digital games store, your Steam client should stop crashing soon. It would be easy to chuckle at these avid collectors of digital games, but I had the striking realization that this vast library of games makes up approximately half of the more than 51,000 available on the platform. That’s a lot of games, reflecting Steam’s near monopoly over PC games distribution. From monopoly to duopoly, the mobile games ecosystem sees similar domination from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, with around 1.5 million games available between them.

To date, Steam has been a pretty benevolent ruler, trading on its longevity in the absence of a substantive competitor. CD Projekt’s GOG is perhaps the closest challenger, although unlike Steam, its games are curated, and the majority of its revenues come from CD Projekt’s own IP such as The Witcher and Cyberpunk (which are also available on Steam). Other giant publishers such as Electronic Arts have their own stores but increasingly utilize Steam, too. Cash-rich Epic Games maneuvered to position itself as the Google Play to Steam’s Apple App Store in 2017, targeting developers and publishers by taking a 12% cut instead of 30% — a huge proportion of game makers’ profit margins. With 471 games as of the end of 2020, the Epic Games Store has some way to go to catch Steam, but Epic Games itself has been shaking up video game distribution in the meantime by taking on Apple over App Store fees it charged Fortnite, subpoenaing Valve for sales data in the process.