Steam is one of the most popular digital storefronts for gaming as a whole. According to Steam, 70 million users flock to Steam on the daily, buying and playing a multitude of games they promote. Steam holds games of all kinds, they hold huge AAA titles (games made by big companies) to small indie developers’ passion projects. Steam has held onto the title of best digital gaming storefront for years on end, and nobody has topped them.
Some of the main reasons Steam has a chokehold on the market is because they are successful across the board. On the daily, the storefront always has a multitude of games on sale for users to pick up; Steam commonly has games on sale for 10-95% off, and during big sale events, games can reach jurassically low prices. Another reason steam is so good is the fact that they have great customer service. The team is really good at recovering accounts and refunding games. Most companies won’t get your account back if it gets hacked, but Steam has been able to assist their users in a large majority of cases. They go as far as getting accounts banned, and the people behind the hacks exposed. Quality of Life (QoL) is another big reason Steam is so loved by the gaming community. The platform has many QoL features that cater to a large majority of the player base. Steam profiles are highly customizable, game posters and banners can be customized to whatever a user wants, and the website is really easy to navigate alongside other features.
In addition, Steam has won debates and won trials with little to no effort on many occasions. An example of this is the “AI tag” situation; If a developer uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to assist in coding, 3d modeling, or anything within the game development process, they are required to put the AI tag in the description of their game. When Steam put this into effect, users were very excited, but the CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, called upon digital storefronts like Steam to get rid of the AI tag because “AI will be involved in nearly all future production” and going on to say that the tag is pointless, according to TechRadar. This statement by the CEO was met with immense hate from the community, people actually started supporting the idea of AI tags to be used in all digital storefronts.
To sum up what has been said, Steam is one of the proven best gaming storefronts on the market. With all their QoL, customer support, sales, and other general features. Steam holds a good monopoly over the entire gaming storefront industry, just because they are too good.
