~~I don't know what democratic platform means since the two closest democracies to me geographically are total bullshit.~~ Edit: after reading the article I get it. Its visibility of your game that they are praising. They detail how they have to really work to get the game to show up anywhere but on steam if its good, people will buy it and it will show up more.

Maybe if apple allowed 3rd party stores, yet was objectively better than the others then things would be different in regards to them.

Steam has had so many competitors over the years and the only one with any merit is gog. The rest have been so garbage that even if they had better rates, comparatively few people would use them. With the rise of discord pretty much nobody uses steam's socials any more apart from as an easy way to join a friend's game. Before that none of the others compared there either.

And nobody is forced to use steam in the first place. Most games on steam are available on other platforms, although I can't think of a good reason to use any other than got.

The remaining downside to steam is that you are still only buying into a license agreement and not owning anything, though even pulled games are accessible if you bought them. I would know, I have like 2-5 iiirc. For now anyway. Dog only knows if valve's fucked or faulty future mitigation plans to prevent fucking over friendly customers will actually pan out if gabe dies.