They don't have a monopoly. They just have the best platform. It offers a lot of quality of life features along with the games and rarely causes issues. I can't even recall them ever doing anything anticompetitive. There are other platforms available to purchase from if you don't like steam. GoG for instance. Or Epic if you want to support assholes.

Being the most attractive platform doesn't make them a monopoly. It does however irritate me anytime I have to use a different platform that often functions much worse, like EA or Blizzard.

The number of people in this thread claiming that Steam is not a monopoly is too damn high. If actually you’re interested in the evidence, the Organized Money podcast recently had a great interview with pair of lawyers whose full time job is suing Valve as a monopolist on antitrust grounds, and winning over and over on behalf of their clients.

72% of devs work for some giant corp or doesn't know what monopoly means. Gotcha.

Sure, but it's well earned. The rest doesn't do shit. When Microsoft dominated, they made things worse.