Steam’s Dominance as A Store Platform Persists
What is your platform of preference when purchasing a game online? If it’s Steam that comes to your mind at first, that might not be just a coincidence but a result of its ongoing success.
Was this road to becoming one of the most successful store platforms of all time easy for Valve? Of course not, but it’s safe to say that they have beaten their opponents in specific conflicts and reasserted their dominance over the market many times. We can give some examples where some publishers decide to abandon Steam releases for their titles, but later on, reverted their decision and kept sticking with Steam.
We can give Mass Effect franchise for example. EA has released their first two titles of Mass Effect, but not going with the same thought for their third title of the franchise, making it only available on their own platform, Origin. The reason for this decision was Steam’s allegedly “restrictive terms of service.” Ultimately, EA released the same title, Mass Effect 3, on Steam 8 years later, in 2020.
Well, things weren’t looking good for Origin at the time of the Mass Effect 3’s Steam re-release. A year later, Origin was replaced by the EA app, marking the end of Origin’s lifetime. EA releasing their games on Steam again can be viewed as a victory for Steam. However, this is not the end of Valve’s victories.
We can give another example from the Call of Duty franchise, which had its newer titles missing on Steam, making Blizzard’s Battle.net the only option available for purchase, but made its comeback with Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and Warzone 2.0 this year.
Epic Games actually did have some ace cards up their sleeve, having Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Borderlands 3 as titles exclusive to their platform. Well, this did not last long, and I mean it. Red Dead Redemption 2 lasted as an Epic Games Store & Rockstar Games Launcher exclusive for only a month, later on, it was released on Steam.
Microsoft is also on the list of those who came back to Steam for their newest title releases. Starting in 2019, we get to see their newest releases on Steam. This is mostly due to Microsoft’s plans failing for Microsoft Store, ultimately making it unnecessary.
The names we have mentioned in this article are big, yet that alone did not help them beat Steam in its own game. There might be a day when a store platform beats Steam in the future, but that day is not really foreseeable at the moment.
