Difference: what does apple do? It has a store that they check the content on. And provide the small app infrastructure. Also they ask for money for you to upload anything.

What does steam do? They provide a huge infrastructure for games with hundreds of gigabytes and then a workshop for mods and multiplayer and controller support and remote play and a general good service.

The epic games launcher sucks and they don't even provide half of that and they ask for 25% I think because otherwise developers wouldn't even consider their shop.

~~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.

The app store is the only way to get apps on ios, whereas steam is not the only way to get games on PC.

It's the biggest one, yes, but no one HAS to use it. It does hold some power by virtue of having the majority of the gaming population as its user base, but no other storefront has even tried. The only one that has any value over steam is GOG, the rest are objectively worse.

Well you aren't forced to publish your PC or Steam Deck game on Steam for one.

Apple and Google's 30% not only hits the base price, but every single transaction that happens inside apps as well. Imagine a toll bridge in front of your nearest supermarket where the people working the toll booth inspect every bag of grocery you bought and then charged you toll based on what you bought there.

Apps arent entirely like video games. If you wanted to open a non-subscription based music store or book store or whatever, you'd find it economically impossible to pay the publishers their cut, apple their cut, your server host their cut, and have anything left over for yourself without charging your customers their arms and legs. This is why all those kinds of apps are subscription based. You can cleverly batch and bundle stuff in a monthly subscription fee which gives you room to dance around google and apples high fees and have enough money to keep your lights on.

Because Epic is warming up it's litigation rout with Valve against Apple. It's not going too well.