I think you may have accidentally misread my post, or maybe I didn't word it carefully enough (in which case I apologize for the confusion). I don't prefer Steam. As a consumer, on principle in most cases I refuse to buy from it.
Steam effectively punishes creators for not steering users towards their monopoly, and they have a ton of tools for user lock-in: Steam Input, Steam Workshop, etc... They may not be as egregious as Apple, but they are often pretty egregious in their own right.
In a normal market, having a diverse set of users across multiple platforms would be a good thing as a creator, it would give you security and give each platform less power over you. Steam uses their review system to punish smaller creators who have a diverse userbase, and it uses their response to cement its market dominance even more and to give itself more power over those creators and their players. I would argue this is bad for the market.
My bigger point here is that Apple advocates will sometimes point to Steam and say "they charge high fees too, what's the problem?" There's are multiple reasons that Steam is able to charge higher fees than most of its PC competitors and remain the dominant platform for PC games, some of them due to the way that it methodically weaponizes incentives for both players and creators against alternatives. Comparing Apple to Steam does not make me like Apple more.
>Steam effectively punishes creators for not steering users towards their monopoly, and they have a ton of tools for user lock-in: Steam Input, Steam Workshop, etc... They may not be as egregious as Apple, but they are often pretty egregious in their own right.
Main difference is steam is pretty clever about how they do this. They will pull out very fast if customers start to complain, maybe reworking it later on (paid mods -> steam workshop). Meanwhile, devs on the wrong end of the stick can get some of the worst customer service out there behind the curtain. The only way to get steam to respond is to be lucky enough to cause enough customer ire (e.g. Stein's Gate prequel not being approved for Steam. Despite having an ESRB rating... until customers complained).
That's how you get stuff like the Wolfire lawsuit but people chastising Wolfire instead of Valve.
Most other companies don't even pretend to care and just eat the PR hit. That cynicism will build up over the years, so there's much less sympathy for Apple.
Supporting your "I don't prefer Steam" point, I make a point of supporting Gog (and SetApp!), only to find out that many of the games sold there are crippleware. Deep in the fine print of the non-DRM'd version distributed as 44 floppy disks (OK, not quite, but it feels like Slackware from the 90s nonetheless) is that this non-DRM version cannot multiplayer, not even offline LAN in the household.
Even more surprising, Gog's DRM'd version multiplayer may require ... STEAM! ... to run.
This is galling.
(For the game that most annoyed me, Baldur's Gate 3, this may have changed once Larian introduced their own cloud sync. I haven't tried again, the first experience was that tedious.)
I see the parallels that you're drawing and I agree with you, but I still see major distinctions.
The biggest example I'd like to call out here is that I recently moved from Nintendo Switch to Steam Deck. I was astonished by how much the Steam Deck is just a Linux computer. And I was fully able to install Heroic Launcher, which is compatible with GOG, and install all my GOG games on my Steam Deck and have them work just fine. This is light years away from where Apple is. If Apple had anything remotely like this, I would be a customer quite quickly. But it's the lack of freedom and choice that I find so objectionable.
How can you call any of that "punishment" or anti-competitive?
Steam offers the far superior platform, in every possible aspect. Every thing you've said is them OFFERING (not FORCING) better solutions to things.
For example, in what universe do you think it's sane to think a store front should accept random reviews from random people? Having bought the game is the one of the best metrics to tell if a review is even approaching sincerity.
Not having random reviews in the steam reviews is a feature.
And in the context of Android or iOS, the PC gaming market is SUPER DUPER EXTRA diverse. I own games in like 5 different stores, but always prefer Steam or GOG where possible.
Offering better services and getting more user because of it is not malicious or anti-competitive or monopolistic. It's the best possible outcome (assuming you like capitalism).
Steam effectively punishes creators for not steering users towards their monopoly, and they have a ton of tools for user lock-in: Steam Input, Steam Workshop, etc... They may not be as egregious as Apple, but they are often pretty egregious in their own right.
In a normal market, having a diverse set of users across multiple platforms would be a good thing as a creator, it would give you security and give each platform less power over you. Steam uses their review system to punish smaller creators who have a diverse userbase, and it uses their response to cement its market dominance even more and to give itself more power over those creators and their players. I would argue this is bad for the market.
My bigger point here is that Apple advocates will sometimes point to Steam and say "they charge high fees too, what's the problem?" There's are multiple reasons that Steam is able to charge higher fees than most of its PC competitors and remain the dominant platform for PC games, some of them due to the way that it methodically weaponizes incentives for both players and creators against alternatives. Comparing Apple to Steam does not make me like Apple more.