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Can anyone overthrow Steam? "As long as Valve is independent," analyst says it looks impossible

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Can anyone overthrow Steam? "As long as Valve is independent," analyst says it looks impossible

Recent moves from Epic Games, comments from its ever-chatty CEO Tim Sweeney, and scrutiny of Valve's handling of AI-reliant games has left many people revisiting a timeless question in PC gaming: can anyone, anywhere, ever beat Steam at its own game?

I brought this question to Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at research and analyst firm Newzoo. In the past few weeks, we've seen more developers dissect and debate Valve's chokehold on PC gaming – how Valve got to this position, how Steam's dominance affects game devs and players, and the feasibility of Steam becoming a meaningfully smaller portion of the market.

Alternatives to Steam obviously exist. GOG is a great source for specific games, Rosier notes the success of many "local launchers" in Asia, Battle.net is selling The Witcher now, Itch.io is like a big box of chocolates, and, well, the Epic Games Store is vibe coded. But nobody really threatens Steam as the market leader. Can it be done?

"Steam is difficult to avoid, I would say, at this point in time," Rosier reasons. He says "this is kind of a pendulum" that has swung back and forth, and we've currently caught PC gaming in a very Steam time in its life.

"10 or 20 years ago, the big publishers decided to have their own platform distribution on PC, and then they almost all went back to Steam," Rosier adds. The likes of EA and Ubisoft all came crawling back , and even Blizzard has Overwatch on Steam now.


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