There may be issues with Steam's hold of market share (or not), I won’t debate that. But I don’t think it’s comparable at all to the topic at hand. If you want to sell a video game to PC (personal computer, not necessarily Windows) users, there are many options besides Steam and Steam has no special position of privilege on any platform it's available on (Windows, Mac OS, Linux). You could still distribute your game by CD if you wanted to and it would work as well as any game bought on Steam. There are also many other digital games distribution platforms. They may not be as popular as Steam, but Steam has no inherent advantage over them. On a Windows PC, for example, Steam has no advantage over Origin, or GOG Galaxy, or any other.

Its popularity is due to other factors, not some privileged position it occupies. Unlike Google’s or Apple’s app stores which absolutely have a privileged position on their respective platforms.

Steam doesn't own the underlying platforms that they are selling on. This is the biggest issue for me regarding Apple. Even with Android, at least you have some escape hatches, although they are not very user friendly.

Sounds like an unrelated topic designed to get people to not focus on the main Google and apple topic. There are dozens of industries that could be broken up but aren’t. Take D*sney’s near monopoly on comic book/fictional characters/plotlines ect. No one bats an eye about that, why would anyone care about steam? It’s all just entertainment. Google and Apple aren’t just about entertainment as they touch almost every part of life in modern society.

Do they really control 90%?

This four year old article puts Steam game sales revenue at 13% of the total PC gaming sales revenue (and 18% of digital sales revenue):

https://www.pcgamesn.com/steam-revenue-2017

Couldn't find any newer stats, but surely it hasn't grown from 13% to 90% in just four years?

> bans app store operators with dominant market positions from forcing payment systems on content providers and "inappropriately" delaying the review of, or deleting, mobile contents from app markets.

Does steam block or make it hard for people to download the same programs via other means? looks more like a premium platform rather than a gatekeeper.

Steam has competition - Epic Game Store, Windows, or direct distribution. It is a lot more feasible for a consumer to switch between these stores, so there can be an effective market that choses which service to use.

This does not exist for iOS because there's no other stores on the platform, and you cannot "just" switch to another the Play Store.

May be because gaming industry is not as important as yet as a the device that is used by almost majority of the world population? Also no one is forcing anyone to install steam. And steam is not the only way to get games to work as intended on your PC.

Steam is not really big enough in Korea to be on the radar. Single player pc games aren't really that popular, and the dominant ones like LoL or other MMO RPGs have their separate installer/launchers

What about Amazon? Or any other dominant player in any market?

Steam does not come pre-installed on nearly every device unlike Apple's and Googles offering. Future Steam Deck not withstanding, but that will be miniscule player.

They don't prevent any other store from operating. So I don't see how they are comparable to anything Google or Apple does. Windows Store might qualify if they forced themselves on Windows in same way. But certainly Steam is entirely different.

This seems like a disingenuous whataboutism. You are free to not use Steam as a publisher. You can use Epic/GOG or choose to self-host. The biggest advantage of Steam is the convenience of payments, marketing and infrastructure. If that is not an attractive option for you, you can skip it. This option is not available for iOS at all and is quite limited on Android.