>>137430084A dev that marshalled enough capital to develop a title will almost certainly have enough capital to distribute it either by themselves or through a smaller distribution service than Steam.
Take Minecraft for example, the beta for years was distributed through a little website with low cost server requirements. We see this distribution practice with lots of indie games.
It would be even easier for large developers to distribute this way. The only reason they don't is because Steam is providing a service that is not distorting their prices. Once Steam started to distort their prices (let's say, Steam began selling new release AAA games at $75 a download) or tying the products in with Steam DRM (apart from Steam being a DRM itself, let's say Steam imposed a new DRM practice tied with download sales that made game sales suffer) these companies would measure their losses against the relatively inexpensive cost of just distributing the games themselves, or elsewhere, which we can see from the indie game market is not that difficult to do.
And Valve knows this, which is why we haven't seen distortionary pricing, tying, or any other monopolistic practices from them with Steam.
Also, this is if we define the market that Steam does or could have a monopoly in as the PC video game digital download market. I'm not convinced the market is that narrow. At its broadest, the market is digital entertainment as a whole, in which Steam will never be a monopoly provider. A more realistic market is "video games". In which Steam will likely not be able to overtake console gaming, even with a rumored console that they might market.
