Clutching at straws there, pal.

Do straws have a sipping monopoly?

I want you to read what I wrote over and over again until you reach some sort of mental sunrise. When everything is bright, warm and cozy you will realize just how wrong your monopoly statement is.

The others aren't options. EGS now, will list 3rd party games. But prior to this, only Steam.
Rule of thum when it comes to cyberbullies. Never read anything they right.

Explain why.

uPlay has been selling third party titles since 2013, Origin since 2011.

Because it ruins his "argument," such as it is, and as such he will pretend they don't exist.

Steam is a distribution/download platform, and you can buy games directly from the steam store or from any of 50+ online stores. So there's your competition on price.

Eh, no. Publisher sets the price, as people are very quick to tell you if you complain about ludicrous regional pricing such as we get when lumped in with Australia; and publishers have to agree to any sales. And any store that relies on selling Steam Keys is not in competition with steam- steam can simply rescind their right to sell keys if someone gets too competitive. The stores that are competitors to steam are really only the ones that don't rely on steam keys for the majority of their business.

You think those stores get their keys from Steam?

Steam key resellers really aren't competition to Steam. If Steam lost more money on key redemption than they gained the whole mechanism would have been shut down long ago. They allow it precisely because the gains from "locking in" pricing 'competition' to the Steam platform maintains an artifically high market share that outweighs the 'losses' in not directly profiting, ie, every Steam key redeemed still = a lost sale for Steam's actual competition. So the gains are indirect rather than direct, but Steam still gains from each key redeemed and by extension that's not real competition of actually competing store platforms at all (GOG, Epic, UPlay, etc). GreenManGaming, etc, may be "competing" with other key resellers for the users wallet at the very last link in the chain, but on a gaming store platform level / service provision as a whole, they simply aren't competition for Steam itself in the big picture of things.

Ultimately, yes, they 100% do. Steam keys. It is, to coin a phrase, in the name.

Practically it doesn't matter who generates them, so long as Steam is able to refuse to honour them if other vendors start selling too many. Which they can do.

I agree with this. The thing I don't agree with is this part:
"steam can simply rescind their right to sell keys if someone gets too competitive."
That simply doesn't happen. They don't even have direct contact with those stores, the publishers/devs do.

It's a true statement of fact though that Steam do 100% control the whole Steam key mechanism. And Steam have indeed locked out keys before, eg, who do devs / publishers turn to, to get Steam keys revoked over G2A stolen credit card key fraud? Steam. They may not dictate to publishers which 3rd party reseller stores they can sell keys on, but they can shut down the entire key redemption thing for all of them at any time. The reason they don't is precisely because Steam have always indirectly profited from 3rd party Steam key resellers (which is why key resellers have always been glorified affiliates rather than competition).

Worst post ever.