A big reason it feels like nobody competes with steam is that if you want to sell your game on steam it can't be cheaper elsewhere. So any other store can't compete on price.
If you don't sell your game on steam you are missing 90% of the market. So as long as Valve continue to make steam good enough, nobody has an incentive to switch.
It's an abusive monopoly. Steam take 30% of revenue from developers and Epic take 12%, but the prices can't be 18% cheaper for the consumer without giving up 90% of the market!
Are you seriously blaming Steam for game developers setting the price of their games the same on all platforms? They're the ones pocketing that 18% difference by the way and that 18% difference is literally the selling point that is supposed to lure in game developers to the epic games store. There has never been a promise of cheaper games.
The "most favored nation" pricing you're complaining about being abusive refers to Steam key sales on third party platforms and that pricing exists for a blatantly obvious reason. How much of a percentage does Valve get from that sale? 0%. Absolutely nothing. The developer generated keys are free and Valve will still pay the distribution costs (storefront, downloads, multiplayer, etc) for you. If it was possible to sell a Steam key cheaper on another platform, then nobody would buy Steam keys from the Steam store anymore, which means their revenue would tank to zero, which in turn means they would have to cancel free steam key generation, duh. Valve is being extremely accommodating here and you're twisting it into its opposite, which is pretty disgusting.
The problem is the Steam Distribution Agreement isn't public so I don't have a way to prove if this is true or false.
At the same time there are articles like this https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2g1md0l23o on the bbc claiming a tribunal ruled a case can continue against Valve for "forcing game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms".
If you don't sell your game on steam you are missing 90% of the market. So as long as Valve continue to make steam good enough, nobody has an incentive to switch.
It's an abusive monopoly. Steam take 30% of revenue from developers and Epic take 12%, but the prices can't be 18% cheaper for the consumer without giving up 90% of the market!