Kiaran Ritchie on Why Steam Is Almost Impossible to Beat

The argument that put Steam's lead back in focus

They played capitalism so well they broke it.

The remarks drawing attention come from Kiaran Ritchie, who previously worked at Epic Games. There is no product, download, or official page attached to this. What circulated on November 2, 2026 is a short preview of his case: Steam has become so dominant that a rival can build a cleaner launcher and still fail to matter.

Ritchie frames the familiar 30% fee as a toll on distribution rather than a bill for services. Developers, he says, are paying Valve for reach into a player base large enough that ignoring it is a commercial risk. Once that base is the default place people already buy and launch games, a store has to be accepted even when its cut feels steep.

Why a better store still loses

The sharp part of the claim is about habit, not feature lists. Ritchie believes most people already on Steam have no practical reason to move, even if another shop is nicer to use. Friends, libraries, and the simple fact of already being there keep the audience in place. A launcher can win on design and still start from an empty room.

That flips the usual pitch for a new storefront. If players will not switch for a better experience, the competitor never gets the network that would justify a lower cut. Developers then face a closed loop: the store with the players sets the terms, and the terms include that 30%.

• The fee

  Ritchie treats Valve's 30% as the price of admission to Steam's audience, rather than payment for launcher tools.

• The audience

  He says Steam users lack a reason to try another store, so a superior client does not move them.

• The bind

  Developers who need those players cannot skip Steam, which leaves the cut in place.

What it means if you ship or buy games

If you make games, the practical reading is blunt. A launch plan that treats Steam as optional is, on this account, a plan that walks away from the largest ready-made crowd. The cut is painful because it is attached to the place your buyers already are, and Ritchie does not see a near-term way around that.

If you only play games, his point explains why store wars feel stuck. You are not being asked to compare launchers on merit alone. You are being asked to abandon a library and a crowd for a shop that may be better and still feel empty. Until that trade feels worth it to ordinary players, developers keep meeting buyers where they already are.

What is still unsettled

Ritchie's line is a diagnosis, not a proposal. He does not outline a store that breaks the loop, and nothing in the preview offers a public alternative you can try. The open question is whether any rival can give players a reason to move that is stronger than the library they already own, or whether Steam's lead simply compounds from here.

Also unresolved is how widely other developers share the former Epic Games developer's read. The 30% figure and the refusal to leave are presented as facts of the market as he sees it. What to watch next is whether this stays a sharp one-off critique or becomes the working assumption for how new PC storefronts are judged.