When Tim Sweeney and Epic Games launched the Epic Games Store in December 2018, one of their most controversial and attention-grabbing strategies was the aggressive pursuit of timed exclusivity deals. Rather than simply competing with Steam through features or community, Epic focused on securing major titles as exclusives to drive traffic to their platform. They offered developers and publishers lucrative financial incentives, including upfront payments and a more generous revenue split—88% to developers compared to Steam’s standard 70%. These deals often involved games being available only on the Epic Games Store for a period of six months to a year before appearing on other platforms like Steam. The strategy sparked significant backlash among gamers, many of whom viewed the exclusivity approach as anti-consumer, especially when titles that were previously expected to release on Steam suddenly became Epic-exclusive. Games like Metro Exodus, Borderlands 3, and Control were notable examples that stirred controversy. Despite the criticism, Epic defended the approach as a necessary step to challenge Steam's dominance and to create a more developer-friendly ecosystem. Over time, the exclusivity push helped establish Epic Games Store as a serious competitor in the PC gaming market, although the debate over the tactic's long-term value and ethical implications continues.

Over the years, gamers have grown deeply comfortable with Steam—not just as a platform, but almost as a cultural cornerstone of PC gaming. Valve earned this loyalty by aligning with values the gaming community holds dear: open access, frequent sales, mod support, and a relatively hands-off approach to DRM. Steam positioned itself as a platform that "gets" gamers, and for the most part, it delivered. This helped build a sense of trust and even affection among its users, to the point where many began to see it less as a corporation and more as a benevolent fixture of the gaming world. But in embracing Steam so wholeheartedly, many gamers lost sight of an important truth: Steam is still a business. Valve, like any company, exists to generate profit. Its choices are shaped by strategy and market control as much as, if not more than, any sense of community goodwill. When Epic challenged that status quo with exclusivity deals, the backlash was fierce—not just because of inconvenience, but because it felt like a betrayal of the unspoken pact between gamers and their favored platform. In reality, though, that pact was always one-sided. Steam’s goodwill was never charity—it was good business. As a Linux gamer myself, I have nothing but respect and genuine appreciation for Valve’s contributions to making Linux a viable gaming platform. Their investment in Proton has been nothing short of transformative—suddenly, thousands of Windows-only games became playable on Linux with minimal friction. For years, gaming on Linux was a niche filled with compromises and technical hurdles, but Proton changed the landscape. And with the launch of the Steam Deck, Valve didn’t just deliver impressive hardware—they gave mainstream visibility to how far Linux gaming has come. For many non-Linux users, it was their first real exposure to a polished, Linux-based gaming experience that just worked. That said, admiration shouldn't cloud perspective. Valve is still a business. Their investments in Linux, Proton, and the Steam Deck weren’t just about ideology or community goodwill—they were also strategic moves to secure platform independence and long-term relevance in a shifting hardware and software ecosystem. I’m thankful for what they’ve done, but I try to remember: Valve isn’t my friend. They’re a company, and like any company, their endgame is profit.

The ultimate goal of any company operating in a capitalist society—whether explicitly stated or not—is to achieve complete market dominance. It's baked into the structure of the system: grow or die, expand or be overtaken. An apt analogy is a poker table where every player begins with a fair stack of chips, but over time, through skill, luck, or strategy, one player accumulates more and more until they hold all the chips. At that point, the game isn’t really a game anymore—it’s over. In business, that endgame is monopoly, or something close to it. But in modern capitalism, becoming a monopoly outright is risky. Legal and public scrutiny tend to follow. So the real trick is to dominate a market without being recognized as a monopoly—by shaping ecosystems, locking in users, acquiring competitors, or establishing such strong brand loyalty that no one else can meaningfully compete. That’s why even the most “consumer-friendly” companies should be viewed with some skepticism. Their goodwill is often a strategy to gain ground, not an end in itself. Valve, Epic, Microsoft, Apple—they all play the same game. Some just wear friendlier masks than others. In recent years, we’ve finally seen major regulatory bodies—most notably the European Union and now the United States—begin to formally recognize Apple and Google as monopolies in the digital marketplace. These designations aren't just symbolic; they’ve led to meaningful legislative and legal steps aimed at breaking the monopolistic grip these companies have over their platforms, especially regarding app stores, payment systems, and control over third-party software distribution.

Looking back, it’s hard not to credit Tim Sweeney and Epic Games for helping push this reckoning into motion. Epic’s lawsuits against Apple and Google, sparked by the Fortnite ban after Epic bypassed in-app payment systems, were among the first high-profile, aggressive legal challenges to the closed ecosystems of mobile platforms. While Epic didn’t win every point in court, the lawsuits cracked open a broader conversation about platform control, competition, and digital rights—conversations regulators were perhaps too slow or too cautious to start on their own. Without that bold (and, to many, controversial) move by Epic, it’s entirely possible we’d still be waiting for serious antitrust scrutiny to catch up to Big Tech’s reach. Does this mean Tim Sweeney did this out of the kindness of his heart? No, of course not. I cannot ascribe to him the same monopolistic tendencies since he hasn't shown them. But epic is a company, just like steam, just like apple and just like google. If the roles had been reversed would he have acted any different? Since I have no evidence that he would I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt. Thus the epic game store saved you despite yourself. And you hated them for your own salvation.

We need to crack monopolies—not just for the sake of competition, but for the fundamental principle of user ownership. There was a time when buying a device meant it was yours, truly and fully. You could open it, modify it, install what you wanted, and use it how you saw fit. But today, in the era of tightly controlled ecosystems, that ownership has become an illusion. Without access to the software—or more specifically, the freedom to control what runs on your hardware—your expensive phone, tablet, or even laptop is little more than a glorified paperweight. Software is the soul of hardware. If you can’t install apps outside of an app store, if you can’t change the OS, if you need permission from Apple or Google to access basic functionality, then you don’t own your device—they do. The stranglehold of app stores, enforced through policy and technical barriers, is one of the clearest examples of modern digital monopolies in action. This gatekeeping must be dismantled. Not just to promote fair competition, but to restore genuine ownership and autonomy to users in a world that increasingly treats them like renters in walled gardens.

As a Linux user, I fully acknowledge what I like to call repository fatigue. In the quest for openness and decentralization, we've ended up with a sprawling landscape of software sources—native package managers like APT and RPM, universal formats like Flatpak and Snap, third-party PPAs, AppImages, and now even containerized apps via tools like Distrobox or Nix. It’s a bit of a paradox: the freedom to choose can sometimes feel like a burden. When yet another distribution channel or packaging format appears, it’s hard not to roll your eyes and think, great, another one to manage. But as exhausting as this can be, it’s still a symptom of freedom—a messy, decentralized, sometimes chaotic freedom that stands in stark contrast to the locked-down, single-store approach of platforms like iOS. Yes, repository fatigue is real, but it’s a small price to pay for actual control. You’re never stuck waiting for one gatekeeper to approve an update or allow an app. If anything, the abundance of choice in the Linux world highlights just how artificial and restrictive the monopolized app store model has become. For software that has to run locally, I’ve mostly settled on Flatpak or manually sandboxed AppImages—sometimes even the occasional Snap, since I use Ubuntu. My general rule is to prioritize whichever method the developer has chosen as their official distribution channel. It keeps things simple, stable, and respectful of upstream intentions. But increasingly, I’ve taken it a step further: I’ve gone to great lengths to shift as much of my software usage as possible to web-based alternatives, primarily through Progressive Web Apps (PWAs). PWAs have become a surprisingly effective bridge between the flexibility of native apps and the convenience of the web. They’re platform-agnostic, update automatically, and often consume fewer system resources than their traditional counterparts. More importantly, they remove yet another layer of dependency on centralized packaging systems. By accessing software through open web standards, I gain another level of autonomy—one that isn’t tied to a vendor, a store, or even a specific OS. It’s not a perfect solution, and it comes with its own trade-offs, but in a world increasingly defined by digital gatekeeping, it feels like a practical way to reclaim some control.

That dream—a mobile phone with nothing but a browser, where every app is a one-click installable PWA—is not just a personal vision, it’s a powerful idea that has echoed through tech history. In fact, it was the original vision Steve Jobs had for the iPhone: a device where developers would build web apps using open standards like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, accessed through Safari, no App Store needed. Apple famously shifted course a year later with the launch of the App Store, and the rest is history—but that initial vision was rooted in openness and universality. Mozilla chased the same dream with Firefox OS—a mobile OS built entirely around web technologies, where every app was a web app. It was lightweight, open, and elegant in its philosophy, but it couldn’t compete with the entrenched dominance of iOS and Android. Palm, too, with webOS, was betting on the web as the future of apps before being swallowed by market forces and acquisition chaos. These efforts failed not because the vision was flawed, but because they were too early. Hardware wasn’t fast enough, browser standards weren’t mature enough, and the economic incentives of centralized app stores were simply too strong. But now, in a world where PWAs can work offline, send push notifications, and be indistinguishable from native apps, the idea feels more viable than ever. The question is: will the industry ever allow that level of freedom again—or will it take another bold push, from users or developers, to reclaim it?

I’ve recently decided to shift all of my personal development efforts towards this direction. Every single application I make from now on will function as a PWA that anyone can install on any device. Android, iOS, Linux, Windows, whatever. One click in their browser and it's installed on their system. No app store needed. No choke hold accepted. While I’m not quite ready to fully discuss it, you can get a sneak peek of my work at www.bottleofbits.com, where the first few applications of this nature will be released in the upcoming weeks. I'm not sure how successful this endeavour will be since we've been conditioned by monopolists to think that we really need an app, and we need to get that app from them. My hope is that enough people will agree with my philosophy and support it so I can make a living from it. Because my dream would be to get away from what the modern tech sector has become. It's the devourer of dreams, not just for consumers but developers as well.