If that were true, you'd think you see more steam exclusive games. The problem is I can't think of a single one I own that is steam exclusive. I am sure there's at least one out there.
Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, and their sequels are all Steam exclusive. The only mandated Steam exclusives are Valve games. Anything else is purely out of convenience for the developer.
I realize you're probably referring to PC gaming specifically here, but it's interesting to note that Portal and Portal 2, at least, (haven't checked on the others) are available on the Nintendo Switch store.
Whether 31,000+ constitutes a lot of games depends on your personal definition. You said you'd think there were more, so I'm guessing you were thinking of a bigger number.
AFAIK developers generally don't announce when a game is exclusive to Steam, so that's probably as close to a definitive list as there is. And I don't know how accurate it is, either, as I haven't inspected it.
I assume one of the things that's missing from the list are games that used to be exclusive. E.g., Borderlands 2 was (on PC) exclusive to Steam for something like 7 or 8 years, but it's presumably not on the list since it eventually became a non-exclusive title.
Right. "Steam exclusivity" is not a thing where there's exclusivity contracts or anything like that, but rather developers "just" deciding other stores are not worth the effort right now. Both in just being additional effort to setup/promote and for smaller titles it can be important to have all initial sales happening in one place, because ranking on Steam (and other stores) is tied to getting enough sales/reviews/... happening quickly. And then some add GOG etc only later to catch the long-tail of sales there too.
(and I guess Valve first-party titles are a special case of course)
Fair point. It's interesting though I have a large steam library (1000+ games) and the intersection with this is very low. How many of these games actually have sales?
But regardless, the point was that steam features provided vendor lock in. I doubt that is the case for many of thees games. It's likely just that steam is the most popular marketplace.
