Since Steam's release in 2003, it has pretty much become the de facto game distribution software. It's simple; the store has tens of thousands of games, these games usually go on sale a couple of times a year offering fantastic discounts, the game downloads are blazing fast (even in China), the built-in chat is pretty good, and so on.
However, Steam still faces competition especially from more specialised game stores, namely GOG for retro PC games, Origin for EA games (yuck) and Battle.net for Blizzard games. But those stores aren't real competitors. None of them offer what Steam does, nor do they seek to replace Steam.
Uh-oh, there's a new contender in town. Epic Games Store. That name is probably going to sound familiar because they are the creators of Fortnite. Epic Games has been aggressively pushing their new store as a new contender on the battlefield of game stores. Namely announcing Metro Exodus would become an exclusive for a limited time on Epic Games. This infuriated PC gamers around the world. The main issue with this move, is that it indicates that Epic Games is willing to hurt consumers for their own gains, because an exclusivity war is not going to be pretty.
I'm personally not a fan of exclusives. Especially the console exclusives. And even then, console exclusives are somewhat justifiable because they allow developers to heavily optimize their games, and make them the best they can be. A PC game store exclusive is just annoying, even though it's still possible to play the game should you download the appropriate launcher.
While not wanting a new store, I also understand that it can be damaging to have only one store with no real competition. This is true for any industry. The thing is that with Steam, consumers and developers alike are very happy with the platform.
As a gamer you get all your games in one place. You get a store, often with good discounts. You get chat, and multiplayer invitation. You get a mod marketplace. Fast downloads. Automatic updates. What's not to love?
Developers get access to a massive user base and marketing. They get access to a lot of infrastructure and SDKs they can implement in their games. They don't have to worry about providing downloads or clients. They can integrate deeply with Steam to make multiplayer gaming very enjoyable. The only downside is the large cut that Steam takes. It sits at 30%, but games earning more than 10$ million yearly qualify for Steam Direct, which pays out a bigger portion.
So to answer my own question; Yes, Steam is still the king. However, with renewed competition from Epic Games and even Discord, they've been forced to change policies and updates parts of the Steam client and store. All of this benefits the user in the end, as long the exclusive games doesn't get out of hand.
