Fallout 76 Won't Be Available On Steam.

Well, not only that, but Bethesda gets a full 100% profit when they self-distribute their titles.

I'm guessing that Valve's standard contract is that the price on steam be the same retail price as listed on any other platform and/or physical store.

The same way that you can't blame Valve for having the monopoly on games due to the fact that they pioneered the online gaming platform.

I don't blame them at all - quite the contrary. Valve has done a lot for gamers. But for any company to have such a large share of the market is not healthy, irrespective of what business they are in. Just imagine when Gaben, the so-called gamer-friendly Owner/CEO drops this whole company into the greedy hands of a board of directors and they take full rein? Think about the possible outcomes of that when they have almost all gamers by the balls already. All they need to do is squeeze a little....

But wishing the platform to have less upcoming games at the same time

You have any better suggestions on how to reduce a single company's share of a market without taking a bit of that market away from them?
I think one of the issues we see is that the majority of gamers are young, and they want their games above all else. It's not until later when they ask themselves the question ''How did we end up here'' that it matters when a company has an unhealthy share of the market - and by that time they are probably in the older minority once again. Valve is almost (but not quite) grooming younger players into the fold. Not healthy.

Don't just lock your games to 1 platform, that's just lazy. Make a better alternative instead.

Hell, even Valve does that. They just hide their own games in amongst a lot of others so you don't think about the fact that Valve is just as protectionistic of their own games as EA, or any other, and now Bethesda. But yes you are right, they should always better their platform to suit players. But here once again the younger player base makes a collateral decision, which is not market savvy; They will buy the game anyway, so there's no real incentive for platform developer to work that hard. Imagine a car sales-chain that did the same, ''We'll sell you a buggy car, which costs a lot to repair/service, AND on top of that make the visit to the garage as problematic as possible...'' No-one would buy their cars. But kids don't buy cars, they buy games. And it's ''waaaaah, I want' all the way to the bank, so a poor platform won't be readily evident to developers. You can't blame Bethesda here for doing what many others do, protect their own away from Valve. And you can't blame them for being late in the game either. Valve was first, at least mainstream first, and have a well positioned head start. And if Valve hadn't been like they are, I don't think others would fight so hard to get from under them. If they allowed sales on their platform without hefty percentages, Valve would have the largest platform to shoot ideas and moneymaking schemes from, and at the same time all developers could sell and cash in and try their own ideas - much like creating software for Windows works today (perhaps a flawed argument, the exact same discussions have been held about Microsoft market shares for years.).
We could then have all our games in one place while developers could have what they want (of which I will readily claim ignorance of). But Valve doesn't do that, do they? If anything you should blame Valve for all the bigger developers wanting to get away from them.

You can't say Steam having the monopoly on games is bad, but Bethesda net having the exclusive on this game is good

I'm not saying that. I'm saying that Valves hold on the entire market is unhealthily large. Bethesda doing a platform on their own is good to counteract this. And again, what Bethesda is doing is no more exclusive than what Valve does with it's own games, haven't seen many copies of H-L, L4D, TF2, DOTA, CS, Portal, or any others of Valves games go for sale on Origin, UPlay, or anywhere else than Steam.
And talking about exclusivity here is just a poor choice of words, save that for console talks. There you can argue that the exclusivity is bad, as only owners of certain hardware can play a game, and you need several pieces of hardware to play them all - not good for consumer end. But this, it might be exclusive to their platform, but the platform itself will be readily available on any PC.
There could be an issue with this however, if every developer decides ti have a platform on their own, that would become messy for gamers and you would need to install so much software just to install all the games you want, but I believe only a handful of developers will do, as it's timeconsuming, and costly to do so.

Hahahahaha, that said I look in my own PC and I see Steam, Origin, GOG Galaxy, UPlay, Battle.net Launcehr, Epig Ganes Launcher, Desura (dead I believe), Itch.io, BattleState Games, Rockstar Online, Six Foot, and Minecfart for Windows. Holy crap, we might already be fuxxxed..... ;-)

At the end I'm not trying to be a dick and shoot down everything you think, I personally like Steam too - even with it's flaws. I personally would wish here was only one platform that had all the games and all the bells and whistles we can think of. But as I've experienced this world a long time now I'm sorry but that just ''ain't no good'' for the consumer end - especially not in the long run. But I look at it like this; I have one single platform: My PC. That's my single point. On that platform I run software, sometimes directly, sometimes via another piece of software when it's convenient to me. If any of those pieces of software starts threatening my availability of the lower level software it controls, I want to get rid of it. If it threatens my wallet I want to get rid of it, or at least lessen it's impact. With Valve you can't, you have no other ''real'' means of acquiring a lot of games on Steam.... And as Valve have that large market share, I have no ''real'' choice but to let the software now affect me negatively. That is what I mean with ''unhealthily large part of the market''.

Heh, if you can't see what's funny with that, then I can't really convince you now can I?

It's only funny to you because you're working off a logical fallacy, much like that psudeo-math gag where you get get 2=3 by dividing by zero. Namely, you're working off an assumption of diehard anti-Steam sentiments, when the topic has nothing directly to do with sentiments related to Steam at all. The topic is "other platforms", which Steam is incorrectly being pushed into by individuals such as the OP.
Basically, it's like us saying "Okay, we get that pizza is popular, but we'd maybe like to eat other foods for lunch at times, and overall that'll be better for everyone other than the monopoly pizza businesses currently have on meals." In other words, it's pro-other-foods, not anti-pizza, even if the end result does diminish pizza's impact. In short, being concerned about the metaphorical pizza business monopoly doesn't mean we have to stop liking and buying pizza.
There's absolutely no conflict of interest, and thus no ironical humor to derive from the matter.

But I have to disagree with the notion that Steam is a growing monopoly.

Right. It's an established monopoly. Steam is to PC gaming what Facebook is to social media.
There are other options available, but everyone understands that one company both dominates and steers the overall market (as a monopoly does).

The only reason that Bethesda is putting this as an exclusive in their platform comes down to money.

Which is normal for companies to do, and thus makes threads with sentiments such as this one peculiar.

The same way that you can't blame Valve for having the monopoly on games due to the fact that they pioneered the online gaming platform.

There were actually a handful around before Steam (For example, Sony's TheStation preceeded it by 5 years), and Steam was considered very poorly in its early years when compared to existing platforms. I'm still not entirely sure how it gained the early popularity and impact that it did, though its inclusion of social, market, and other secondary elements definitely were responsible for its rise to prominence later on.
Then, bundles and Steamworks multiplayer gave Steam a distinct edge, which solidified its position, drawing even gamers such as myself (who only used GOG up till 3 years ago) into using the platform. By now, it's so firmly established that companies and consumers just treat it like a forgone conclusion that a game'll come to Steam.

Similarly, while Nintendo took part in early gaming console efforts, Atari, Fairchild, and Magnavox "pioneered" the field, even though Nintendo and Sega were arguably the ones that defined our expectations of it. So, simply put, let's put aside "pioneered" as a meaningful point of argument.

Further, "blame" is an irrelevant concept here. Monopolies are toxic for consumers, blame doesn't factor into that. Valve is easy to criticize, given their extensive consumer-unfriendly practices, but a large reason why they can get away with such practices is due to them having a monopoly. Us encouraging a healthier gaming environment doesn't in any way have to directly relate to Valve or Steam, but to us being rational, experienced consumers.

as well as EA for that matter, is going about this all wrong. Provide your games on both platforms, let the buyers choose.

Your expectations are clearly colored by a post-Steam perspective. It was traditional to self-release up until Steam claimed dominance. Likewise, arguing against EA is nonsensical, given that there's absolutely no reason or benefit for them to utilize Steam, meaning you're basing off your own personal desires for a singular service, rather than any rational premise. (Likewise, note that EA already used Steam in the past, but no longer does due to conflict with Valve, so it's not like it's an easily workable option for them anyway.)
Moreover, again, so far all we've seen is Bethesda pre-launching onto their platform, not retaining exclusivity on it (which negates your point in question).

Provide your games on both platforms, let the buyers choose. If they choose to buy through Steam, then improve your platform so it'd be a more enticing option for the consumer to choose.

That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, unless you're thinking the launcher is intended to directly compete with Steam- which it currently is not, it's meant for self-publishing. Your perspective is like "you should never ever self-publisher or use a smaller publisher, your books and music should always only be published by the biggest publishers around, no matter how unfavorable that is to yourself!" ..that's just.. not how any of this works, unless you're deeply self-sabotaging and inexperienced.
Likewise, you don't need to have competing impact to be able to gain an advantage by utilizing self-publishing. Take a look at Battle.net, which is clearly a better option for Blizzard than Steam would be.

Don't just lock your games to 1 platform, that's just lazy.

Sloth also doesn't factor into discussions relating to marketing decisions like these..
Are you even sure you're on the same topic as us?

but since I'm too lazy to engage

:scratches head: Okay, I guess it did factor in to the conversation.

You can't say Steam having the monopoly on games is bad, but Bethesda net having the exclusive on this game is good. Both are not good.

Agreed, but irrelevant to the point. Again, we're not arguing in favor of Bethesda's choice, but rather are being skeptical of those who think that they had to make a different choice.

I'll emphasize this again - Exclusivity is bad, it is for all intent and purposes, a form of monopoly

A monopoly is an established dominance over an entire field. In gaming, that would be at least an entire genre, not exclusivity over a single IP. A single IP, no matter how popular, can't affect monopolic changes on an industry. Your mis-application of terminology aside, you're correct- a greater range of options are almost always more beneficial to consumers. As I noted, not relevant to this conversation, and as such I don't think anyone is arguing against it, but correct.

Digital gaming is weird in that respect- other than Steam keys (and that's something Valve has been firmly trying to stamp out of late), you don't see a variety of retailer options like you do with physical goods. Certainly, it'd be healthier if we had that.. but again, that'd be based in the establishment of competing forces against Steam's dominance, not by criticizing such efforts when they occur. But, again, we're not discussing competing platforms, but self-publishing; which in retail terms, is like only selling through your own website. Would people be this ticked off if something just wasn't in their local Wal-Mart? That's where the weirdness of topics like this one comes in.

Jim Sterling would probably answer this:

It's most likely bullshit that singleplayer games are not profitable anymore. But the big publishers are not satisfied with just some money. They want all the money. Therefore microtransactions.

I tend to agree with him on this. We have more than enough evidence that singleplayer games are still profitable even without microtransactions. Witcher 3 being the prime example, but there are also many others.