Steam

I think the reason they don't do that is because the costs of building an ad network that complies with regulatory requirements in every region is really expensive.

For existing ad networks, it's worth it because of the volume of customers. For Valve, the customer count would be low unless they wanted to make a play at becoming an ad network outside of Steam as well, which is not something that makes sense for them as a business. So for Valve, micro microtransactions and other forms of paid DLC are a much better business model for free-to-play games.

I think it's better than having ads too, but if Valve could have found a simple way to monetize the ads, I they would have gone that route. But this approach brings in more money, reduces cost of hosting games that don't bring Valve income, and brings good will.

I realize this is in the actual Steam community so I'll try to be gentle.

Why would they even want competitive advertisements on their product? They don't have official ad intergration ~buy~ ~one~ ~of~ ~our~ ~games~, because it would be like amazon advertising ordering and shipping from Walmart ~valve~ ~must~ ~remain~ ~holy~. They get advertisement dollars from the developers on their platform ~their~ ~actual~ ~customers~, they get a cut of every game sale ~we~ ~don't~ ~want~ ~last~ ~a~ ~"last~ ~click"~ ~compensation~, ~30%~ ~from~ ~a~ ~successful~ ~ad~ ~is~ ~way~ ~more~ ~lucrative~.

Steam already has plenty of advertisement plastered through it's entire platform ~you~ ~must~ ~login~, ~I~ ~will~ ~default~ ~spam~ ~you~ ~with~ ~pop-ups~ ~and~ ~a~ ~store~ ~page~ ~that~ ~will~ ~probably~ ~crash~. They've literally locked you into their advertising model already by forcing you to open their services every time you get an inkling to play a game you've purchased ~reinforced~ ~mental~ ~connection~ ~and~ ~integrated~ ~advertising~ ~ftw!~

It's quite perplexing that Steam has such a huge ravenous fan club on Lemmy. You can take a singular aspect of how they conduct business to any community on here and find examples of how it's given a pass because it's "Steam". I believe it's convinced me that people really don't mind big monopoly companies, just not ones that openly are hostile to it's users (even then some don't mind).