I know, it's the same one from the front page, but I don't have Photoshop where I'm at, so I can't put Gabe Newell's head on Scrooge McDuck like I would want to. I'll get to it later.

Is Valve building a digital distribution monopoly? Josh Tolentino asked that question in his write up on how Steam has roughly 70 percent of the market share today. But it's a flawed question because it supposes that Valve doesn't yet have a monopoly on digital downloads for the PC gamer.

It does.

Or rather, I should say, it has an incredibly strong de facto monopoly that has arisen for two major reasons, each of which I'll go into a little detail below to explain why Steam is king, and no one's stealing the throne anytime soon.

Lack of strong options: By strong options, I mean programs comparable to Steam. Who else right now offers not only digital downloads, but chat, friends list, achievement and stat tracking, server lists, anti-cheat support, pre-loading and cross-computer settings for games? There are others in the video game industry that do, but they're all on consoles. Nothing else on PC even really comes close to the kind of package Steam offers its users. Yes, it does limit when you can play your games because of the online connection thing, and there are complaints about prices and region locking and resale of titles, but for most gamers (including yours truly), they are really negligible when compared to all the advantages. It's a bit like how when Windows started to become popular, everyone flocked to it because ... well, Mac OS really couldn't hold a candle to it (remember, for some time, Apple was worse than they are now ... even if you think they're bad at the moment) and nothing else could provide a strong option against Microsoft's product. That's how they nearly conquered the entire operating system world and why Linux, Chrome and Co. are going to be chipping away at their huge numbers for years to come.

Steam/Valve have most of the popular PC titles out there already: When you've got all the big games coming out on the PC, it's hard not to have a monopoly on the market. Simply put, Steam gets the big games, and thus, gets the people who want those games. So let's take a look at just how that's worked out:

Recently, there have been two big PC-related game releases: Borderlands (Steam had it), Modern Warfare 2 (Steam-exclusive) and Left 4 Dead 2 (Valve made it). Other popular PC titles include Team Fortress 2 (Valve), Dragon Age: Origins (Steam), Champions Online (Steam), Torchlight (Steam), Aion (Steam), Counter-Strike: Source (Valve) and about the only games not Steam or Valve-related on this list: MapleStory, Sins of a Solar Empire the ever-popular World of Warcraft.

Yes, MapleStory is still apparently popular. I don't know why. But the point is to look at the list of games above and notice the trend: almost all the games came out on Steam.

In this sense, Steam's a bit like Wal-Mart: they've got everything, so why bother going to seventeen different stores when you can go to one place AND have everything easily manageable? There are trade-offs, that's for sure, like offline play, but for games like Champions Online that don't have offline modes, like TF2 that only have LAN as an offline option of any sort, and games like Left 4 Dead 2 that have one basic offline option (hi, single-player campaign!), it doesn't matter. You're going to be online to play those games anyways. And like Wal-Mart, Valve loves cutting Steam prices to give users deals and bundles games together in affordable packages you'd have to be stupid to not buy. The whole "low prices" thing does work (as evidenced by Wal-Mart's explosive growth) because they keep people coming back to see what your next deal is going to be. Impulse has weekly deals, too, but they don't get noticed very much because often, the titles getting mark downs aren't as sought after. And because, as we've been told before, Steam pays the little guys better than the other platforms do and they get exposure to Steam's large installed userbase, they're more likely to come back.

Can anyone stop Steam? The only company that can break them at this moment would be their Washington state buddies, Microsoft. They have the money and resources to build a comparable service with Games for Windows Live, but considering how focused they are on the Xbox 360 at the moment, I would doubt they'll be working on plans for this quite yet. So, at least for now, Steam has their little monopoly. One day, yes, there will be challengers, as most de facto monopolies tend to draw in competition trying to take them down, but until those challengers arrive, we'll be fattening Gabe's wallets for quite some time to come.

Here in America, it's about time for Thanksgiving, where we pile the whole family into a car, drive to someone's house, eat a lot, and watch my football team suffer another painful blowout loss in front of a national audience. Ah, memories.

But there's also stuff to be thankful for. For example, all the things we got this week. That's why, of course, What'd You Get? is here, to show everyone how thankful we are for our games and game-related things. And to brag about them, too.

This week ... I didn't get a thing. Too busy with Forza and Left 4 Dead 2, which I got a bunch of achievements in, if that counts.

That's it for me, though. What'd all of you get?

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Left 4 Dead 2 waiting for PC release party! I am your humble host, NihonTiger, and I welcome you to the fun of waiting for the game to unlock and decrypt! In the meanwhile, why not sit back, relax and partake in what we do every week: talk about all the stuff we got!

That's right, it's time once again for What'd You Get, where you, the Dtoid reader, tell us what you bought this week.

For me? I got Left 4 Dead 2, Borderlands and, a throwback surprise: Skies of Arcadia Legends for the Gamecube. Woo! I also got a lot of toy-related things I'll be showing off on Tomopop, so keep an eye out for those!

That's it for me this week. What'd all of you get?

There's always been a lot of talk about Link one day having a voice or not, and as it turns out, one of Nintendo's most notable voices was supportive of the idea of giving Link a voice. Charles Martinet, the voice of Mario, Wario and many other characters, recently gave an interview where he talked about his experience in campaigning to do the voice of the hero of Hyrule.

According to Martinet: “I spoke to Mr. Miyamoto and said: “I wanna be Link, I wanna be Link”, and Miyamoto told me that Link isn’t going to have a voice; he is going to stay the way he is. Of course Mr. Miyamoto is always right! The way it works right now is the way it is supposed to be. It’s the genius of Miyamoto and he knows just the right formula for making his games more fun and more exciting. For example in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, If things slowed down for Mario to express his inner feelings it just wouldn’t work and this way it keeps our hearts pounding with enthusiasm.”

Honestly, I'm glad things stayed the way. Silent Link isn't bad, but I just don't think Charles, as good of a job as he does with the Mario characters, would have done well as Link. Then again, we'll never know.

So, what do you think, Dtoid community? Would it have worked for you to have Charles Martinet voice Link, or do you prefer him as is?

Attention Dtoid community: do you like free stuff? Do you like Street Fighter? Well, you're in luck on thie Friday the 13th. Tomopop, sister site of Destructoid and a place you really should be checking out every day, is having a contest where the big prize is this amazing 12" Blanka statue from SOTA Toys. It's a $100 statue and it's got great detail and quality. About the only thing it won't do is electrocute those who touch it, but why would you want that?

Interested? The full details on how to enter are available over at Tomopop, and trust me, it's pretty simple to enter. You're all eligible to win, too, just as long as you follow the rules, so don't think you have no shot! The contest ends Wednesday, November 25, at noon Eastern, 9 a.m. Pacific. We'll announce the one lucky winner on Friday, November 27. Good luck! :)

Sometimes, surprises are a good thing, and this week is no exception, as I've now got a reason to fire up my Wii once more and put Forza 3 aside for a little bit. Of course, I wish it would also have been announced ahead of time, but Nintendo doesn't operate like that. I can only hope enough people notice this little game I'm talking about and buy it before it gets forgotten about.

And that game is my answer, or part of it, to the eternal question: What'd You Get?

This week, it's Excitebike: World Tour and Borderlands. Oh, and I have Left 4 Dead 2 all pre-loaded and ready to go for next week. But that's it for me this week.

What about all of you? What'd you get?