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Alan Wake 2 Still Hasn't Earned Back Its Budget (techraptor.net)

submitted 6 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[+] [email protected] -13 points 6 months ago (15 children)

What makes Steam a monopoly is market dominance. Nothing else counts.

The keys thing underlines how little their competition matters. They can effectively give away copies, to other platforms, and those other platforms remain irrelevant.

Shitting on Epic - however fun and well-deserved - does not change how we are talking about Steam.

Netflix is a great comparison, because Netflix was also plainly a monopoly. The streaming video market was Netflix. Their behavior as a monopoly was better for everyone, compared to this shit-show of vicious little fiefdoms.... but defending a monopoly doesn't make them stop being one.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (14 children)

Except, legally in the US where Valve is based, you've got 0 legs to stand on.

Valve does dominate the market they're in, but they do so without creating an unreasonable restraint of competition in that market. They are dominant by providing the best product, not because they have unfair business practices which burden the competition. Like I said, Valve will literally allow game makers to go and take 100% of every sale they make (assuming they can process payments for free) while still allowing them to use the platform Valve have built and pay to maintain so long as they'll pay Valve a cut for the copies that are sold directly through the Steam store. Valve allows their competition to sell games that package said competition's stores inside of those games. Every EA or Ubisoft game comes with the competitor's store bundled in. They create tools that allow their competitors games to run on platforms that the competition doesn't want to bother with and they give them away. HOW IS ANY OF THAT AN UNREASONABLE RESTRAINT ON COMPETITION?

"Here you go guys, you so obviously don't understand what the audience wants. How about you give us a cut of the sales you make on your games via our platform and we'll let you install your platform on our customer's PCs? How unreasonable and diabolical of us to cut down the competition by letting gamers see what an open sewage pipe of fetid scum they'd be dealing with in our absence. BWAH HA HAH HAH! We have constrained the competition by our cunning craft of having a better product. Truly we are monsters from HELL! HAIL GABEN!" -Valve, The monopolists 🙄

Steam is the antithesis of anticompetitive, they're not the single seller of any good beyond "Valve Games" of which there are now 22(?) among millions of PC games, and they don't generally dictate prices in the market; which is the succinct way of saying that they don't live up to any portion of the legal standard for what constitutes a monopoly. Give me something factual that implicates Valve as a monopoly or get out of here with this nonsense.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago (13 children)

In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. For instance, the term monopoly may be referring to instances where:

There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)

Restraint of competition:

Courts do not require a literal monopoly before applying rules for single firm conduct; that term is used as shorthand for a firm with significant and durable market power — that is, the long term ability to raise price or exclude competitors.

I'm not thrilled how every reply pretends I follow up "Steam has overwhelming market share" with "and they're EEEVIL!!!"

I haven't said shit about Valve, ethically. I outright said Netflix's short-lived monopoly was better for consumers. I certainly haven't defended Epic, whatever the hell that other guy wants to rail against.

But Valve obviously has power.

Valve has the ability to do these things.

Their competitors don't.

Steam's market share is so high, they could do whatever they want, whether or not they ever do.

We are talking about a long-awaited critical darling of a game, and we are talking about how its sales blow, specifically because it's not on Steam. Yes, it has sales, but it doesn't have enough sales, unless it goes through this one store. Defending the store's practices will not change that. Defending the conditions that led here will not change that. It is a dead simple fact that Steam's market share is real fuckin' high. So high that everyone else barely counts. We have a word for that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I was going to get to this but my last comment ran over the 5000 character limit and had to be trimmed back. I was just going to drop it, but on reflection it is important to drive the distinction home, so here it is:

It is a dead simple fact that Steam’s market share is real fuckin’ high. So high that everyone else barely counts. We have a word for that.

We have a word for that.

Yeah. We do. That word is dominance. It is not monopoly because monopoly has qualifiers beyond dominance.

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