this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
1 points (100.0% liked)

Apple

921 readers
1 users here now

There are a couple of community rules in addition to the main instance rules.

All posts must be about Apple

Anything goes as long as it’s about Apple. News about other companies and devices is allowed if it directly relates to Apple.

No NSFW content

While lemmy.zip allows NSFW content this community is intended to be a place for all to feel welcome. Any NSFW content will be removed and the user banned.

If you have any comments or suggestions please message one of the moderators.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 9 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (4 children)

It’s good to have a monopoly on games distribution

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

it's isn't really a monopoly, given that there are other companies and platforms, like Epic, Xbox store for windows, GOG...

but practically? yhea, it's a monopoly because the are actually a good product.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

there is some hate here for your comment, but u rite. <3

good to be the king.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Agreed they have a monopoly. But given the modern pattern of digital services always racing to the bottom with enshitification, it’s apparent that we are all very fortunate that the game didtribution market is not an efficient market right now.

Steam would not survive in a competitive market, they’d be outcompeted by loss leaders running on infinite venture capital which would inevitably start turning the screws to draw profit from their captive audience before eventually collapsing and taking all their games with them.

That monopoly is a win for consumers because it is lazy and predictable, it’s a win for game devs because it’s vaguely pleasant to use over a long period which keeps piracy down, and it’s very good for valve, obviously.

Monopoly’s are usually bad when you assume you’re the customer, but with modern services we’re generally the product, a fat and happy monopoly is sometimes better than the alternative.

This comment is only slightly tongue in cheek.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

They were the first to market and built it to distribute some of the most popular PC games to ever exist. They are an entrenched market leader who haven’t tried to make steam into something more than what it should be. They do not have a monopoly, windows store, gog, itch, epic, Apple store, android store, battle.net, EA store, Xbox/store cloud, PlayStation store…

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Valve doesn’t force you to buy games on their platform like Epic does.

You can use GOG and Itch.io instead.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Just because there are other distribution channels doesn’t mean that valve doesn’t have that market stitched up. Their profitability is a function of being a monopoly. It isn’t like their client or anything is revolutionary.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I disagree as their client is the most feature rich one available and it’s not Valve’s fault that the competition shoots itself in the foot too often. Show me one example where Valve bought out competitor stores.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 days ago

They're monopoly only because all of their competitors fail to capture the audience. You might as well say Water is monopolizing hydration.