Larian Studios defends Valve: Steam's success is deserved
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Should the second be punished in some way because of that?
It’s not a punishment. It’s a correction, required to maintain a healthy market.
Your lemonade stand would be more like if there was a stand on every block: By virtue of the scale of their business they could afford to undercut any competition that tried to start up. If they did that they could be slapped on the wrist for being anti-competitive.
Is Valve/Steam anti-competitive? IDK. It’s a monopoly, though, so you have to watch it extra carefully to ensure it doesn’t abuse its position as a market leader.
Your lemonade stand would be more like if there was a stand on every block: By virtue of the scale of their business they could afford to undercut any competition that tried to start up. If they did that they could be slapped on the wrist for being anti-competitive.
Cough Walmart cough
Walmart has been accused of selling merchandise at such low costs that competitors have tried to sue for predatory pricing (intentionally selling a product at low cost in order to drive competitors out of the market).
In 2000, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection accused Walmart of selling butter, milk, laundry detergent, and other staple goods at low cost, with the intention of forcing competitors out of business and gaining a monopoly in local markets.
Crest Foods filed a similar lawsuit in Oklahoma, accusing Walmart of predatory pricing on several of its products, in an effort to drive Crest Foods’s own company-owned store in Edmond, Oklahoma, out of business.
However, in 2003, Germany’s High Court ruled that Walmart’s low cost pricing strategy “undermined competition” and ordered Walmart and two other supermarkets to raise their prices. Walmart won appeal of the ruling, then the German Supreme Court overturned the appeal.
Walmart has been accused of using monopoly power to force its suppliers into self-defeating practices. In 2006, Barry C. Lynn, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation (a think tank), said that Walmart’s constant demand for lower prices caused Kraft Foods to “shut down thirty-nine plants, to let go [of] 13,500 workers, and to eliminate a quarter of its products.”
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I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
More comptetion wouldn’t just benefit consumers, it would benefit devs. A dev could shop their game around go with a store front that suits their needs better.
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I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don’t give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I’m all in for supporting competition when it’s good competition.
Is there a place that highlights these bad terms in the ToS?
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Should the second be punished in some way because of that?
It’s not a punishment. It’s a correction, required to maintain a healthy market.
Your lemonade stand would be more like if there was a stand on every block: By virtue of the scale of their business they could afford to undercut any competition that tried to start up. If they did that they could be slapped on the wrist for being anti-competitive.
Is Valve/Steam anti-competitive? IDK. It’s a monopoly, though, so you have to watch it extra carefully to ensure it doesn’t abuse its position as a market leader.
The bottom line on what I’m trying to say, is that valve isn’t doing anything to correct. The only way to make them less competitive would be to actively make the user experience worse.
Is it a potential problem that valve could go anti consumer and fuck everyone over? Absolutely. But until that happens, there’s nothing to actually do beyond point out that it has a monopoly. Which… I mean, doesn’t actually do much more than trigger the “monopoly = bad” thought in people’s minds.
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I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher. And if available also official Linux builds. Back in the days GOG did that, but they stopped doing it. And before someone comes after me, I know there are alternative launchers on Linux. But I don’t want to give GOG money for work others doing it for free. I don’t want support a company who only cares about Windows.
They started supporting and cooperating with heroic launcher.
Thus heroic is the defacto official GOG launcher on linux.
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It would likely result in endless corporate backstabbing, exclusive deals, contracts fights, and patent trolling
Which would likely result in horrid quality of life for the end user. Having to maintain countless accounts and subscriptions to have even fractional access to games.
It would likely also fuck over the studios and indie developers who would be shoved aside or relentlessly bought up in a ever growing attempt to grow.
More competition does not always mean things are better for the consumer. You can see the exact same thing played out with the recent rise and now slow descent to streaming services. As we went from one good one that turned into a horrible one as the sharehold is demanded it, then more rows and then things only became worse.
When you start operating at the sort of scale that the internet does, true, the whole competition thing being better for the consumer rarely works out.
You more frequently just end up with a bunch of greedy companies endlessly trying to one-up each other f****** over everyone in their attempts resulting in no one-winning, not the company, not the developers creators or middlemen nor and definitely not least the consumer.
True competition benefiting the consumer also requires there to be a connection to the consumer in a reason to actually service them. The companies need to be fighting for the consumer and not just each other. But that is all capitalism is turned into. The consumer is no longer the end goal. They’re just fighting each other to stomp them out so that all that’s left is themselves.
It’s been shown time and time again for decades now at at sufficient size competition just by itself does not help. The only thing that is repeatedly shown to be helpful is private companies with a good person at their home. Not trying to be a greedy f***.
And it’s showing time and time again. Every time that person retires the company sold their holders. Found public offerings made things just get worse.
The problem is not monopolies are bad. It’s not. The competition is good. It’s at public companies are a problem in the law forcing companies to do everything in their power to please. The shareholders is killing everything.
More competition does not always mean things are better for the consumer [cut], e.g. streaming services
I don’t believe this oligopoly is competing with each other?
(I’m not arguing with the rest of your post because capitalism bad
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So we’re acknowledging it’s a monopoly? Cool. Defense is still an acknowledgement. I’ve had the weirdest goddamn arguments with people insisting they’d never shop anywhere else, and if games aren’t on there it’s their own fault they’re doomed… but how dare anyone use the m-word! Obviously that can only mean one seller with absolute control, like how Standard Oil owned all 85% of the market.
I still don’t feel like it’s a monopoly when there is nothing stopping developers from selling the game as a paid download off their own site. Players can even add that game as a non-Steam game and still get a mostly complete experience as if they brought the game from Steam. Companies selling their game on Steam was always a option and not a necessity.
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I simply do not understand the sentiment that not being a total bastard is something celebrated and not expected or required.
And while many like our Steam benevolent (almost) monopoly, I do wonder how would the market look like if we had 20 competing companies that cannot gain more than 5% of the market share. Can you imagine the competition between them and how would that benefit us, the consumer?
That would mean exclusives everywhere. Everyone would try to force some game pass on us, until our only choice to get an OK selection would be having 4 subscriptions. Or piracy.
With Steam, I get a well integrated platform for buying, updating and launching everything with the correct compatibility layer.
That’s more convenient than piracy, so I use it.
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They started supporting and cooperating with heroic launcher.
Thus heroic is the defacto official GOG launcher on linux.
What type of support and cooperation? And where it is documented, so I can read about it?
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Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won’t go the Netflix way in the future.
I’m curious what you mean by this.
Netflix only went the way it did because they were liscensing shows and movies from other publishers/studios who could have, and finally did, take their shit back and start their own subscription service.
It’s not just Netflix that sucks now; it’s the whole of legit streaming video services becoming what cable was that got Netflix popular to begin with.
This is unlikely to happen with Steam, given that competitors are already trying to do what they can similarly and it has yet to actually do anything.
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Larian Studios defends Valve: Steam's success is deserved
While many accuse Valve of monopolising the PC gaming market, others argue that Steam\'s dominance is simply the result of doing things right.
Gamereactor UK (www.gamereactor.eu)
I think valve has the absolute worst skins market out there but their store is really good.
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I only buy games on Steam, GOG and ItchIO. The main reason I don’t give a cent to stores from EA, Ubisoft or Epic Games anymore is their services and terms are horrible. I’m all in for supporting competition when it’s good competition.
I bought Anno 1800 through uPlay and, to be fair, the app is not too bad, but now that I’m on Linux idk if I’d be able to get it working again. Not that I necessarily have interest to play again.
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I’m curious what you mean by this.
Netflix only went the way it did because they were liscensing shows and movies from other publishers/studios who could have, and finally did, take their shit back and start their own subscription service.
It’s not just Netflix that sucks now; it’s the whole of legit streaming video services becoming what cable was that got Netflix popular to begin with.
This is unlikely to happen with Steam, given that competitors are already trying to do what they can similarly and it has yet to actually do anything.
Yeah streaming has an assumption of an exclusivity deal whereas in gaming it’s unpopular and financially not worthwhile (though subscriptions would rapidly change that).
If Netflix and HBO and everyone else all were equally able to buy content and no service was the primary sponsor of content you’d get services competing on price, quality, and selection rather than each of them aiming to always have something worth the subscription price coming out.
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This post did not contain any content.
Larian Studios defends Valve: Steam's success is deserved
While many accuse Valve of monopolising the PC gaming market, others argue that Steam\'s dominance is simply the result of doing things right.
Gamereactor UK (www.gamereactor.eu)
Steam had been one of the good companies so far. Until they showed clear signs of enshitiffication, I will patronise Steam.
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“Not being a total bastard” is a weird way to describe overhauling the gaming on linux experience at no additional cost to the end user, among many other incredibly pro consumer choices they’ve pushed in the last twenty odd years.
Yeah. Steam is fucking solid.
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Steam kinda killed gaming piracy for many. Hope they won’t go the Netflix way in the future.
it’s crazy how you offer people convenience and they willingly pay for it. I remember steam killing piracy before DRM or anything like that existing
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I’m a fan of Valve and Steam too. But you cannot deny that Valve does shitty stuff too. In example Valve is the company who either invented or popularized Loot Boxes. And they don’t do anything about the Black Market for the item trading and selling, such as Counter Strike skins and so on. And there are other little things that could be done, but nothing else upsets me as this.
But besides that, for the most part I love Valve. The commitment to support on Linux is unmatched in the gaming world. As a private company, Valve can do whatever they want. I genuinely think that PC gaming wouldn’t be this good without Valve. If anything, Microsoft would have the power… which in an alternate universe people have to suffer.
The skins and loot boxes is the only negative thing I ever see brought up about steam, and it is a completely voluntary system that applies to a few of their own games. In fact, I keep forgetting they even have them unless someone brings it up and despite being a terrible thing people apparently love them and would be mad if they went away.
So I’ll forgive them for one stupid thing they do and appreciate the other 99% of things they do.
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OpenAI is a non-profit
OpenAI started as a non-profit and pivoted to being for profit whether the paperwork has kept up or not.
Pretty sure that was the plan all along though.
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citation needed
points to all of human history
Maybe this will be one of the exceptions. At least I hope so.
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I would buy from GOG too, if they provided Linux support in form of an official launcher. And if available also official Linux builds. Back in the days GOG did that, but they stopped doing it. And before someone comes after me, I know there are alternative launchers on Linux. But I don’t want to give GOG money for work others doing it for free. I don’t want support a company who only cares about Windows.
I used to be the same.
I have changed to prioritizing GOG though since I try to limit purchases from US companies and I despise how Steam knowingly profits from making children addicted to gambling.
