Gaming

30795 readers

115 users here now

From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!

Please Note: Gaming memes are permitted to be posted on Meme Mondays, but will otherwise be removed in an effort to allow other discussions to take place.

See also Gaming's sister community Tabletop Gaming.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why Steam can be considered a monopolistic platform? (fedia.io)

submitted 4 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

40 comments fedilink hide all child comments

^^^

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It might be. It hasn't been tested in court.

I lean towards 'no' because I do not see moves on their part to actively attack other distributors, but I admit I have not done research on this subject.

Based purely on having used many other distribution platforms, I think they (Valve) just legitimately have the best service currently. Everyone else either kinda sucking (GOG, as much as I love them), or really sucking (EGS, Origin, UPlay, etc), and losing to you in the market, doesn't make you a monopoly.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 days ago

I think they care about their customers just about as much as they care about making money, and aside from GOG, the competition simply does not. It's a pretty good demonstration to how capitalism has failed us, to be honest, because any of those competitors would have been able to compete if they hadn't treated their customers like shit.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

I lean towards 'no' because I do not see moves on their part to actively attack other distributors

That doesn't matter. There's a difference between having a monopoly and abusing it to distort the market. It's the abuse that's illegal, not the monopoly in itself.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 days ago

There’s a difference between having a monopoly and abusing it

Sure, but whether Valve fits the definition is debatable. Being highly dominant does not automatically make something a monopoly. At best you could call it an imperfect monopoly/ imperfect competition, because substitutes absolutely do exist, but they're not mostly close enough to be truly competitive. It's also important to factor in that 4/5 of the largest games on PC are not even on Steam at all: Fortnite, Roblox, Minecraft, and League of Legends. PUBG is the only one of the top-5 that's on Steam.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

Under US law, yes it does matter, that’s what makes something a monopoly under US law, otherwise it’s just a dominant market position.