Gaming

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

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

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[–] [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.