• Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      They account for about 75% of game sales on PC from what I’m finding, it’s a “virtual monopoly”, i.e. they have enough reach to control the market even if they have competitors.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        75% of the units sold or 75% of the overall revemue. Given that the most successful PC games aren’t even on Steam, the latter seems unlikely to me. Roblox alone is a sustained revenue stream in insanely high numbers.

        Do they block the competition in any way? They aren’t the stewards of Windows. Epic buys exclusive rights to games. Does Valve do the same? On Steam Deck, there’s even an entire independent app store (Discover with Flathub) enabled right out of the box. That’s how the community made Minecraft and Heroic Game Launcher available. Official EGS, GamePass, and GOG launchers could be made available via Flathub but MS etc. choose not to.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          They have their own unethical business practice they’re getting sued for (preventing sales at a lower price on competing platforms) and just because you agree with what they do now doesn’t mean it’s not a risk to have such a behemoth in the market, Gaben is nice now, it just needs him changing his mind or retiring/dying and shit could hit the fan real quick.

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            It’s not about Valve or Newell being nice or not, it’s about whether Valve has a monopoly and the EU just recently looked at digital markets closely and determined that Valve is not a gatekeeper.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Because of the way they act at the moment, it doesn’t mean that they’re not in a monopoly position.

              Turns out it’s simply because the EU didn’t even study their case because the PC gaming market is too small to bother 🤡

              • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Well, the EU made a list of monopolists in digital markets and decided that Valve is not one of them and that has nothing to do with current behavior.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  Find me a source confirming that they actually studied Steam’s position in their market. They have specific criterias, including financial and user ones, and Steam doesn’t meet them… oopsy!

                  • stillwater@lemm.ee
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                    1 year ago

                    You’re the one that needs to provide a source since this was your original claim to refute someone else’s cited source. Don’t sealion and constantly ask someone else for more and more and more sources when they’ve already provided one and you’ve provided none.

                  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    Find me a source confirming that they actually studied Steam’s position in their market.

                    I found a super recent source that does not list Valve as a monopolist. Maybe you should go and find a credible source other than “Trust me, bro” that Steam is a monopoly.

                    They have specific criterias, including financial and user ones, and Steam doesn’t meet them… oopsy!

                    So Steam does not rake in so much money to hog the market and also does not have enough users to hog the customer base. If anything is an oopsy, it’s you accidentally admitting that Steam is not a monopoly. Good we cleared that up!

          • stillwater@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            They have their own unethical business practice they’re getting sued for (preventing sales at a lower price on competing platforms)

            Who’s suing them for something so boilerplate? This isn’t that stupid frivolous lawsuit from Wolfire you’re referring to, is it?

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Frivolous? The judge has accepted new evidence and the lawsuit has been allowed to proceed.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Nintendo is compared to other console manufacturers.

          Microsoft is considered to be in a position of monopoly in the OS market, yet they’re not the ones building the PC itself.

          Holy fuck did I just enter a freaking asylum or something?

    • Phil_in_here@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Yeah, to say a successful business is a monopoly because it is far reaching is absurd.

      Call me when Good-Old-Epic-Steam launches.

      • rambaroo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The fact that there are tons of games only available on steam should tell you it’s a monopoly.

        It’s fucking shocking to me that so many people here actually believe that Valve isn’t a monopoly. You must have your head way up your ass.

        • skulkingaround@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          How many games are actually steam exclusive on PC though, not counting 50 cent shovelware crap? A good chunk of the best selling PC games ever (minecraft for example) are not even available on steam.

          I just went through the top 10 on steam and other than counter strike, which is literally made by valve, all of them are available elsewhere.

        • stillwater@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Because that’s not at all how a monopoly is defined and you ignored the concept of retail exclusivity deals to make this statement lol.

    • Zorque@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      One can have a monopoly without directly trying for it. Especially when it comes to services with a lot infrastructure involved. Once you make those investments, it’s hard for anyone to compete against them.

      A monopoly just means you control a significant amount of the market. I think, technically, they would fall under oligopoly. Where a few businesses have control of the market instead of just a single business. But the point is they have a far larger share of the market than most others. This is mostly because they create a product that people want to use, instead of making a service that unfairly captures the market through things like game exclusivity or hostile takeovers.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        But when the EU recently announced service gatekeepers, Valve was not among them. Microsoft is.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          *Because they don’t meat the minimum financial and monthly user criterias to be taken into consideration when analyzing the monopoly status of their platform

          You forgot to add that part 👍

          • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Because they don’t meat the minimum financial and monthly user criterias to be taken into consideration when analyzing the monopoly status of their platform

            So Steam does not meet / meat🥩 the financial and monthly user numbers to count as a monopoly? So Steam is not a monopoly then. Great.

            • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              No, the PC videogame market is too small for the European Union to analyse it.

              If the local hardware store is the only one selling screws for 100km around and it doesn’t show up on their list, does it means they don’t have a monopoly or it simply means that they don’t bother checking that because the hardware store doesn’t:

              Make 6.5B a year/doesn’t have a market capitalization of 65B

              Doesn’t have 45m monthly users in the union AND 10k business users in the union

              Meets those criterias three years in a row

              Because these are the criterias required for the EU to take the time to analyze a companies’ position in their market.

              • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                No, the PC videogame market is too small for the European Union to analyse it.

                Then please provide ANY form of facts-based analysis that Steam is a monopoly and no “Trust me, bro” isn’t that.

                • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 year ago

                  The European Union considers some companies to be a monopoly with a smaller market presence than Steam has in the PC video games sales market. That comes from your own source buddy.

                  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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                    1 year ago

                    That comes from your own source buddy.

                    You continue to deflect that you have no proof that Steam is a monopoly.