A new lawsuit was filed earlier this month in the UK that alleges Valve, owner of Steam, has been overcharging 14 million PC gamers and abusing its dominant position in the UK.
It’s so crazy how Valve gets called a monopoly because of how their competition refuses to make anything of equivalent quality. It literally took the epic games store years before they had a shopping cart to check out in. Valve is the only one with good customer service, a solid refund policy, and no 3rd party exclusives in the platform. Valve is basically the only one that’s not a publically traded company, so it’s not responsible to shareholders and going through enshittification like everything else.
Its like imagine five barbers in town. One gets all the business and is rich, but he’s nothing amazing, just a reliable barber. The other four barbers are constantly using rusty razors and punch customers in the throat right before they leave. No matter what anyone tells them, they won’t stop. New razors cost money they don’t want to spend, and your hair gets cut mostly the same in the end so why bother?
Stop defending them, monopolies are never good to consumers.
By your logic they shouldn’t be broken because it’s the competitors’ fault if people don’t do business with them instead.
Well no, if your company is big enough that it doesn’t make sense to go for the competition then no matter what the competition does you are so far ahead that they’ll never catch up and you can sway the market as you please.
By your logic they shouldn’t be broken because it’s the competitors’ fault if people don’t do business with them instead.
Yes exactly, that’s why they shouldn’t be broken.
They’re consumer friendly and are not taking specific action to BE a monopoly, contrary to many other companies.
There’s also enough competition and it’s exactly their fault that they fail/refuse to implement what makes Steam so popular.
I’m definitely against monopolies, but mindlessly slapping rules on them just because they’re labeled monopolies is some of the dumbest shit I’ve heard
Monopolies are often great for consumers… When they’re nationalized. Obviously that’s not going to happen with Valve any time soon.
What would the benefit be to breaking up Valve? How would you even go about doing that? The obvious choice is to break out different business units- break things like the hardware sales and game development into separate companies. But that still doesn’t address the issue of them having too much market share for software sales.
The next beat thing I can think of would be to have some sort of regulatory body just to place restrictions on the industry. Which, of course, would vary from country to country, and would probably have to include all of their competitors: Epic, GoG, and the various publisher-specific stores, maybe even other storefronts like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It would be hard not to also hit the mobile games industry too (which, to be fair, might be a good thing). But this kind of thing is usually reserved for things like utilities, communications, financial markets, etc. Such an organization for a luxury recreationak market… I have to wonder how much political appetite there really would be for that? Is that really what people want their governments to be focusing on?
Not that I disagree with the good experience - Valve has done a lot to support Linux gaming and I’m bloody grateful for that, but I believe Valve was kicked up the arse by regulation and Epic Games converting their Fortnite launcher into a Fortnite launcher that lets you buy other games being a viable threat (the whole controversies not withstanding).
Not to mention that in the US and Canada (outside of Quebec), you get a one year warranty on Steam Deck while in some other places (namely the EU, UK and Quebec) the regulations kick in. For the UK, you get six years minimum from consumer protection law (oversimplification, but you get the gist). Some of their good decisions and experiences were a result of regulation forcing its hands.
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No need to have 100% of the market to be a monopoly, just need to have enough influence that you control the market, which is their case.
It’s so crazy how Valve gets called a monopoly because of how their competition refuses to make anything of equivalent quality. It literally took the epic games store years before they had a shopping cart to check out in. Valve is the only one with good customer service, a solid refund policy, and no 3rd party exclusives in the platform. Valve is basically the only one that’s not a publically traded company, so it’s not responsible to shareholders and going through enshittification like everything else.
Its like imagine five barbers in town. One gets all the business and is rich, but he’s nothing amazing, just a reliable barber. The other four barbers are constantly using rusty razors and punch customers in the throat right before they leave. No matter what anyone tells them, they won’t stop. New razors cost money they don’t want to spend, and your hair gets cut mostly the same in the end so why bother?
So they sue the first guy for having a monopoly.
A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly.
Stop defending them, monopolies are never good to consumers.
By your logic they shouldn’t be broken because it’s the competitors’ fault if people don’t do business with them instead.
Well no, if your company is big enough that it doesn’t make sense to go for the competition then no matter what the competition does you are so far ahead that they’ll never catch up and you can sway the market as you please.
Yes exactly, that’s why they shouldn’t be broken.
They’re consumer friendly and are not taking specific action to BE a monopoly, contrary to many other companies.
There’s also enough competition and it’s exactly their fault that they fail/refuse to implement what makes Steam so popular.
I’m definitely against monopolies, but mindlessly slapping rules on them just because they’re labeled monopolies is some of the dumbest shit I’ve heard
You cannot base your decision on if the monopoly seems friendly to you or not, what kind of Mickey mouse logic is that? Fucking hell.
You’re going to wait until it’s problematic to do something about it? Man, I hope you show more logic in how you managed things in your personal life!
“I’m definitely against monopolies”
No, you’re not, you’re against the monopolies you don’t like, there’s a major difference.
Monopolies are often great for consumers… When they’re nationalized. Obviously that’s not going to happen with Valve any time soon.
What would the benefit be to breaking up Valve? How would you even go about doing that? The obvious choice is to break out different business units- break things like the hardware sales and game development into separate companies. But that still doesn’t address the issue of them having too much market share for software sales.
The next beat thing I can think of would be to have some sort of regulatory body just to place restrictions on the industry. Which, of course, would vary from country to country, and would probably have to include all of their competitors: Epic, GoG, and the various publisher-specific stores, maybe even other storefronts like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It would be hard not to also hit the mobile games industry too (which, to be fair, might be a good thing). But this kind of thing is usually reserved for things like utilities, communications, financial markets, etc. Such an organization for a luxury recreationak market… I have to wonder how much political appetite there really would be for that? Is that really what people want their governments to be focusing on?
Do you have a better solution to propose?
Not that I disagree with the good experience - Valve has done a lot to support Linux gaming and I’m bloody grateful for that, but I believe Valve was kicked up the arse by regulation and Epic Games converting their Fortnite launcher into a Fortnite launcher that lets you buy other games being a viable threat (the whole controversies not withstanding).
Not to mention that in the US and Canada (outside of Quebec), you get a one year warranty on Steam Deck while in some other places (namely the EU, UK and Quebec) the regulations kick in. For the UK, you get six years minimum from consumer protection law (oversimplification, but you get the gist). Some of their good decisions and experiences were a result of regulation forcing its hands.