It’s a free market, right? Customers choosing what they prefer and all that? And then eventually the one that provides the best price-for-service ratio comes out on top? Something like that, right?
If you want to stop Steam from being so ubiquitous with PC gaming, then create some proper competition. The only one that comes close in my eyes is GOG.
Unlike yourself apparently, I learned that in school: Monopoly is made up of two greek words “monos”, meaning single, kinda like mono and “polein”, meaning sell. It’s a market where there is a single seller. But unlike what you think, it is not possible to simply “create better competition”. A monopoly is controlled by a single entity. You can not enter a market controlled by a singular entity without ludicrous amounts of luck or wealth. There is a reason why even the US, the country with the most, largest monopolies in the world, has antitrust laws.
I had a reason to call you out, you didn’t even get any insight to my thought.
Right, and everybody buys their games over microsoft store. I don’t even know what the hell GOG is supposed to be. A monopoly is not characterized by no other players, it’s chracterized by a lack of seriously competing players. There is a serious difference. Chrome isn’t the only player. It’s still a monopoly with 70% of market share. It can move the market at will with little meaningful resistance.
If I go and sell lemonade, that doesn’t do anything to CocaCola.
Chrome/google is a monopoly because they actually pay to keep Firefox and apple Browsers running. Firefoxes major funder is google. This is so Google can claim they aren’t a monopoly.
There is also Safari, Gnome Web, Falkon (don’t know the spelling), ladybird, then you got the web browsers that are not fully web compliant… the point is there is a lot. And even if Mozilla wasn’t paid large sums of miney by Google, Firefox as code wouldn’t vanish all of a sudden. It would likely be picked up by the FOSS community (again).
I don’t need to keep trying, as this isn’t about me convincing you, but simply about me showing that you are wrong, which according to our like/dislike ratio I successfully did. You do not matter here. The academic truth does.
You put value in a like-dislike ratio and you think you can educate me?
You haven’t proven me wrong, you’re just another brainlet preaching to a choir of people who seem to be adamant at painting Valve as having a monopoly.
I mean, everyone has their preferred little dillusions, I guess, but an argument of popularity fallacy doesn’t make you right.
You’re absolutely right, it doesn’t make me right. But that’s not what I said anyways, so I don’t think you did what you think you did with that.
You little radlib you, always confusing being a fan of a thing with that thing being good <3.
If you want an actual breakdown of the points where Valve uses its monopoly to manipulate the market. But I’m not sure you’re interested in that, since you haven’t even explained a single aspect of economy, but only been telling me ho wrong I am. Shows incompetency.
It’s a free market, right? Customers choosing what they prefer and all that? And then eventually the one that provides the best price-for-service ratio comes out on top? Something like that, right?
Yeah, that’s lead to monopolies before numerous times. That does not change the fact that a monopoly is still a bad thing as as soon as there’s no competitors, the monopoly can jack up it’s prices or keep them artificially high.
Assuming there’s up front costs you have to pay to be able to compete with that monopoly (infrastructure, marketing, etc), then you’re looking at losing a lot of money trying to break into a market where everyone defaults to your competitor. And in that time, your monopolistic competitor can afford to lose even more money to bleed you out of the market and then go back to high prices.
And that’s just the financial barrier, that doesn’t count networks effects and platform lock in that can prevent customers from leaving.
Monopolies are always a bad thing, and inherently need to be heavily regulated as they structurally break capitalism. Quite frankly any industry that creates walled-garden or relies on network effects needs to be heavily regulated as well, and steam checks all three of those boxes. There’s a reason that they are THE most profitable tech company per employee, and that’s not because they’re charging fair prices.
Valve has done nothing that monopolistic corporations have done (i.e. Disney or Nintendo). They have kept themselves relatively small, private, and focused on providing one service really well.
Every other competition has only ever tried approaching what Valve does with Steam with shortcuts and quick money grabs.
It’s all fine and dandy to cry and complain about monopolies, but nobody even really tried. Epic’s store was, and still is, a laughing stock. That is what Valve is up against.
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It’s a free market, right? Customers choosing what they prefer and all that? And then eventually the one that provides the best price-for-service ratio comes out on top? Something like that, right?
If you want to stop Steam from being so ubiquitous with PC gaming, then create some proper competition. The only one that comes close in my eyes is GOG.
You do not understand the issues around monopolies and it shows.
You do not understand what a monopoly is.
Unlike yourself apparently, I learned that in school: Monopoly is made up of two greek words “monos”, meaning single, kinda like mono and “polein”, meaning sell. It’s a market where there is a single seller. But unlike what you think, it is not possible to simply “create better competition”. A monopoly is controlled by a single entity. You can not enter a market controlled by a singular entity without ludicrous amounts of luck or wealth. There is a reason why even the US, the country with the most, largest monopolies in the world, has antitrust laws.
I had a reason to call you out, you didn’t even get any insight to my thought.
Steam isnt a single seller though. There is GOG, there is Microsoft store, and other wasys to purchase games.
Right, and everybody buys their games over microsoft store. I don’t even know what the hell GOG is supposed to be. A monopoly is not characterized by no other players, it’s chracterized by a lack of seriously competing players. There is a serious difference. Chrome isn’t the only player. It’s still a monopoly with 70% of market share. It can move the market at will with little meaningful resistance.
If I go and sell lemonade, that doesn’t do anything to CocaCola.
Chrome/google is a monopoly because they actually pay to keep Firefox and apple Browsers running. Firefoxes major funder is google. This is so Google can claim they aren’t a monopoly.
Gog is the games store most people use if they don’t want steam. https://www.gog.com/en/games
There is also Safari, Gnome Web, Falkon (don’t know the spelling), ladybird, then you got the web browsers that are not fully web compliant… the point is there is a lot. And even if Mozilla wasn’t paid large sums of miney by Google, Firefox as code wouldn’t vanish all of a sudden. It would likely be picked up by the FOSS community (again).
Very smart. You learned how to repeat words written in books. You’re probably very proud of yourself.
You still don’t know what a monopoly is, however, considering this is a discussion about Valve and Steam.
But keep trying.
I don’t need to keep trying, as this isn’t about me convincing you, but simply about me showing that you are wrong, which according to our like/dislike ratio I successfully did. You do not matter here. The academic truth does.
You put value in a like-dislike ratio and you think you can educate me?
You haven’t proven me wrong, you’re just another brainlet preaching to a choir of people who seem to be adamant at painting Valve as having a monopoly.
I mean, everyone has their preferred little dillusions, I guess, but an argument of popularity fallacy doesn’t make you right.
You’re absolutely right, it doesn’t make me right. But that’s not what I said anyways, so I don’t think you did what you think you did with that.
You little radlib you, always confusing being a fan of a thing with that thing being good <3.
If you want an actual breakdown of the points where Valve uses its monopoly to manipulate the market. But I’m not sure you’re interested in that, since you haven’t even explained a single aspect of economy, but only been telling me ho wrong I am. Shows incompetency.
Yeah, that’s lead to monopolies before numerous times. That does not change the fact that a monopoly is still a bad thing as as soon as there’s no competitors, the monopoly can jack up it’s prices or keep them artificially high.
Assuming there’s up front costs you have to pay to be able to compete with that monopoly (infrastructure, marketing, etc), then you’re looking at losing a lot of money trying to break into a market where everyone defaults to your competitor. And in that time, your monopolistic competitor can afford to lose even more money to bleed you out of the market and then go back to high prices.
And that’s just the financial barrier, that doesn’t count networks effects and platform lock in that can prevent customers from leaving.
Monopolies are always a bad thing, and inherently need to be heavily regulated as they structurally break capitalism. Quite frankly any industry that creates walled-garden or relies on network effects needs to be heavily regulated as well, and steam checks all three of those boxes. There’s a reason that they are THE most profitable tech company per employee, and that’s not because they’re charging fair prices.
But Steam isn’t a walled garden, or a monopoly.
Valve has done nothing that monopolistic corporations have done (i.e. Disney or Nintendo). They have kept themselves relatively small, private, and focused on providing one service really well.
Every other competition has only ever tried approaching what Valve does with Steam with shortcuts and quick money grabs.
It’s all fine and dandy to cry and complain about monopolies, but nobody even really tried. Epic’s store was, and still is, a laughing stock. That is what Valve is up against.