If google fucking PLAY STORE is a monopoly then I hope they nuke Steam next. No excuses.
Edit: lemmings are crying bcs I threatened their favourite company lmao. Suddenly all the capitalism haters activated their one brain cell to protect their games 😂
I haven't ever had a computer that has been pre-built that comes with steam pre-installed.
I've had plenty to come with bloatware, but none of that bloatware has ever been Steam. And you know why? Because Valve doesn't pay companies to pre install Steam.
Before jumping on the "TIL" bandwagon, maybe consider fact-checking and not just regurgitating baseless rumors. Steam dominates the gaming marketplace. They control a massive share of digital game distribution, making it a one-stop-shop for gamers.
Steam's the cool kid on the block, and everyone else should just pack up and go home. Monopoly vibes, man. /s
Can you tell me how Valve forces steam to be installed on everyone's PCs and bans the installation of other game stores? You still haven't done that yet.
Steam is optional, not preinstalled, and Valve does nothing to force its use. Valve doesn't even do legal (but shady) things like exclusivity deals, like some of their competitors do.
Google, on the other hand, knows OEMs have no choice but to use their software, so they force companies into signing agreements saying no third party app stores, no not including XYZ apps and Google telemetry, etc.
One is an abuse of market position. The other is just a popular product. They are not the same.
In the hypothetical world where Valve creates an OS that replaces Windows, MS exits the PC space leaving SteamOS to take up all of the market, and Valve forces PC makers to only have Steam and no other game stores, and that all revenue should go through Valve, then you'll have a point. But right now it's just "Steam is popular" - that's not an argument, there's zero coercion going on.
Again, point me to where Valve is doing what Google is doing. Stop evading this request.
Steam is not on stock market, their value is purely estimated and compared with different factors. Unlike google you don't know "what's behind the doors" with steam.
But they do dirty practices to keep their position high, which are posted over and over again. 30% cut, psychological marketing tricks to keep you hooked, insider steam market, "analyzing trends" by data mining your PC, whitewashing and downplaying any fuckups, supporting Russians during the war, cleansing Chinese users, pressuring game developers with Steam's terms and conditions and more. That's as much as I could think of rn. Go ride Gabe's dick and lick off all the black cum from under his triple chin.
Google made the same argument in this case, but Epic responded by saying that impairing the competition is sufficient to describe the behavior as unlawful. Like Google, Valve control the vast majority of the market, charge a fee that is way above the cost of service, and have rules that make the competitors less appealing. Like this one:
In response to one inquiry from a game publisher, in another example, Valve explained: “We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam key or not, as a part of the same shared PC market- so even if you weren’t using Steam keys, we’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. . . .”
Google made the same argument in this case but Epic responded by saying that impairing the competition is sufficient to describe the behavior as unlawful.
But Valve doesnt do anything to impair competition. Google owns and controls the operating system, require their store to be installed, and pay off other companies to be the default. Valve doesn't do anything like that.
In fact Valve is pretty much the only company trying to promote a FOSS OS that no one controls.
The landlord also has several competitors, but when he gets all the properties for himself and the rest gets almost nothing he's a monopolist, no? Look what Microsoft and google and hundreds of other companies did to become Monopoly.
If you're thinking steam isn't a monopoly then why is it nearly impossible to create a gaming platform that competes with these giants? If you can't even enter the market because of ONE company, then something is very wrong.
(Not talking about epic or gog. I mean totally new platforms)
If you're thinking steam isn't a monopoly then why is it nearly impossible to create a gaming platform that competes with these giants?
Depends on what you mean by "monopoly". In the strictest sense it means they have zero competition (hence the prefix "mono",meaning one), which is clearly untrue because we have Epic, GoG, Origin, Battlenet, Meta, etc. etc.
In the case of Google, it means they take anticompetitive measures. I've asked you what anticompetitive measures Valve takes but you don't seem to want to provide an answer. Why is that?
If you mean "big business that other companies have trouble competing with", that does not fit any definition of a "monopoly".
It's not "impossible" at all. It is very difficult because you're fighting established brands that are not regional, and have decades of experience and brand recognition on you. Competing with them would require a fuckton of money and also some sort of novel features to bring to the market that they're not. These are not anticompetitive measures, it's just effective business.
How would you go about even trying to rectify that? Would you force Valve to give money and promotion to a competing service? Or would you just go full CCP and ban them entirely in favor of the state-sponsored Bytedance option?
If I wanted to start a power grid company, I would need a fuckton of money as well. It's called a natural monopoly.
On the other hand starting a new gaming platform is just like competing with a national power grid company. It's nearly impossible.
You become a target that's on sight from all angles. At that moment you're prone to pretty much every anti competitive tactic.
Tell me why no one is trying to overtake steam and why companies that actually try, are being flushed.
If I wanted to start a power grid company, I would need a fuckton of money as well. It's called a natural monopoly.
That's simply not what a monopoly is. You're confused.
A monopoly is when there's only a single energy company available, which is not the case here.
Tell me why no one is trying to overtake steam and why companies that actually try, are being flushed.
I already have. Lots of companies are doing that right now, but they all suck. I mean GoG is great as a simple game store but most publishers are not willing to sell without DRM and their store is mostly nothing more than just a store, where Steam is so much more than that.
Epic has a long history of anti-consumer behavior that has earned them a bad reputation. They're also partially owned by the CCP.
A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs... give the largest supplier in an industry...an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors.
This is for like, cell tower companies and stuff where infrastructure costs are in the billions. A game store has no infrastructural costs in excess of any other business.
You can't just call a business a monopoly because it costs a lot of money to compete with them.
You've replied to me 3 times now without ever answering my question about what anticompetitive measures Steam has taken to remain a supposed monopoly and thus I'm left to assume you're just trolling and will have to end this conversation. Goodbye.
Yeah, you have 0 knowledge about app economy. Servers, infrastructure, production, employees are all free. Go compete with steam using your $1 cloud hosting. Bye.
You've replied to me 3 times now without ever answering my question about what anticompetitive measures Steam has taken to remain a supposed monopoly and thus I'm left to assume you're just trolling and will have to end this conversation. Goodbye.
I said it in another comment. You have 0 awareness in the conversation you initiated.