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I mean, this meme is not wrong. Valve is a de facto monopoly because everyone else is shit, and user hostile. But, a monopoly is still a monopoly, and we shouldn't be glazing a billion dollar company, in any circumstances. And it's not like Valve has never done anything wrong.
It's ok to like Valve, I like Valve. But we need to hold them to account, and call them out when they do something wrong. And if you really think Valve did nothing wrong in this case, why not let them prove it in court? They have a lot of money, they can afford some lawyers.
Is it, though? I can buy games on gog, on itch.io, on epic (but that would require me to use epic, lol), or maybe on humble bundle (took a quick look, mentioned steam keys, not sure).
I thought that "monopoly" meant that a company has exclusive control in their market which clearly doesn't apply here.
Either way, it'll be interesting (and maybe infuriating) to see how the court arguments pan out.
I mean we say Google has a monopoly on search, but there are bing, duckduckgo, kagi, etc. You are thinking absolute monopoly.
Good comparison. I use DDG for my own search and only rarely switch to Google if I'm not finding something.
At the same time, "You can't avoid dealing with Google if you want to run a public-facing website" rings true.
I'm less sure about applying the same sentiment to Valve. Can you realistically make a living as an indy game dev on itch.io or gog.com? I'm not sure. Food for thought.
Most devs who shared their thoughts online say that not being able to sell on Steam means a death sentence for their game. There was a case recently about a game who Steam banned from selling and without the media coverage they would’ve never made it, because itch.io sales represent a very small portion.
I feel like a key difference between Google's search Monopoly and Valve's is the fact that Google paid off the competition to be the default on basically every browser.
Valve's de facto monopoly is very real, or at least they absolutely dominate the PC game market (IANAL, no clue if Valve's monopoly passes the legal bar). But outside of the SteamDeck and a couple gaming focused laptop's, Steam doesn't get forced on any user as the default. They personally install it.
You are right. Google is a monopoly, and they are at the same time anti-competitive. Valve hasn't done anything anti-competitive yet (that I know of, anyways), but they are a monopoly.
I feel people strongly associate being anti-competitive with being a monopoly, which is fair, not many monopolies out there that are not anti-competitive. But there is a distinction.
I don't even think Google has a search Monopoly. They might have a maps Monopoly. But even Apple competes with them pretty heavily on that. (Before I'm personally given my own goddamn cross to hang from, I hate google)
Google has a search monopoly, that is not in question.
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/department-justice-wins-significant-remedies-against-google
The only thing is, had the case been decided under any other DoJ, Google would not have gotten off as lightly as they did. But even Pam-fucking-Dow-over-50,000-Bondi agreed that Google was a monopoly.
monopoly law usually kicks in around 95% market share.
Steam has effective monopoly.
If a game is not released on Steam, it might as well not exist. There are only a handful of exceptions.
And games that do get death threats from Steam fans. Because how dare those developers not release on "the only worthy platform"? Remember the Epic games?
Monopolies are more than just "competition does not exist".
These "handful of exceptions" are the vast majority of the entire PC gaming revenue, though. In 2022/2023 the overall revenue was 45 Billion Dollars, of which Steam made up 8.6 Billion.
30% of 45 Billion is 13.5 Billion.
Of which Valve made 8.6 Billion.
Which means only 4.9 Billion was made by every other PC platform combined. Including the standalone games like Fortnite and Minecraft.
Thank you for proving my point.
So what exactly should be the punishment for doing nothing illegal while all your competitors sabotage themselves?
I agree. But I'm also keeping in mind that this is the situation capitalists claim to want: competition for everyone to continually improve. They just missed the part where they were supposed to improve and not make things worse. Aside from that, with all the major sites people think of like EA and Epic, it makes things even more difficult to topple that monopoly. Everyone wants to have their games in a convenient place. Having competition is incompatible with what players would want, because they'd need eight different launchers for games. I'm fully content with cycling itch and steam when I want what one or the other offers. For what I imagine is most people, it's easier to use just one list/site that already has everything.
Well, everything in one place doesn't really require a monopoly. The key is interoperability. It would be having a single launcher that can download games from any store. This way the customer can have choice over where to buy games and what launcher to use. It'd something similar to the heroic launcher.
Absolutely. But I doubt companies would agree to even try that. They'd rather compete for the spot of "the launcher everyone goes to" (and fail).
well, government regulations. one can dream...
Sometimes a monopoly can have so much money that it actually does some very significant amount of innovation. Look at Ma Bell.
The problem is to not let them get so big though. Then you've got to break it up and that gets hairy. Look at Ma Bell.
And then they might try to get back together. Look at Ma Bell.
And at the end of it, we might just end up with a duopoly of shit. Look at Ma Bell and Xfinity.