Yeah, they’ve got a monopoly and it sucks, but they don’t seem to have a desire to push it to the point of drawing attention. I know why Epic does what it does, because they have to compete with the near complete market dominance of Valve. However, it’s not like Valve has used their position to increase prices or anything like that. They also invest in doing things that improve the experience rather than just trying to harm the competition.
I don’t like the monopoly, but I do appreciate Valve as a company.
I keep seeing “Monopoly” repeated, but I’m having a hard time understanding the logic.
They haven’t bought competitors. They don’t do anything to hinder others progress in this market, sometime to the detriment of their customers (see: Steam launches another launcher, to launch the game). They haven’t openly shown anything anti-competitive, in fact they have stuck to their guns (30% cut) when others have attempted to compete.
What they have done is cultivate the best platform that continues to evolve, add features, and maintain stability. Consumers continue to choose to use Steam overwhelmingly, but outside of Valve’s own games, there is no threat of exclusivity or punishment.
It’s the opposite of monopolistic behavior. Any company is free to compete, build their own platform, and offer software. It’s expensive, and tricky to get right, but nothing is stopping them, Valve included.
A monopoly doesn’t care about actions. There’s only one place people think about when they think to purchase a game on PC. That means it’s a monopoly. Sure, it’s not a horrible situation, and they don’t seem to be significantly exploiting their position, but that doesn’t change that they have no real competition.
If we’re going deep into the literal meaning of monopoly, the “mono” prefix means “one” but they have several legitimate competitors so that’s simply untrue.
Well they kind of have used their position to indirectly increase prices… If they take a 30% cut then the games need to sell for more to make the same profit (and there’s the geolock and anti price-competition thing too)
Ah yes, the monopoly, a business with competitors such as ea origin, Ubisoft dunno what they called it, epic store, gog. The word monopoly must break down like monopol-y as in like a monopole, a magnet with only one polarity that is separate from the other polarity.
For launchers there’s Epic, GoG, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft Gamepass, R*. If we’re talking game sales there’s a litany of other websites to purchase games from Humble Bundle, Fanatical, Itch.io, Green Man Gaming.
Players can buy directly from the publisher in most cases. For outside those, there are options of DRM free or whatever Epic supposedly has to offer.
Steam may have a dominant position, but I’m not entirely sure that’s a monopoly. If we had no other options? Sure. We have multiple other options. Steam Keys are the most common for a number of the sites, but I’d also consider that none of these launchers have the set of features that Valve offers with theirs.
Does people choosing a better service make it a monopoly? I think if Steam didn’t have even 1/3rd of what it offers then the other options would be more widely used. Rather, if the other options put as much effort into the quality of life of their launchers, they’d be more popular.
But personally I also think the Epic-backed Wolffire lawsuit claiming Valve has a monopoly is kind of BS, unless it comes out to be true that Steams market power forced developers to keep games off other stores and keep it on their own. If Valve were forcing its competitors to be shit, then sure it’s a monopoly.
Up to this point, it seems to me that Steam has dominated the market because of reliability. The consistent sales, refunds are consistent, the program has a number of uses from communities to guides to per-game control schemes, to little things like the soundtracks of games being in one spot.
Yeah, they’ve got a monopoly and it sucks, but they don’t seem to have a desire to push it to the point of drawing attention. I know why Epic does what it does, because they have to compete with the near complete market dominance of Valve. However, it’s not like Valve has used their position to increase prices or anything like that. They also invest in doing things that improve the experience rather than just trying to harm the competition.
I don’t like the monopoly, but I do appreciate Valve as a company.
I keep seeing “Monopoly” repeated, but I’m having a hard time understanding the logic.
They haven’t bought competitors. They don’t do anything to hinder others progress in this market, sometime to the detriment of their customers (see: Steam launches another launcher, to launch the game). They haven’t openly shown anything anti-competitive, in fact they have stuck to their guns (30% cut) when others have attempted to compete.
What they have done is cultivate the best platform that continues to evolve, add features, and maintain stability. Consumers continue to choose to use Steam overwhelmingly, but outside of Valve’s own games, there is no threat of exclusivity or punishment.
It’s the opposite of monopolistic behavior. Any company is free to compete, build their own platform, and offer software. It’s expensive, and tricky to get right, but nothing is stopping them, Valve included.
A monopoly doesn’t care about actions. There’s only one place people think about when they think to purchase a game on PC. That means it’s a monopoly. Sure, it’s not a horrible situation, and they don’t seem to be significantly exploiting their position, but that doesn’t change that they have no real competition.
If we’re going deep into the literal meaning of monopoly, the “mono” prefix means “one” but they have several legitimate competitors so that’s simply untrue.
Well they kind of have used their position to indirectly increase prices… If they take a 30% cut then the games need to sell for more to make the same profit (and there’s the geolock and anti price-competition thing too)
Ah yes, the monopoly, a business with competitors such as ea origin, Ubisoft dunno what they called it, epic store, gog. The word monopoly must break down like monopol-y as in like a monopole, a magnet with only one polarity that is separate from the other polarity.
For launchers there’s Epic, GoG, Ubisoft, EA, Microsoft Gamepass, R*. If we’re talking game sales there’s a litany of other websites to purchase games from Humble Bundle, Fanatical, Itch.io, Green Man Gaming.
Players can buy directly from the publisher in most cases. For outside those, there are options of DRM free or whatever Epic supposedly has to offer.
Steam may have a dominant position, but I’m not entirely sure that’s a monopoly. If we had no other options? Sure. We have multiple other options. Steam Keys are the most common for a number of the sites, but I’d also consider that none of these launchers have the set of features that Valve offers with theirs.
Does people choosing a better service make it a monopoly? I think if Steam didn’t have even 1/3rd of what it offers then the other options would be more widely used. Rather, if the other options put as much effort into the quality of life of their launchers, they’d be more popular.
But personally I also think the Epic-backed Wolffire lawsuit claiming Valve has a monopoly is kind of BS, unless it comes out to be true that Steams market power forced developers to keep games off other stores and keep it on their own. If Valve were forcing its competitors to be shit, then sure it’s a monopoly.
Up to this point, it seems to me that Steam has dominated the market because of reliability. The consistent sales, refunds are consistent, the program has a number of uses from communities to guides to per-game control schemes, to little things like the soundtracks of games being in one spot.
Is it a monopoly? Or is it the people’s choice?