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US Court Rules Google a Monopoly in 'Biggest Antitrust Case of the 21st Century'.
(www.commondreams.org)
this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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So because they're treating you right it's ok to put 70% of the market in the hands of a single person?
They're not anti-competitive, that's the difference. Devs can even sell Steam keys on their own website and take 100% of the profit if they so choose, and there's absolutely no lock-in.
I'm not sure where the anti-trust is. Having a high marketshare by itself doesn't mean you're committing anti-trust, abusing that market position does.
Just having a high market share isn't the issue. It's abusing that dominant market position that is.
Valve has been smart enough not to do that. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the like haven't. In fact, Valve's competitors have been more anti-competitive than Valve.
ASML, who make EUV machines and other semiconductor tooling, is also in a dominant market position (way more dominant actually). Do you ever see calls to break them up? No. Because they haven't been abusing their power. They know that if they put a toe out of line, they'll be in trouble with regulators.
Google and the like have been able to act with impunity because the US protects them, to the detriment of their smaller companies and their citizens.
ASML is basically a strategic asset. Breaking them up to have a more level playing field inherently threatens the West's economic-political position. If ASML abused their position, it wouldn't be the regulators so much as the CIA that showed up to tell them to reconsider.
Really? Because they're part of the giants that determine game prices, pricing is based on everyone that takes a cut along the way, they take 30%, that's calculated into what games need to sell for, 30% is enough to make them billions in profit, billions in profit is money that came out of our pockets to go in Newell's pockets so he can own six yachts.
I swear if it was a public company people would be flipping out because their numbers would be public and the profit would be going to investors, but they're private and they only have one investor the profit goes to do that's perfectly fine I guess???
30% is the industry standard.
Shit, doesn't YouTube take like 60%? I think Twitch takes a big chunk too. Gog takes 30%. MS takes 30%. Sony takes 30%. Nintendo takes 30%. Apple takes 30%. GameStop, BestBuy, Amazon, and Walmart all take roughly 30% too.
It's the industry standard.
And unlike the likes of the Play Store or App store, Valve provides a lot for that 30%.
free cloud sync
free online multiplayer (not a given, look at MS/Sony/Nintendo)
forums
game demos
game recording with some neat features
a VR system
in-home streaming
family game sharing
a review system
a mod distribution platform
dev tools
advertising
online services you can tie into your game
achievements
a cross-platform, userspace anti-cheat solution
notes
backwards compatibility tooling
OS compatibility layers
Linux development
driver development
vast controller support
performance overlays
steam input
the list goes on...
I'm not in love with everything Valve does (loot boxes, micro-transactions 🤢). But it's undeniable that compared to other companies that take the same (or higher) cut, you get a lot back.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to live in the fantasy world where they only take a 1% cut, but that's just what it is, a fantasy.
Ok so because it's the industry standard it's ok?
How about we focus on the fact that the industry standard makes owners and c-suite billionaires? Do you think people would start hating a company if they cut their share to 10% and prices came down instead of having that extra enrich the few?
Reread my comment. I'm not saying it's ok because it's the industry standard, I'm saying it's tolerable because it's the industry standard and yet despite their strong market position, they still consciously provide a good value.
And let's not pretend that even if everyone switched to a 10% margin (assuming that would even be profitable), people wouldn't then complain about 10% being too high. It's like taxes - no matter what it's set as, a significant amount of people will always say "that's too high! I don't want to pay that!"
Antitrust is not about preventing big companies making money. It's about preventing specific practices by monopolies to restrict the free market and to abuse their users. Don't get me wrong, there's a ton I find morally objectionable with companies as big as Valve and people as rich as Gabe. We might agree on those issues. But this particular Google thing is about something else. And Valve is indeed different to most tech companies in that regard.
If you don't consider that a company taking billions out of our pockets and putting it in the pockets of a single person abuse then I don't know what to say.
You say that like your only option is to buy games from steam.
There are many other online stores you can use. Sorry you don't like the most popular/oldest/one that reflects the wishes of the consumer the most.
Hot take: if they aren't hurting me or others, money wise or not, I don't care if they have majority market share. In this case it makes sense, they treat their customers right and don't bully the market.
This simply isn't the fight.
But they're hurting you, their market dominance means they don't have to compete for pricing, the reason Newell is a billionaire is because the games they sell are sold for more than they're worth.
You know Valve doesn't set the prices right? The developers do
The devs determine they need to sell X copies at Y$/copy, they then calculate what Valve's cut will be and add it over Y$
Example: You think you'll sell a million copy and want to make 10 millions to recoup your cost and make a profit so you need 10$ per. But the truth is that after everyone else gets their cut (publisher, distributor, taxes...) you're left with about 50% of the sale price going to you, that means your need to sell the game for 20$ to end up with 10$/copy going to you. If everyone else had lower margins and you got 70% of the sale price ending up in your pocket you would need to sell your game for 14.30$ a copy to end up with 10$ going to you. Everyone else in this example are the people who aren't part of the actual development cost, their margins are huge compared to the amount of work they accomplish, the proof of that is that they're making billions in profit, profit is revenue - cost, their cost is basically nothing, hosting content and distributing it costs peanuts these days and prices are only going down, so their profit is actually increasing passively over time. Because the devs need to set the price at 20$ instead of 14.30$ you're paying 5.70$ more for the same product and that 5.70$ is all going into the pockets of people that had nothing to do with actually creating the product you're purchasing.
How is that different than selling anything else anywhere? You've picked a strange hill to die on, and your reasoning doesn't even fit.
It's not different, when did I say it's a Steam only issue?
With your one word reply to the post.
I just added one more example that no one talks about. Find one of my comments where I say the other examples weren't just as guilty.
Oh now you haven't only been harping about steam for the last 12 hours? Now the problem is that everything is a monopoly? Lmao ok
I'm talking about Steam because that's what this part of the conversation is about, funny how that works, right? I'll be the first one to call out any company who's owner/c-suite are billionaires. If we want to talk about PC gaming specifically then Epic is no better, neither is GOG. Decentralize that shit.
Ok kid. Have fun.
You don't get to decide for me who I think is or isn't hurting me, I do.
With these takes, what I really want to know is: Who hurt you?
Oh so you believe that margins high enough that the owner is a billionaire don't hurt your wallet?
You are so lost in the sauce. We're talking about a company that hosts a video game sales platform, if I feel like they are fucking me, I can go elsewhere, there's epic, gog, ubishit, ea, xbox, itch, I don't have to go to steam. I choose to.
If they aren't fucking me, let them make as much as they want. There are far, FAR bigger fish to fry.
But all of them are fucking us at the same time. It's the same thing as saying "I don't need to go to that grocery chain, I can go to another one." Sure you can, in the end you're just making a difference boss a billionaire, all of them are fucking evil!
It's a systemic issue and unless you're a billionaire you're a victim just like all of us, even if you refuse to see it.
The systemic issue you are talking about is far higher than any company or conglomerate. You cannot blame them for playing the game they've been given. The system itself needs changed, until such a day I will continue to use the products and services that do not ruin my bank or values. Therefore I will continue to use steam, they are not harming me, I am no fucking victim. The world you desire won't come to pass by crying online and telling others how to feel. Go be the change you want and protest, send mail to government officials, fuck it throw some tomato sauce in some paintings, do whatever you have to. But do not, under any circumstance think I'm going to change my mind on a service that I not only use, but like and most generally would endorse. If you want to change minds, you need a compelling argument.
ADHD rant over, thanks for your time.
"It's an issue but I don't consider myself a victim. I won't stop sending money to the people profiting from the system in place at my expense. Be the change your want to see."
Are you for real?
No one force Newell to be a billionaire, he owns the fucking company, he could decide to cut their margins to 20% tomorrow morning, he doesn't, he collects fucking yachts instead.
Wow, nice job putting things in quotes I never said.
"I have a deep seated need to make you follow my specific beliefs otherwise you are the problem and I must demean you online."
See, I can do it too. Grow up.
Honestly, Fight for demolishing Amazon, google, apple, Nvidia, fascist politics, literally any car company, Boeing, big oil, big pharma, etc etc. They are all much much bigger, and much much more evil than. anything valve could possibly do. thats the real fight.