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Can anyone overthrow Steam on PC? "As long as Valve is independent and not a publicly traded company," analyst says it looks impossible (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 1 point 1 week ago (4 children)

And yet, plainly capable of abusing their near total dominance of an open platform. Hence the concern about Gabe specifically. They have this power, but choose not to be dicks about it.

They still have this power. That's what the word means.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago (3 children)

    Valve does not abuse their market leader position. Being a market leader and a monopoly is a total different position.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (2 children)

    Market share is the only thing defining a monopoly.

    Absolute monopolies basically do not exist, except as subcategories of de facto monopolies. Even Apple obviously does not monopolize smartphones.

    What would anti-competitive practices even mean, if there were no competitors?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    There is no marketshare PC game launchers. What even does that mean? The most successfull games are not even on Steam, most played games are LoL, Roblox, Fortnite, Minecraft and besides that, there are plenty of alternative shops every user can freely choose from. Nobody is forced to use Steam, its an open platform. Every single game they buy can be purchased on any of these platforms. You don't even need to buy games on Steam, to buy Steam game keys.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly:

    A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell') is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service.[1] A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit.

    Therefore Steam is not a true monopoly. They just have a huge market leader position.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    ... of fucking course there's a marketshare, for the sales of games on the PC market. Most sales are through Steam. Be serious.

    The only games that don't live or die by being on Steam are wildly exceptional cases that would have succeeded even if you still had to drive to a store to get them.

    In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. [...] In essence, the term monopoly may be used any time that a market for a good is controlled by a limited number of actors.

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