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Valve "played capitalism so well they broke it" and now Steam can't be replaced (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 1 week ago by [B] to c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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[–] 3 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Monopoly: exclusive ownership through legal privilege, command of supply, or concerted action

Steam has legitimate competitors. They do not have exclusive control. They are, however, dominant because of the incompetence of their competitors. And there are absolutely issues and risks that go along with that. It is not a healthy market, but insulting people when they correct you about the monopoly label is not helpful or productive.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 child)

    This is actually one of those cases where the dictionary definition isn't really helpful or applicable. Because that definition is based on a literal meaning of the word and not the actual economic implications. Economically speaking once a market is dominated to the point where you cannot compete economically that is what we call an effective monopoly or actual monopoly. Basically a real life monopoly.

    Think back to when Bell was broken up. It wasn't the only, exclusive, competitor in the market. However they owned such a massive market share that they had to be broken up because no one could effectively compete. You'll see how using the literal and ineffective definition of monopoly would be extremely easy to defeat for companies exercising actual monopolies.

    So basically the other guy is right, albeit expressing himself rather dickishly.

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  • [–] 4 points 6 days ago

    The issue with that is that Steam still isn't a monopoly by that definition either. Epic can't compete because they provide an absolute dogshit service. Not because Steam has some unassailable institutional advantage. When the epic storefront launched a ton of people were hoping it would be good, and would have happily bought games there. It was garbage, and they refuse to listen to customers on how to improve.

    There are other options both for devs and customers.

    The reality is Steam isn't muscling out Epic because of being a monopoly. Epic muscled themselves out by being out of touch, greedy, shitsticks. And that has largely been the same story for about every failed game storefront.

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