how is steam not competing with them? steam outcompeted them.
By not competing with them. Gaben has 1.5 billion dollars worth of yachts. Steam doesn’t need to be taking 30% and only does so because everyone else does. I guess big companies colluding is kind of the law of the market tbh, but it’s not “the best”.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Grimy@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
Everyone’s fine with staying in their lane and charging the standard percentage. Keeping the status quo to maximize profits isn’t competing.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
you should study a little game theory and industrial design. some markets balance that way
Grimy@lemmy.world 19 hours ago
“Price fixing happens, it’s a normal part of a healthy market”
Doesn’t make it right or legal. Stop defending billionaires please.
Starski@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Idk, I think 30% is perfectly fair considering what a massive market steam is and the huge amount of publicity you get from putting it on steam. I’ll agree that by certain definitions steam is a monopoly, but they aren’t committing any anti competition practices, and this is further proven by them taking the standard 30% if they wanted to they could only take 10%, and that would probably be seen as anti competition by quite a few countries, as many other companies couldn’t deal with trying to make their percentage lower. Steam is essentially being the standard here, and if any other service wanted to take a smaller cut they could, and developers would turn to it more often. For instance, itch.io. if steam were a true monopoly, you could be certain that itch.io wouldn’t exist anymore. Ill change my mind on this when steam loses a SINGLE monopoly lawsuit, and until then you guys need to do more research on actual monopolies.
Grimy@lemmy.world 1 day ago
There’s only a handful of companies and the smallest one (itch.io) takes between 0% and 10%. The companies that “couldn’t deal with it” are Microsoft (for Xbox, they actually take 12% on PC), Nintendo, Sony.
Look up what a soft monopoly is. In any case, they have market dominance and are abusing it. Steam is currently dealing with more than one anti trust lawsuit, including a 900$ million one in the UK.
It’s weird seeing people defend billionaires and their money sucking machine. You could defend Airbnb or Amazon with that same kind of energy and arguments. They haven’t lost a single monopoly lawsuit either.
30% is a disgusting cut for a few gb of data on a virtual store front. It’s having a negative impact on devs, and it only helps makes rich people richer. You don’t get a networth of 9 to 11 billion by being fair and having consumers at heart. Steam and Gaben aren’t your friends, they actively treat you and the industry as a bag of money to be exploited. They just have a really good marketing team.
Starski@lemmy.zip 15 hours ago
I defend it because I love the service, and have used it for over a decade. I again will wait until the results of these lawsuits, as steam has won every other monopoly lawsuit in the past, and I personally believe for good reason as described in my comment above.
Grimy@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
You can say the same thing about Amazon and Airbnb. None of them are bad products and they are all convenient, but they are having a negative impact. You don’t directly feel it but the workers do and in the end, it does mean less quality and overall games for us.
I’m not calling for a boycott here but the minimum would be calling them out on it.