Valve is a de facto monopoly
Is it, though? I can buy games on gog, on itch.io, on epic (but that would require me to use epic, lol), or maybe on humble bundle (took a quick look, mentioned steam keys, not sure).
I thought that “monopoly” meant that a company has exclusive control in their market which clearly doesn’t apply here.
Either way, it’ll be interesting (and maybe infuriating) to see how the court arguments pan out.
Steam has effective monopoly.
If a game is not released on Steam, it might as well not exist. There are only a handful of exceptions.
And games that do get death threats from Steam fans. Because how dare those developers not release on the only good platform?
Monopolies are more than just “competition does not exist”.
If a game is not released on Steam, it might as well not exist. There are only a handful of exceptions.
These “handful of exceptions” are the vast majority of the entire PC gaming revenue, though. In 2022/2023 the overall revenue was 45 Billion Dollars, of which Steam made up 8.6 Billion.
30% of 45 Billion is 13.5 Billion.
Of which Valve made 8.6 Billion.
Which means only 4.9 Billion was made by every other PC platform combined. Including the standalone games like Fortnite and Minecraft.
Thank you for proving my point.
I don’t know what you mean with that 30% but 8.6 out of 45 is a sizable fraction but not one that constitutes an monopoly.
monopoly law usually kicks in around 95% market share.
nialv7@lemmy.world 3 days ago
I mean we say Google has a monopoly on search, but there are bing, duckduckgo, kagi, etc. You are thinking absolute monopoly.
elephantium@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Good comparison. I use DDG for my own search and only rarely switch to Google if I’m not finding something.
At the same time, “You can’t avoid dealing with Google if you want to run a public-facing website” rings true.
I’m less sure about applying the same sentiment to Valve. Can you realistically make a living as an indy game dev on itch.io or gog.com? I’m not sure. Food for thought.
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Most devs who shared their thoughts online say that not being able to sell on Steam means a death sentence for their game. There was a case recently about a game who Steam banned from selling and without the media coverage they would’ve never made it, because itch.io sales represent a very small portion.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
The game is Horses and they got huge ad campaign out of it. Thing is, game is mid and wouldn’t sell a thousand copies without the shitstorm they’ve built up.
Look. Minecraft originally was not sold on any platforms except directly by mojang and is probably the most famous indie game to date. It is not death sentence unless your product is crap. But it is a certain bonus to be sold on the most popular platform.
TaterTot@piefed.social 3 days ago
I feel like a key difference between Google’s search Monopoly and Valve’s is the fact that Google paid off the competition to be the default on basically every browser.
Valve’s monopoly is very real, or at least they absolutely dominate the PC game market (IANAL, no clue if Valve’s monopoly passes the legal bar). But outside of the SteamDeck and a couple gaming focused laptop’s, Steam doesn’t get forced on any user as the default. They personally install it.
nialv7@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You are right. Google is a monopoly, and they are at the same time anti-competitive. Valve hasn’t done anything anti-competitive yet (that I know of, anyways), but they are a monopoly.
I feel people strongly associate these two, which is fair, not many monopolies out there that are not anti-competitive. But there is a distinction.
architect@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
For me it’s simply about choice. There are so so so so many choices for gaming I could not say there’s a monopoly on it. Especially when I can just turn to the open market: piracy.
Xenny@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I don’t even think Google has a search Monopoly. They might have a maps Monopoly. But even Apple competes with them pretty heavily on that.
zikzak025@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Google has a search monopoly, that is not in question.
justice.gov/…/department-justice-wins-significant…
The only thing is, had the case been decided under any other DoJ, Google would not have gotten off as lightly as they did. But even Pam-fucking-Dow-over-50,000-Bondi agreed that Google was a monopoly.
architect@thelemmy.club 2 days ago
Same people trying to claim Google is weighing search for the left.
But they are pieces of shit (Google) and anti competitive. So fuck then entirely.