Comment on As Xbox and PlayStation flounder, Steam is reportedly having another record year

• BlaestEgnen@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Thing is, they have been doing this for over a decade. Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded provate competitor

  Of course they can, they can use the same aim. Problem is it’s more profitable to grind a company down, let it bankrupt and do the same to the next company. Hence enshittification arrived, venture capital has a full playbook for dismantling companies from the inside.

  There’s still a few old bastions wanting stability, Coca Cola Group is the most obvious example of this

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  • applebusch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    its not actually more profitable though. its only more profitable today, at the expense of future profits. this is more a problem caused by personal gain being directly linked to short term corporate gain. its only rational behavior from the perspective of the individual executives benefitting from the crazy compensation packages for laying everyone off and enshittifying the product. literally everyone else loses unless they get lucky and bail at just the right moment.

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    • novibe@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      That’s only true in an old model of individual investors who go to shareholder meetings and stay with a company forever. That’s not how the world has worked for decades and decades.

      Most rich people don’t have investments in individual stock. They don’t give a fuck if a company goes bust or not. Their investments are in giving out loans, bonds, funds etc. They park their money in a family office, and their money moves around the world more than an air steward.

      If a company’s stock goes down 1% they diversify into other stock. They sell to buy gold.

      It really isn’t “worse in the long-term” for them. The wealthy. They are getting richer faster than any other period of history and you think they are dumb…? Not working in their own best interest? Even in the long-term…?

      They pay people dozens of millions a year to make them the most money possible forever. People absurdly more intelligent than any of us here. People who would centuries ago be genius scientists.

      I’m sure they know what they are doing. And they are winning and we are losing.

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    • BlaestEgnen@feddit.dk ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The big investors are earning money on it, the suits has done the calculations and they’re earning a few percentages more a year dismantling companies than they would, had they chosen stability

      Parts of it is also how safe of a bet it is to dismantle, as big capital likes safe investments. Which is largely also why AAA isn’t innovative anymore, they consider it too big of a risk to invent a new wheel

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• doublah@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  Publicly traded companies can’t compete long-term, if there’s a well funded private competitor

  That’s why these companies love the idea of purchasing half the industry or using their resources to operate at a loss and squeeze out private competitors.

  If they can’t compete, they can consolidate.

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  • FoxtrotDeltaTango@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    Then trust busting needs to happen

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