Epic can only compete because they’ve few users and are willing to operate at a near loss
Bullshit. Epic’s loses are in paying for exclusives and giving away games while ruining their PR.
Steam could operate at 15% if they wanted to. But… why would they do that?
Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
While I’m no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve’s market dominance in PC game sales isn’t a good thing for developers or consumers.
SirDerpy@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Competition in capitalism is always better than a lack thereof. But, we’ve not busted monopolies in a significant way since Ma Bell. And, even if we were, at 75% of the global market share they’d not warrant any action yet.
There’s going to be a dominant organization because late stage capitalism sucks. And, I’d rather it be Valve than some alternative trying to fuck me over at every opportunity.
AlotOfReading@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
The thing is, steam’s market dominance is one of user choice rather than anticompetitive strategies. Steam doesn’t do exclusives, they don’t charge you for external sales, they don’t even prevent you from selling steam keys outside the platform, or users from launching non steam games in the client. The only real restriction is that access to steam services requires a license in the active steam account. Even valve-produced devices like the steam deck can install from other stores.
Sure, dominance is bad in an abstract theoretical way and it’d be nice if Gog, itch.io, etc were more competitive, but Steam is dominant because consumers actively choose it.
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Yeah! Other publishers should open their own stores and compete!
…
Oh wait no fuck oh god oh what have we done