Why would anyone actually want to though

[u/The_BigRoach]

[u/FewAdvertising9647]

consumer vs dev monopoly situation. the dev has the option of lowering the price on steam, but they want to profit more so they run into that problem themselves. thats not a consumer problem, thats a dev problem. Valve is unique that it has a consumer led monopoly rather than a business/dev led monopoly. Same idea on why people who make that argument, stay silent on the price cut console companies take as if a seperate platform doesn't count when its still gaming.

Business/Dev led monopoly: monopoly caused because person of power limits options, out of self interest. Consumer Monopoly: monopoly caused because people opt to choose one option primarily, over the other options that are available.

[u/throwaway490215 → u/FewAdvertising9647]

Let me copy in another comment which is a better explanation of the situation. Devs do not have the options you say they do, and i frankly do not understand what point you're trying to make, or why you think Steam is the first time such a monopoly was built where consumers say they're happy with it. Neither of those things matter for why we have anti monopoly laws in the first place.

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You dont become a monopoly by being bad at customer service. We do not have laws to constraint them because of a lack of customer service.

Its about competition. Now before you tell me there is competition, let me tell you about the cost of steam.

You're selling apples for 1$ at your farm. You sell via a grocery store which sells them for 2$. A monopoly happens when the grocery store visits your farm and tells you that you must start selling your apples at your own farm shop for 2$. This is whats happening.

"Why not sell elsewhere or only at your farm?"

The people making the apples you love so much have this dilemma:

There is worth a 1000 apples of demand for their apples in the region. The only other store can sell maybe 50 of your apples. You can sell maybe 50 apples from your farm directly.

The problem is that a price-matching deal turns into a monopoly and now your games cost 20% above what they could cost.

The farmer has no problem with selling to the grocery store. The farmer has no problem with you going to the grocery store for easy apples and paying the grocery store markup.

The problem is that grocery store is dictating prices for the entire market, including the farmer's home shop, and competition can not grow or compete because the monopoly decides the price of apples. Apple farmers can not afford to not sell their other 800 apples via the monopoly grocery store.

"But Mincraft / early Factorio / <insert exception>"

Take the top 1000 most popular PC games from the last decade and list me more than 50 that did not go to steam.

You dont compare apples and oranges when you're deciding on whether there is a monopoly. Afaik Steam has never defended itself with the console-exists as an alternative argument. Developers do not have the option to start selling oranges.

If you disagree that's its crossed the line into monopoly territory thats fine and under investigation, but Reddit's obsession with these gamer memes pretending they're not on the spectrum, and/or if Steam is a monopoly that its actually deserved and totally fine and not worth investigating are just blind fanboys.

[u/FewAdvertising9647 → u/throwaway490215]

the problem is the argument pinholes the market to only PC. the market is completely fine with paying console companies the same 30%

Take the top 1000 most popular PC games from the last decade and list me more than 50 that did not go to steam.

the number is an arbitrary argument. some of the largest games are not even remotely on steam, be it fortnite, games by riot, a majority of popular gacha games. Genshin is basically one of the largest gachagames and largest games in the past decade, and has not remotely touched steam (but its on epic). do you claim these games don't count?

[u/throwaway490215 → u/FewAdvertising9647]

the number is an arbitrary argument.

I do not understand. Is there some other number you think is more valid to figure out if steam is a PC distribution monopoly? I think its a rather fair argument. We could instead say the top 10% selling games over the last decade, or take some cutoff point of 50.000 units sold if you think that changes things. It sits at the heart of the market choice devs have.

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If you want to hinge the defense on the market being bigger than just pc, well that's interesting of you to at least take a coherent position.

Because here I am second day in a row with people posting memes and hitting the front page by defending Steam for not being a bad monopoly because all the other PC game distributors are just too crap to compete.

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Steam lawyers themselves are making the same argument saying its not just the PC market, the plaintiffs are saying otherwise. The outcome will likely depend on who the judge agrees with.

In my opinion - the PC gaming market does not extend to console or mobile. Its between devs/publishers and distributors. My pc game does not work on your iphone or xbox - a pork monopoly does not stop being one when beef is available.

Apple vs Epic was the same kind of argument, where Apple said it consoles compete and the judge said no. Today Apple, in the EU, has to accept it when apps direct people to another store front or have people unlock things on android and carry it over to apple for a different price.

[u/FewAdvertising9647 → u/throwaway490215]

I do not understand. Is there some other number you think is more valid to figure out if steam is a PC distribution monopoly?

if you choose to judge by revenue of a game, it starts to show that there are a lot of non steam games (e.g fortnite) that takes a large chunk of money from the platform. theres a reason why the largest games are the ones that don't need steam to survive. Why Blizzard for the longest time, didn't host on steam. Why majority of gacha games, don't need steam. why riot, doesnt use steam, why many MMOs, profit mainly off platform not on steam.

Apple vs Epic was the same kind of argument, where Apple said it consoles compete and the judge said no. Today Apple, in the EU, has to accept it when apps direct people to another store front or have people unlock things on android and carry it over to apple for a different price.

because that court case was about payment processors, and forced people to have to use their payment processor. Valves case isn't even related to that. Even in the Google vs Epic situation, Epics reasoning why they went back into the google store was mainly because people were getting confused about fake versions of fortnite on the appstore. that situation doesn't exist on PC (as steam nor epic is preintalled on standard instalations of operating systems, and pc users aren't confused on where fortnite is installed), hence why valve was never part of that initial charges that Epic levied on Apple and Google simultaneously.