Having a “Monopoly” that occurred naturally isn’t illegal. Misusing the position and eliminating any competition is illegal. Besides that, the monopoly situation is open and there is competition. They just suck. Imagine filing Nintendo a lawsuit for having a monopoly in handheld consoles…
To add to what you have said:
Valve is an effective monopoly.
A lot of people seem to think ‘monopoly’ means ‘literally 0 alternatives for the consumer’, but this is not the case in either actual economic jargon/theory nor in basically any legal definition of it I am aware of.
To be a monopoly you basically just need to be the clear dominant actor in some market. Not the only one, just the main one, such that you can make pricing decisions in a way that other actors in the same market can’t, basically.
Its… very rare for a ‘true’ or ‘perfect’ monopoly to ever exist for basically anything other than a public utility/service. It almost never happens.
This is the kind of pedantry that is annoying but unfortunately important, similar to how ‘Impeachment’ by the House on its own is actually pointless beyond a mark of shame unless it is also followed by a ‘conviction’ by the Senate.
You are correct that in US law, a major factor that is considered is whether or not the company did abusive, deceptive, underhanded stuff to achieve its monopopy status.
But UK law appears to be different:
You could be doing ‘abuse of dominance’ whether or not you achieved that dominance by underhanded means.
So… while I am not a lawyer, I would be genuinely surprised if Valve was found in serious violation of existing US monopoly laws, but I would be less surprised if they were found to be in violation of existing UK monopoly laws.
Just the first lines of the linked article says what I said, having a monopoly isn’t illegal on itself. Only abusing the dominance is.
Which paragraph or lines do you specifically speaking of? Its a long text, so quoting or pointing the part you refer to would be good.
I’m not really trying to critique you, I just know that a ton of people only read the headline or don’t read things thoroughly, or don’t even click into the actual article at all.
I am just adding my 2 cents as someone with a degree in economics, so I’m not citing the article, I’m citing my years of education in economics and years of work that made use of it.
The article does not really go into the difference between US and UK law around monopolies, so I wanted to explore that a bit myself.
Also, when you say ‘the first lines of the linked article says what I said’… do you mean the OP linked article, or the lexology link that I provided?
Because the IGN article says nothing about whether simply being a monopoly is illegal, that’s why I provided the lexology link, to clarify that.
Sorry if I am not quite understanding what you are saying.
I am not talking about the IGN article, but about the link you gave me.
Game prices are set by their publisher, and prices are consistent across various platforms, regardless of market presence. So, Steam is the same price but a better service generally.
Isnt a natural monolpoly something like YKK who just have the economics and processes in place to capture the market?
Yeah this is so stupid, just sounds like a baseless money grab.
That isn’t necessarily true, companies with SMP have additional regulations. Steam having terms in their contracts preventing sale for cheaper elsewhere would be abuse of their SMP.
Except that’s not what their terms say. Their terms prohibit you from selling a steam key cheaper than on Steam, they don’t regulate your game price on a different store if you’re not offering a steam key together.
“would be”, its an eample of abuse of the SMP
What?
I wasnt saying that the terms said that just that them aaying it would be an example of my point.
Also monopolies are cool now, just as Google.
I don’t mind someone going after Valve but I think the arguments presented are bullshit.
The price parity argument is an argument on paper but in reality we’re not going to see different pricing, except maybe on the super rare occasion a company has their own storefront they want to build up with their first party games while also keeping the game on Steam for extra sales. Realistically that first party game is going to be exclusive to the store (see Alan Wake 2). And 3rd party publishers have no incentive to sell for cheaper on a different storefront because a lower cut by the platform holder would just mean they get to make more money per unit sold. I guess maybe if the storefront pays the 3rd party publisher extra so the storefront itself could set a lower price on the games, but I fear that might end up having the opposite effect where money-rich competitors (like Epic) can end up taking away market from smaller storefronts like GOG or Itch because despite selling games for less it’s still not competing with Steam in terms of features so the market has to grow from somewhere. But I’ll happily be wrong here.
The same way the 30% cut being too much is an argument on paper, but in reality if the cut does go lower the customer, the people actually buying the game, won’t see it. One could argue that it has already gone down for AAA because Steam brings it’s down to 25% after certain threshold and I think once more to 20% after the next threshold. Meanwhile AAA pricing has only gone up in the form heavier focus on MTX alongside an actual price increase from $60 to $70. The cut going down is just going to put that money in the publishers pocket. It would be a win for the publisher but not really a win for the customer.
The only argument that actually could be beneficial to the customer is the add-on argument. I’m not entirely sure what they mean by add-ons. If they mean Steams own made up marketplace of trading cards and stickers and all that shit what is the solution here? Have Steam close it down because there’s no way in world other storefronts would ever make something like that and if they did it would never be made in a way where it could be interchangeable with Steams implementation. I hope by add-ons they mean DLC-s and I would 100% love it if I could buy a game on one platform and DLC-s from a different platform and just have them work together. That would actually be beneficial to the customer. But I don’t see anyone codifying that as a regulation and if it were to happen it would be pretty big strain either on the storefronts or the publishers, because it would be a huge mess to track purchase across platforms to make sure what combination of games + DLCs any particular account has. I would love to see it happen, I just don’t see it actually happening.
The arguments are there on paper but even if Steam did anything about them it probably would have little to no effect on the customers so the lawsuit doesn’t really feel like someone is fighting for the consumer, it just feel like someone trying to take Steam down a peg. It’s fine but it’s unlikely to have an impact on the market, Steam will still stay the biggest seller because Steam offers features to the consumer that no other storefront offers.
There’s nothing that says game developers can’t allow add-ons to be installed from third party stores. Already works that way with games like Gratuitous Space Battles. I’ve bought the expansions on third party stores and simply put the zips or whatever in the relevant game folder.
I don’t know if something has changed since that game, but I don’t see addons sold by 3rd parties as a popular avenue for consumers simply because you have to then manually manage it.
Will say it would be nice to own games on one platform and be able to buy and manage the game via steam. Select the platform you bought it from / the install folder and let steam automagically update the DLCs in there for you.
We don’t really know what the add-on argument is because the article doesn’t really say much about it. I didn’t mean Steam prohibits modifying game files, which is pretty much what you did to add the expansions. I meant it more like you describe in the last paragraph where your purchases are platform agnostic, you buy where you want to and you play where you want to.
This is a great write up to which I can only add that I know that in the ongoing US case, Valve has been arguing that not only is the 30% cut not particularly onerous, and is actually pretty close to the industry norm…
… they also make the argument that Steam provides much, much more to both the consumer and the prospective game seller that…well they just do actually offer many more features and services than existing comparable platforms.
The DLC thing is an interesting idea, but… oh god, basically, is my database manager brain’s response to that.
You’d have to construct like a shared standard of game key liscenses across all digital platforms, you know, the not unlike the kind of thing every single idiot a few years back claimed would be possible with their NFT games.
This is… an interesting idea, but I don’t see how you could actually implement this in practice without basically creating a government agency to manage it.
… Which would then also probably mean that said government would now directly know every game you own.
And then you’d have to think about how that would play with things like game key selling sites…
Yeah. This would be a nightmare to try to actually implement.
Now the government would be directly involved in DRM. Like uh, potentially, verify your actual identity with face scan to log in to your game library of any kinds of games… that kind of involved.
There are many other complexities and problems than that.
Blockchain game ownership.
I’m pretty sure the dlc thing is already possible. Guild wars 2 at least works this way, you can buy the game/dlcs either via steam or via their own store and then you can install and run the game either via steam or via their own launcher (although IIRC the steam way still has the launcher).
It’s probably more of a case of steam providing a convenient way for developers to not need their own account system, so rather than them creating their own solution that integrates with steam and other sources, they just straight up use Steam’s way.
To be honest I’d love it if they forced a way for steam and other shops to allow migrating your games between them, so I could take all the free games from epic but never use it. Currently my compromise is to just never use it and skip the free games.
They’re all just mad that Steam is that good and the alternatives are just fucking garbage.
Rockstar, Ubisoft, EA and Epic can all choke on themselves because they only wish that they can create a rich experience when playing games that Valve did. All that they ever provide is “here is store, library, friends list and that all you get, enjoy”.
Timmy Swiney is goint to lose money again.
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The UK is not part of the EU. The lawsuit is not by the UK (or the EU), it’s just in the UK court.
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We could see that 😂
And Republican I suppose ?
If someone from the US break a law in a foreign country, why shouldn’t it be prosecuted ?
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Well, I agree that US companies do get fined a lot in the old world… The question is, is it because they break the law all the time or because of some sort of conspiracy?
According to Ockham razor, the first should be considered first, then, if disproved, the second can be considered.
Yeah there was like, a whole thing about that
