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Lost_My_Mind ,

Ooooooooooh shit. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.

Ragnarok314159 ,

Will go to SCOTUS, a few bribes will happen, then it will die.

DaddleDew ,

No shit. Now do Amazon, apple, meta, Microsoft, Disney and all the food conglomerates. Then it will have been a good start.

disguy_ovahea ,

Walmart and telecom too.

Ragnarok314159 ,

Too big to fail financial industry should go first.

sunzu ,

oil, pharma... most of all critical aspects of every day life is controlled by oligopolies

Thebeardedsinglemalt ,

“Too big to fail” shouldn’t exist

Clinicallydepressedpoochie ,

If it’s too big to fail it should be made small. Any capitalist will tell you capitalism depends on competition.

Unless, you’re suggesting, america might not be capitalist and we treat businesses as if they were socialist.

cranakis ,

They’ve got Amazon in the works

Amazon

BossDj ,

Would be nice if we didn’t let them kill off so many other businesses first before doing something about it.

Kecessa , (edited )

Steam…

Edit: Funny how I was replying to a comment with examples of companies that wish they had 70% of the market under their control yet people didn’t disagree with OP but bringing up Valve? Oh man, Gaben can do no wrong! 70% of the market under the control of a company owned by a single man? No problemo!

Feathercrown ,

Steam isn’t actually a monopoly in a meaningful way

bitfucker ,

Neither did google. The problem is that this case, from the title stated in another thread, Google are doing anti-competitive shit to make sure they maintain the dominant position. But steam does not practice in anti competitive behaviours (as far as I know anyway). In fact, the competitor can arguably be held to anti competitive behaviour depending on how you spin it.

Kecessa , (edited )

Steam is currently being sued for anti competitive practices and do we really need to wait until they do bad shit before we start to consider that a single company having a good on 70% of the market isn’t a good thing?

NotMyOldRedditName ,

Isn’t that only about the 30% fee?

Steam provides a lot of value for that 30% fee, more than Apple does.

Kecessa ,

Nope, about including price fixing clauses.

The 30% fee is another issue entirely.

NotMyOldRedditName ,

Ah, gotcha. Thanks.

Hexarei ,
@Hexarei@programming.dev avatar

The price fixing clauses are about steam keys being sold off-platform

R00bot ,
@R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

Wtf is with people deciding a monopoly is good because the company hasn’t started enshittifying it yet. It will happen. It’s what monopolies do. Healthy competition is an important part of preventing enshittification.

Kecessa ,

The day Newell leaves people will be eating their words.

YeetPics ,
@YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

Doubt it. Stay mad though, this shit is hilarious.

Gonna go buy a few dozen steam games to help pad Gabe’s wallet for making such a great platform.

JamesFire ,

Steam has no competitors because nobody is competing with them, not because they are forcing nobody to compete with them.

Steam isn’t abusing their dominant position to prevent competition. Other companies could make their own storefront and compete with steam. Nobody does in a way that’s actually comparable to steam.

Steam has a monopoly, but it’s not because steam is actively keeping it that way.

Kecessa ,

If you have enough control on the market you don’t have to actively try and stop competitors, you’re just the default solution and people automatically turn to you. Walmart doesn’t need to use dirty tactics to compete against mom and pop shops, the day they open people just start going to Walmart instead because they have everything in a single place.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

That wasn’t always the case, and I don’t know if it’s currently the case. At least at one point, they would intentionally lose money by dropping their prices below profitability just to get mom and pop shops to shut down, and then raise prices back up to profitability. Or they’d force suppliers to cut costs only for them to the point where the supplier wasn’t making a profit, but by then they had stopped selling to competitors.

There’s a lot more evidence for Walmart committing anti-trust than Valve.

Kecessa ,

Point is, they don’t need to do that now because they’re dominant, they just have to come in with their big boots, sit at the table and wait until everybody leaves, they have unlimited money, they just need to offer the same prices as anywhere else, the convenience will kill the competition.

sugar_in_your_tea ,

I’m failing to see where the anti-competitiveness comes in.

balder1991 ,

deleted_by_author

    •
    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    What does this have to do with Valve?

    R00bot ,
    @R00bot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    Nobody can because of Steam’s monopoly. You can try to create your own store but you won’t have nearly the same selection of games. Monopolies are bad. Even when they’re companies you like. To be clear, I’m not saying Steam should be broken up, I’m not saying they should lose games to other stores. I’m saying they’re a monopoly, and that is bad because it enables Steam to stagnate or even get worse.

    It’s also pretty inarguable imo that Steam has been getting worse. Steam sales used to be events. You’d get multiple huge discounts on AAA games. Now you’re lucky to get 40% off a 6 year old game. And don’t get me started on the UI, which, while fine, hasn’t changed meaningfully in like a decade. There simply is no incentive for Steam to be better. So they’re not. We should consider ourselves lucky that they’re still as good as they are, because they won’t be forever.

    bitfucker ,

    And that practice is what? Providing value to the consumer? The thing that MAYBE can be used against them is the clause for selling STEAM KEYS outside of steam. But that is it. Take a look at mindustry, the game is free everywhere else but steam. But that did not violate steam ToS since they didn’t sell the steam keys for less than what is listed on steam.

    Kecessa ,

    It’s in front of a judge right now and information is public if you want to know more, and no they’re not getting sued for providing value to the consumer (but don’t worry, they charge you enough that they can provide value AND make Newell a billionaire… so maybe you should be angry about that if you don’t care about the rest.)

    Warl0k3 ,

    Have you read the filings? The complaints are that steam listings for a game have to match the lowest price for the game, that keys can’t be sold for less than the steam listing (I’m not really sure how this is a different thing from the low pricing), and that steam takes too big a cut of the proceeds. That last one is particularly hilarious, in that they are bringing this lawsuit to a court that respects USA business laws, which pointedly do not hold that ‘being too greedy’ is a problem (outside of price-gouging laws, which are not relevant here…)

    RxBrad ,
    @RxBrad@infosec.pub avatar

    This is an issue because of Steam’s 30% cut.

    Other retailers take a smaller cut. But because Steam mandates that the Steam storefront always gets the lowest price, publishers can’t take advantage of that lower cut to offer lower prices. They can only lower the price to something that doesn’t torpedo them with a 30% cut on Steam.

    Warl0k3 ,

    Sure, but that’s not a monopolistic practice. That’s just a MAP, which is an incredibly common agreement. Hell, its better than most MAP contracts because they only take a 30% cut of sales thru steam, even if the dev is selling steam keys thru an alternate storefront.

    bitfucker ,

    The fuck are you talking about? I already gave an example of mindustry being free anywhere but steam. As long as they don’t distribute the steam keys for free somewhere else, they are safe. Steam mandates that you put the lowest/price parity for the steam keys you sold outside of steam. If for example a game is being sold on steam priced at $15 with a 30% cut, the publishers are free to distribute the steam keys on their storefront for the same $15 without any cut. OR they could sell it cheaper BUT they cannot sell the steam keys. Maybe other storefront keys/drm. But the problem is, will the publisher sell it for a lower price knowing that they could sell it for the same price across the board with a higher profit margin?

    If you wanted to argue that it is steam’s fault for taking the 30% cut in the first place so we get where we are now, then I don’t know what to tell you anymore. The problem is not steam but greed. Back to my example mindustry, that is a valid strategy to sell it for free everywhere but steam and is perfectly legal. It’s just no one wanted to follow that model (instead of free, offer a cheaper price).

    YeetPics ,
    @YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

    You know anyone can be sued for anything right?

    Being sued doesn’t mean a damn thing, the case judgement is what matters.

    Kecessa , (edited )

    You don’t need to have full control of the market to be considered a monopoly, you just need a big enough share that you can make it sway in the direction that you want, which Steam has. Example: Microsoft is considered a monopoly even though there’s Apple and Linux that get market shares.

    I always find it funny how defensive people get when I bring this up about Steam on Lemmy of all places, suddenly people are perfectly ok with the centralization of power in the hands of a single person.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    It’s not about market share, it’s about actually using that market share to negatively impact competition. Steam doesn’t have any sort of exclusivity agreements with anyone, nor do they get paid if a customer buys a key on another platform or on the dev’s own website. There’s no anti-competitive behavior here at all, people use Steam because they like the experience more.

    There’s a massive difference between anti-competitive behavior and just being a really good option. You don’t get broken up because you’re successful, you get broken up because you’re abusing your dominant market position. I have yet to see any evidence that Valve does this.

    Kecessa ,

    Game pricing is still based on then taking a 30% cut so it’s negatively impacting consumers because that’s billions in profit that they make and with their dominance they don’t need to actively take anti competitive measures, they’re the default choice.

    It’s like Walmart, they don’t need to actively push mom and pop shops out of the way, they just need to open their doors and wait them out. In theory all they did was offer something great (everything you want in the same place!) but the end result is competition closing their doors.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    And we shouldn’t be shutting down/breakup up either if that’s all they’re doing. Being successful isn’t a crime.

    Walmart has had multiple cases of predatory pricing accusations and has completely pulled out of Germany due to it. Criticism of Valve is: their service is too good? I’m really not seeing the anti-trust w/ Valve (here’s a related Wikipedia article for Valve), but I am seeing it for Walmart.

    Feathercrown ,

    I always find it funny how defensive people get when I bring this up about Steam on Lemmy of all places

    Perhaps we simply disagree?

    roguetrick ,

    You can’t break up steam and improve the market in any particular way. Since they’re not really big on exclusivity agreements, there’s also very little a court order would do to make the market more competitive.

    Kecessa , (edited )

    If consumers were more evenly spread around different platforms there would be actual competition to determine prices and margins for the developers. Right now Epic takes a smaller share of the revenues but the price is the same to try and compensate for the smaller number of buyers. With their dominant position it’s pretty much impossible to have someone join the market and truly be competitive against Valve, even if they offered a product with all the same features and more (which would require a ridiculous amount of capital), people have their well established habits and won’t move even if the product they’re using isn’t necessarily the best or they’re spending more than they need to.

    aphonefriend ,

    That’s not what a monopoly is.

    Epic had all the money in the world and tons of time (and users) to create a viable alternative. They didn’t fail because valve squeezed them out, they failed because they refuse to improve their product. In fact, it could be said that Epic wanted to become the monopoly themselves. If they spent half as much effort on their product as they do on lawsuits and exclusivity deals, they would have been a viable competitor. But they didn’t. At the end of the day, it sucks to use. Steam does not.

    Kecessa ,

    EGS is perfectly usable and in my opinion is better than Steam in some aspects (way less bloat, open the app and your games are right there to launch even if you’re on the storefront), your saying they refuse to improve their product just shows you’re not using it because it’s way better than it was on release.

    And yes, Valve has a monopoly, they control enough of the market that it goes where they decide it’s going and they’re the default solution people turn to when they need the services they offer, they’re also working on increasing their reach with streaming on the platform, forums, reviews and so on. If all you need is found on a single platform and it’s the platform that a vast majority is using then what do we call that? That’s right, a monopoly.

    Want a similar example? Microsoft is considered to be in a monopolistic position with Windows, yet they have competitors, same with Office, same with Explorer back in the day. Google is a monopoly even though competitors exist.

    aphonefriend ,

    Opinions aside, that’s still not the legal definition of a monopoly.

    Monopoly: Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service.

    Valve does not have exclusive control of the PC gaming market. The EGS funded lawsuit even says that in the docket. They are only suing on the grounds of the keys issue. I don’t disagree with you that when Newell leaves, things COULD change, but you can’t base the present on the possible future. At this time, steam is on “top” because the vast majority of users have voted with their wallet and time. Not because they are engaged in sweeping anti-competitive backdoor dealings. You know, like EGS does.

    Kecessa ,

    Well then, by your definition Microsoft never had a monopoly and Google isn’t one either.

    YeetPics ,
    @YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

    You’re reaching because steam makes you seethe for whatever reason.

    Betting you have a rage-boner for Firefox too.

    I’m guessing you feel this way about any company from the west lmao

    Kecessa ,

    Any company that makes their owner or investors billionaires while people like you and me have a hard time affording food and a roof is evil. That money comes from somewhere.

    mjhelto ,

    You really gotta aim your sights higher if that’s the criteria you’re using for a “monopoly”. Valve is a private company, that sells games and other “wants”, not “needs”. If people can’t afford games, without losing their house or struggling to eat, I don’t think that’s a company’s fault.

    If Valve was even close to using anti-competitive methods to maintain market dominance, you’d be correct. However, a company having superior quality products and making good business decisions is not a basis or definition of a monopoly. They just make good decisions and provide quality products that people want and enjoy.

    Instead of using strawman and false equivalency fallacies, try taking a look at what really constitutes anti-competitive practices.

    Kecessa ,

    Continue defending the billionaires, I’m sure they care 👍

    mjhelto ,

    You’re either a troll, extremely young, naive, and/or uneducated if you think my comment above is in defense of billionaires. I literally have comments in my history to the absolute opposite*. What I’m “defending” is the definition of a monopoly when it comes to business practices; of which Valve has exuded none of the behavior of.

    You think any business doing well, providing quality goods and services, not being anti-consumer, and being the most trusted platform for gaming as a result is the definition of a monopoly. Again, you use fallacy to try and argue a point.

    Wait… Are you that dickhead from Epic who pays for exclusivity rights, steaks user data from Steam files, or something? I could see that guy being pissed at Steam for seemingly no reason.

    • one such comment, if I recall, is about how much I hated Steam when it first came out for killing LAN parties by locking down CD keys.
    Kecessa , (edited )

    But that’s exactly what you’re doing though. You’re in front of a company that controls 70% of the market, meaning they can do whatever the fuck they want regarding pricing and you’re defending them because you don’t see any issue with that.

    So yeah, let’s wait until they start truly acting like shit before thinking “Hey, maybe we shouldn’t have let them get such a hold on the market…”

    candybrie ,

    If they hiked prices above what other stores offered, consumers would leave. If they lowered prices to be untenable for developers, developers would leave, and consumers would follow (they’d probably grumble, but they’d go where the games are). There isn’t a lock in for future sales on either side. So do you think they can do whatever they want with prices with no consequences?

    Kecessa ,

    If you’re big enough and people are dependent on your product then no they won’t simply leave.

    It’s not like owning a DVD deciding your next DVD player won’t be a Sony because you don’t like them. The products that you “own” are dependent on Steam, of you’ve got thousands of games on there you can’t just leave and bring your library with you to another platform.

    mjhelto ,

    That’s the same for any digital platform, though. Literally, any gaming store except for GOG won’t let you take your library with you. You don’t own the game as far as any of them are concerned. You’re claiming Steam is some kind of monster because their platform for games you don’t own is better than other platforms for games you don’t own. Because their platform doesn’t sucks, it earns them a lot of business. That’s it. That’s the magic sauce.

    With options, if Stream sucked, people would go elsewhere.

    If Steam had anything resembling a monopoly they’d do everything they could to remove platforms offering the same games. The number of platforms has only expanded since they started.

    If Stream was a monopoly, they’d not only undercut others, they’d pay for exclusivity rights. Steam let’s developers sell their own keys from anywhere the developer wants, while taking no cut when that happens, even though Steam still has to front the bandwidth and storage for the game to be played.

    If Steam was a monopoly, they’d buy up smaller firms, buy businesses with similar, but competing services, or take another company’s product, reverse engineer it, and make their own undercutting the original. They’ve done the opposite at every turn.

    You really don’t understand monopolistic tactics. You’re not going to understand it, either, since you’ve continues to conflate good business decisions that earn trust and adoption with anti-consumer practices. Steam makes good business decisions, listens to their customers and developers about ways to make the service or products better, and has more business because of it. They have a better product without stooping to the air a in lot of current businesses are pulling.

    That’s it. 70% market dominance doesn’t fucking matter. They could have 90% and it still wouldn’t be a monopoly with their current strategy. Other businesses need to suck less.

    Kecessa ,

    You should review your definition of monopoly because it doesn’t imply bad behaviour by the party in a monopolistic position, it just means they have enough control over the market to sway it in the direction that they way, may they do it or not doesn’t matter and that’s exactly the power that Valve has over the PC gaming market, hence why competitors can’t succeed and companies end up just closing their platform and making their games available on Steam instead.

    JackbyDev ,

    Did you read the articles? The judge acknowledged that Google is widely recognized as the best general purpose search engine but that part of why they are used so often is because of Google paying people to make Google the default search option which many people never change.

    Kecessa ,

    Doesn’t matter, there’s alternatives therefore it’s not a monopoly, that’s was the point I was replying to. I’m not the one making the rules or definitions!

    Hexarei ,
    @Hexarei@programming.dev avatar

    Fun fact: You can change which page your Steam client opens up to by default. I haven’t seen the store unless I wanted to in years.

    mightyfoolish ,

    it’s pretty much impossible to have someone join the market and truly be competitive against Valve, even if they offered a product with all the same features and more

    (1) Many PC gamers simply wait for games to go on sale. Epic buying exclusive agreements isn’t as dominating of a strategy as they think it is; even if it’s expensive.

    (2) Steam is the incumbent. You have to be better in order to be worth it to switch. As you mentioned, Epic is lacking in features

    (3) Valve has not treated the desktop market the way Apple as treated the app store. Look at how far Epic has taken Apple to court; compared to their biggest rival, Valve

    (4) Valve has put in alot of work in other layers; such as making open hardware and contributing to AMD GPU drivers on Linux. They work on the whole platform, even parts they do not directly make money off. This is called investment.

    (5) What exactly would you break Steam into being? One app for reviews, another for buying, and another for launching games? Break the development studio into a different company? Even if Epic is throwing around money made from its game engine and games?

    Kecessa ,

    That’s the thing though, with their market share an hypothetical competitor could be better and people still wouldn’t switch, Steam is where their games are, it’s where their friends play, building everything from scratch elsewhere wouldn’t be worth the trouble even if the alternative was better.

    Store, development, forums, trading platform, launcher, online gaming services, hardware, streaming integrated into the platform, DRM… Valve has their hands all over the place and there’s a single person at the top of that. Wanna wait until they start becoming bad before considering that maybe it’s not a good thing that they have a hold on 70% of the market? Hell, just the fact that Newell could decide that they’re closing their doors tomorrow and no one has access to their games anymore should be fucking worrying to everyone.

    mightyfoolish , (edited )

    At what seams would you break Steam at? In this day and age those are just app store features. Is there anything you listed Sony, Microsoft or Apple don’t have?

    I do understand having a Steam library would make it harder to switch but most of us have a few GOG games and collect Epic free games as well (though, I haven’t even looked at the free Epic games since Christmas).

    People even download a launcher like Hero Launcher on the Steamdeck to run games from other stores. We have the freedom to use Steam in tagent with other stores and we do. You can buy a game off GOG and add it to Steam to launch it.

    Steam is simply the better product, hands down.

    Edit: To prove that I see your point but just don’t agree with it: Here is a quote from an ArsTechnica article about a judge viewing Steam as a monopoly.

    Despite those changes, Judge Coughenour once again dismissed Wolfire’s argument that Valve had engaged in “illegal tying” between the Steam platform (which provides game library management, social networking, achievement tracking, Steam Workshop mods, etc.) and the Steam game store (i.e., the part that sells the games). Those two sides of Steam form a single market, the judge wrote, because “commercial viability for a platform is possible only when it generates revenue from a linked game store.” What’s more, the suit has not shown there is any sufficient market demand “for fully functional gaming platforms distinct from game stores.”

    Does this judge expect me to buy a game from Epic which is missing features and then pay Valve a fee to contact the developer through Steam? Will Epic cheapen their price by 30% so I can “enable Steam features.” This would be unprecedented. I cannot go to Amazon to return/complain about a product I bought from Walmart.

    JackbyDev ,

    If Valve was the company getting the exclusive deals and preventing Epic from selling things then I’d be more inclined to agree with OPs point.

    Harvey656 ,

    Steam? Really out of all these, the the one that treats it’s customers properly and gives them any and all tools needed to make a proper purchase decision with many big sales consistently. Great call

    Kecessa ,

    So because they’re treating you right it’s ok to put 70% of the market in the hands of a single person?

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    They’re not anti-competitive, that’s the difference. Devs can even sell Steam keys on their own website and take 100% of the profit if they so choose, and there’s absolutely no lock-in.

    I’m not sure where the anti-trust is. Having a high marketshare by itself doesn’t mean you’re committing anti-trust, abusing that market position does.

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Just having a high market share isn’t the issue. It’s abusing that dominant market position that is.

    Valve has been smart enough not to do that. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and the like haven’t. In fact, Valve’s competitors have been more anti-competitive than Valve.

    ASML, who make EUV machines and other semiconductor tooling, is also in a dominant market position (way more dominant actually). Do you ever see calls to break them up? No. Because they haven’t been abusing their power. They know that if they put a toe out of line, they’ll be in trouble with regulators.

    Google and the like have been able to act with impunity because the US protects them, to the detriment of their smaller companies and their citizens.

    Kecessa , (edited )

    Really? Because they’re part of the giants that determine game prices, pricing is based on everyone that takes a cut along the way, they take 30%, that’s calculated into what games need to sell for, 30% is enough to make them billions in profit, billions in profit is money that came out of our pockets to go in Newell’s pockets so he can own six yachts.

    I swear if it was a public company people would be flipping out because their numbers would be public and the profit would be going to investors, but they’re private and they only have one investor the profit goes to do that’s perfectly fine I guess???

    TheGrandNagus , (edited )

    30% is the industry standard.

    Shit, doesn’t YouTube take like 60%? I think Twitch takes a big chunk too. Gog takes 30%. MS takes 30%. Sony takes 30%. Nintendo takes 30%. Apple takes 30%. GameStop, BestBuy, Amazon, and Walmart all take roughly 30% too.

    It’s the industry standard.

    And unlike the likes of the Play Store or App store, Valve provides a lot for that 30%.

    • free cloud sync
    • free online multiplayer (not a given, look at MS/Sony/Nintendo)
    • forums
    • game demos
    • game recording with some neat features
    • a VR system
    • in-home streaming
    • family game sharing
    • a review system
    • a mod distribution platform
    • dev tools
    • advertising
    • online services you can tie into your game
    • achievements
    • a cross-platform, userspace anti-cheat solution
    • notes
    • backwards compatibility tooling
    • OS compatibility layers
    • Linux development
    • driver development
    • vast controller support
    • performance overlays
    • steam input
    • the list goes on…

    I’m not in love with everything Valve does (loot boxes, micro-transactions 🤢). But it’s undeniable that compared to other companies that take the same (or higher) cut, you get a lot back.

    Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to live in the fantasy world where they only take a 1% cut, but that’s just what it is, a fantasy.

    Kecessa , (edited )

    Ok so because it’s the industry standard it’s ok?

    How about we focus on the fact that the industry standard makes owners and c-suite billionaires? Do you think people would start hating a company if they cut their share to 10% and prices came down instead of having that extra enrich the few?

    TheGrandNagus ,

    Reread my comment. I’m not saying it’s ok because it’s the industry standard, I’m saying it’s tolerable because it’s the industry standard and yet despite their strong market position, they still consciously provide a good value.

    And let’s not pretend that even if everyone switched to a 10% margin (assuming that would even be profitable), people wouldn’t then complain about 10% being too high. It’s like taxes - no matter what it’s set as, a significant amount of people will always say “that’s too high! I don’t want to pay that!”

    patatahooligan ,
    @patatahooligan@lemmy.world avatar

    Antitrust is not about preventing big companies making money. It’s about preventing specific practices by monopolies to restrict the free market and to abuse their users. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a ton I find morally objectionable with companies as big as Valve and people as rich as Gabe. We might agree on those issues. But this particular Google thing is about something else. And Valve is indeed different to most tech companies in that regard.

    Kecessa ,

    If you don’t consider that a company taking billions out of our pockets and putting it in the pockets of a single person abuse then I don’t know what to say.

    Tiresia ,

    ASML is basically a strategic asset. Breaking them up to have a more level playing field inherently threatens the West’s economic-political position. If ASML abused their position, it wouldn’t be the regulators so much as the CIA that showed up to tell them to reconsider.

    YeetPics ,
    @YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

    You say that like your only option is to buy games from steam.

    There are many other online stores you can use. Sorry you don’t like the most popular/oldest/one that reflects the wishes of the consumer the most.

    Harvey656 ,

    Hot take: if they aren’t hurting me or others, money wise or not, I don’t care if they have majority market share. In this case it makes sense, they treat their customers right and don’t bully the market.

    This simply isn’t the fight.

    Kecessa ,

    But they’re hurting you, their market dominance means they don’t have to compete for pricing, the reason Newell is a billionaire is because the games they sell are sold for more than they’re worth.

    Hexarei ,
    @Hexarei@programming.dev avatar

    You know Valve doesn’t set the prices right? The developers do

    Kecessa , (edited )

    The devs determine they need to sell X copies at Y$/copy, they then calculate what Valve’s cut will be and add it over Y$

    Example: You think you’ll sell a million copy and want to make 10 millions to recoup your cost and make a profit so you need 10$ per. But the truth is that after everyone else gets their cut (publisher, distributor, taxes…) you’re left with about 50% of the sale price going to you, that means your need to sell the game for 20$ to end up with 10$/copy going to you. If everyone else had lower margins and you got 70% of the sale price ending up in your pocket you would need to sell your game for 14.30$ a copy to end up with 10$ going to you. Everyone else in this example are the people who aren’t part of the actual development cost, their margins are huge compared to the amount of work they accomplish, the proof of that is that they’re making billions in profit, profit is revenue - cost, their cost is basically nothing, hosting content and distributing it costs peanuts these days and prices are only going down, so their profit is actually increasing passively over time. Because the devs need to set the price at 20$ instead of 14.30$ you’re paying 5.70$ more for the same product and that 5.70$ is all going into the pockets of people that had nothing to do with actually creating the product you’re purchasing.

    TachyonTele ,

    How is that different than selling anything else anywhere? You’ve picked a strange hill to die on, and your reasoning doesn’t even fit.

    Kecessa ,

    It’s not different, when did I say it’s a Steam only issue?

    TachyonTele ,

    Oh now you haven’t only been harping about steam for the last 12 hours? Now the problem is that everything is a monopoly? Lmao ok

    Kecessa ,

    I’m talking about Steam because that’s what this part of the conversation is about, funny how that works, right? I’ll be the first one to call out any company who’s owner/c-suite are billionaires. If we want to talk about PC gaming specifically then Epic is no better, neither is GOG. Decentralize that shit.

    TachyonTele ,

    Ok kid. Have fun.

    Harvey656 ,

    With your one word reply to the post.

    Kecessa ,

    I just added one more example that no one talks about. Find one of my comments where I say the other examples weren’t just as guilty.

    Harvey656 ,

    You don’t get to decide for me who I think is or isn’t hurting me, I do.

    With these takes, what I really want to know is: Who hurt you?

    Kecessa ,

    Oh so you believe that margins high enough that the owner is a billionaire don’t hurt your wallet?

    Harvey656 ,

    You are so lost in the sauce. We’re talking about a company that hosts a video game sales platform, if I feel like they are fucking me, I can go elsewhere, there’s epic, gog, ubishit, ea, xbox, itch, I don’t have to go to steam. I choose to.

    If they aren’t fucking me, let them make as much as they want. There are far, FAR bigger fish to fry.

    Kecessa ,

    But all of them are fucking us at the same time. It’s the same thing as saying “I don’t need to go to that grocery chain, I can go to another one.” Sure you can, in the end you’re just making a difference boss a billionaire, all of them are fucking evil!

    It’s a systemic issue and unless you’re a billionaire you’re a victim just like all of us, even if you refuse to see it.

    Harvey656 ,

    The systemic issue you are talking about is far higher than any company or conglomerate. You cannot blame them for playing the game they’ve been given. The system itself needs changed, until such a day I will continue to use the products and services that do not ruin my bank or values. Therefore I will continue to use steam, they are not harming me, I am no fucking victim. The world you desire won’t come to pass by crying online and telling others how to feel. Go be the change you want and protest, send mail to government officials, fuck it throw some tomato sauce in some paintings, do whatever you have to. But do not, under any circumstance think I’m going to change my mind on a service that I not only use, but like and most generally would endorse. If you want to change minds, you need a compelling argument.

    ADHD rant over, thanks for your time.

    Kecessa ,

    “It’s an issue but I don’t consider myself a victim. I won’t stop sending money to the people profiting from the system in place at my expense. Be the change your want to see.”

    Are you for real?

    No one force Newell to be a billionaire, he owns the fucking company, he could decide to cut their margins to 20% tomorrow morning, he doesn’t, he collects fucking yachts instead.

    Harvey656 ,

    Wow, nice job putting things in quotes I never said.

    “I have a deep seated need to make you follow my specific beliefs otherwise you are the problem and I must demean you online.”

    See, I can do it too. Grow up.

    Honestly, Fight for demolishing Amazon, google, apple, Nvidia, fascist politics, literally any car company, Boeing, big oil, big pharma, etc etc. They are all much much bigger, and much much more evil than. anything valve could possibly do. thats the real fight.

    Landless2029 ,

    Funny the things you can do when you don’t have to worry about shareholders.

    Hexarei ,
    @Hexarei@programming.dev avatar

    Their market dominance isn’t because of anticompetitive practices, it’s because of customer-friendly practices. People like it, so people use it.

    OfficerBribe ,

    Majority also like Google. Like it or not, they still provide the best search engine.

    Septimaeus ,

    Did they fix it? Last I tried it, all I could get was sponsored content and LLM spam.

    OfficerBribe ,

    I use adblock so have no reference point how it looks like without adblock. I assume you would just scroll a bit lower to get actual results?

    Septimaeus ,

    Same (AdGuard) I meant like I’d consistently get all of the first page of results linking to hyper SEO clickbait sites / AMP links / Adsense affiliates (think multi-page/gallery/click-through articles and low quality content farm sites like CNET, Forbes, Quora, etc) with a smattering of straight up keyword banks, snippet aggregator spam, and chatbot articles full of longwinded made-up nonsense with zero payoff.

    Even more annoying was that Google started dumbing down all my searches, regardless of technical detail and specificity, just railroading me into simplistic drivel. Eventually verbatim/quotes syntax stopped working also, and that was the end of google’s usefulness to me.

    Ibuthyr ,

    Lol, they absolutely do not. Their search results have turned to shit.

    OfficerBribe ,

    What’s a better alternative? Have tried all major ones except paid ones and I always return to Google. Maybe for basic stuff Duck Duck Go / Bing is fine, but once you start searching for local / non-English stuff, results were underwhelming.

    karashta ,

    searx.space

    My current favorite search engine. Just pick one that’s running out of your country or close to it. Hope it works as well for you as it does for me.

    LifeInMultipleChoice ,

    Thanks, I’ll give it a try.

    fermuch ,
    @fermuch@lemmy.ml avatar

    I’ve been using kagi for a few months (6 according to my bank). It is paid. It is great. It’s so good I’ve switched my wife to it since Google was giving her a lot of garbage (she’s a non techie) and she says “it feels like Google used to be. The answers are what I was looking for. I forgot I was using Kagi”

    frezik ,

    I want the answer to be a federated system, like YaCy. Which I tried to set up, and its results make AltaVista look good. Maybe good enough for a corporate intranet, but not the internet at large.

    fossilesque ,
    @fossilesque@mander.xyz avatar

    I bought a Kagi subscription within hours of finding the site. They’ll eventually enshittify but they’re very good for now.

    bionicjoey ,

    There are lots of articles about how they make their search results worse on purpose for more profit. They alter search queries on the server side to give results for a search which is more aligned with an advertising partner. They inject AI into search results which can be wildly wrong.

    Kecessa ,

    So? A private company having control of the market is never a good thing, no matter how good they are at the moment because you never know what will happen in the future.

    YeetPics ,
    @YeetPics@mander.xyz avatar

    people like it

    So?

    So if people trust a platform it’s hard to build an anti-trust case because the owner has a majority share.

    It’s okay if you don’t like them for whatever reason, but comparing them to google, apple and Disney is ignorant at best, dishonest at the very least.

    Rethink this stuff before you put yourself up as a reactionary lmao

    Kecessa ,

    Alright then, let’s do nothing until Newell dies and they become controlled by someone else that people don’t like as much, maybe you guys will wake up then.

    candybrie ,

    “Let’s wait for them to start doing illegal stuff before we use the law against them.” Yeah, of course.

    Kecessa ,

    So let’s wait for the behemoth to really hurt the market enough that we notice it before we do something to prevent it from happening.

    And people wonder why the world is turning to shit.

    Hexarei ,
    @Hexarei@programming.dev avatar

    You still have yet tob porpoise any same solutions.

    What do you propose they “break up” into?

    Kecessa ,

    I don’t know, what do you think the solution to Reddit was? 🤔

    Oh that’s right, we’re on a decentralized platform and you guys are defending the company centralizing everything PC gaming under their umbrella. I FUCKING WONDER WHAT THE SOLUTION COULD BE?

    TachyonTele ,

    Say it one more time for the mirror

    Xanis ,

    Rethink this stuff before you put yourself up as a reactionary

    immediately reacts

    96VXb9ktTjFnRi ,

    I agree, sort of. People may be right to point out that it’s not only about a dominant position but also about abusing that market power to lock people in. Still I think our entire platform-economy is a little problematic. People want one-stop-shopping because it’s really convenient, and people tend to go to platforms where others already are. So most people stick with Steam, Spotify, Uber, Whatsapp, etc. I don’t think this has to be a problem, if indeed these platform are in a way neutral, free, not abusing their power. Sometimes these platforms already behave in responsible manner, but there really is no guarantee that this will stay that way. Everything with a dominant position can be enshittified, including Steam. What we need are FOSS decentralized platforms! Platforms where everyone comes together are so important, that they shouldn’t be left to for-profit companies, people should come together in public squares.

    Kecessa ,

    Thing is we can’t know for sure they’re not abusing their power… Oh wait, we can in fact!

    Game price is based on wanting a return on investment after a certain number of sales, the amount of money needed to make a profit is based on the development cost, every time someone in the distribution chain takes a cut the price increases. Valve takes a 30% cut and that’s enough to have made their owner a billionaire, those billions come from money you and me and all other Steam users spent that we didn’t need to.

    It’s the same logic as in any other market, the only difference is that other companies are trading publically so people get angry because their numbers are public and we can easily see that they’re making billions in profit off of us to enrich investors, well with Valve there’s only one investor.

    And again, do we need to wait until they start acting in truly awful ways before we act on the fact that they control a majority of the market and are trying to increase their market dominance? Newell could die tomorrow and the company could then be made public and turn to shit, what then? “Dang, we should have done something while we had the chance I guess…”???

    96VXb9ktTjFnRi ,

    do we need to wait until they start acting in truly awful ways before we act on the fact that they control a majority of the market and are trying to increase their market dominance

    No I was arguing for exactly the opposite. Let’s not wait, but aim for non-profit decentralized platforms.

    RxBrad ,
    @RxBrad@infosec.pub avatar

    SHHHH!!!

    Monopolies and authoritarians aren’t bad as long as people like them! Hadn’t you heard?

    Kecessa ,

    Join a decentralized platform because fuck Spez, defend a centralized platform because yay Gaben!

    Kiernian ,

    Huh.

    Maybe it’s just the games I play, but I mostly hear people in MMO’s ranting about steam and swearing they’ll never use it (or never use it again). At least some of these people have seemingly zero personal issues with Amazon gaming, arc, epic, gog, and a few other steam clones.

    I realize that by the numbers, steam is probably still the biggest, but unlike that early half-life debacle, most games are on multiple platforms now. Steam being bigger isn’t what I’d call monopolistic anymore, it’s just good sales on games and inertia.

    Given epic’s often BETTER sales, despite the fact that I really dislike the layout and functionality of the epic client, most of what steam has going for it is the deck and inertia.

    trolololol ,

    Yep wait until Gabe retires and Microsoft buys it.

    Xanis ,

    Where companies with monopolies are found to gain that title by ousting competitors and brutal buyouts and tactics literally every time, Valve exists. Literally. They just exist. Big difference between a monopoly and the best.

    Other companies also exist. In fact there are several launchers and two other digital distributors, and several websites, where one can purchase games. There are some things Steam is shit on. The still feels old interface as a broad example. Competitors could push in, like Epic. Instead, they manage to create the next step up from a gold-tainted dung pile, shit on their own launcher or store stability and performance, and create an experience so bad that Steam is able, through the fuckups of their rivals, maintain a market majority.

    lagomorphlecture ,

    Cable companies too please.

    chemicalprophet ,

    Do PG&E

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    I still don’t understand how the Californian government bailed them out when they were bankrupt, yet they were allowed to remain an independent company? Why didn’t the government take full control?

    Electricity in cities in the Bay Area that have their own municipal power company (like Palo Alto and Santa Clara) is literally 1/3 the cost of PG&E.

    jaybone ,

    FUUUUUUUUUUUCK PG&E

    Fuck them. If there was ever a case to be made for government owned utilities (and like why is that even a debate in the first place?) these assholes would be the poster child.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Palo Alto’s got the right idea - the city runs the electricity, gas, water, sewer, and they also have a city-owned fiber internet provider for businesses (which they want to eventually roll out for residential use too). Services are cheaper than other cities where they contract these out to third-party companies, since they’re running them to benefit residents, not to make money.

    They do contract out some things (garbage/recycling/compost is contracted to GreenWaste) but not many.

    namingthingsiseasy ,

    Because the USA haven’t had the balls to hold corporations responsible for their actions in decades. They can save them from failure, but have no willpower to correct any of their malevolent behaviors.

    I really hope this generation is the one that finally changes that trend.

    RememberTheApollo_ ,

    Gotta keep the rich people rich so they can fund my campaign.

    It’s not about the balls to hold them responsible, it’s about not biting the hand that feeds you. They don’t want to do anything about it.

    ayyy ,

    Because the governor owns a looot of shares. It’s just basic blatant corruption.

    Louisoix ,

    I don’t think they’ll ever do anything serious to apple. That shit is untouchable.

    TachyonTele ,

    The food companies fly low under the radar. They definitely need a wake up call.

    Voroxpete ,

    They are. The FTC have already brought antitrust suits against three of the companies you just listed, and you can bet your ass they’re eyeing the rest.

    Decades of neoliberalism doesn’t get undone in a single day. This is good news, and if America keeps putting competent people in power we’ll see more of it.

    Stegget ,

    Clone Teddy Roosevelt.

    wjrii ,

    This is a big deal, but just a reminder that this is the District (trial) court, so the next step would be the Circuit Court of Appeals, followed by an appeal to the Supreme Court. There may be some intriguing injunctions that come out of this, but we’re years away from a final disposition.

    For the curious, this one came out of the DC Circuit, informally known to be the most technically and administratively savvy circuit, as it deals with a LOT of nitty gritty stuff coming out of Federal agencies.

    dohpaz42 ,
    @dohpaz42@lemmy.world avatar

    I was about to comment that this is going to be appealed, and unless something changes with SCOTUS, my money is in it being reversed to some degree.

    Lost_My_Mind ,

    Stop making me sad, sir!!!

    adarza ,

    depends on when it hits the supreme court.

    didn’t someone just say google was ‘very bad’ and should be ‘shut down’? …someone that helped stack the court to its current composition?

    Thebeardedsinglemalt ,

    Clarence Thomas is hiding behind a tree in a yellow suit rubbing his hands together for all the shit Google is gonna give to him to get this immediately overturned…

    cupcakezealot ,
    @cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

    this is why it’s silly that people are mad at mozilla for buying a privacy friendly ad company to try and break the monopoly.

    priapus ,

    Its seriously absurd. I hate ads, but there’s realistically not a better option to profit when providing free software and services like Mozilla is doing. Investing into ads that don’t violate your privacy is a great decision. I don’t know what the hell people want from them.

    doodledup ,

    They should do it like Signal: accept donations. Signal is doing just fine. But Mozilla cannot legally do that as they are a for-profit company. And Mozilla Foundation won’t do that either because they are funded by Mozilla and under their command.

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    You can accept donations if you’re a for-profit company, there’s no rule against that.

    doodledup ,

    You can do crowdfunding. But general donations is illegal in the US if I understand that correctly. irs.gov/…/charitable-solicitation-state-requireme…

    sugar_in_your_tea ,

    Those are restrictions for charitable organizations, not for-profit organizations. AFAIK, for-profit companies can accept donations, they’re just not tax-deductible and the corp would need to pay taxes on it since it’s income.

    Laborer3652 ,

    Signal is a teeny tiny little pet project compared to an entire browser and rendering engine.

    Cornelius_Wangenheim , (edited )

    Google pays them 400 million. You really think they’re going to get anywhere close to that from donations?

    bitfucker ,

    You underestimate the complexity of a web browser if you compare it to instant messaging app

    explodicle ,

    They’re comparing the business models, not the software itself.

    bitfucker ,

    The problem is the business models revolve around the software. You cannot directly compare them without also comparing the complexity and manpower required to achieve it. Just take a look at W3C spec and you’ll see just how many cases there are to handle when making a browser. Not to mention making it secure and performant. Also, if you want to support web push technology on your browser you also need to have infrastructure to maintain. A donation may work but you’ll have to be content with slow development since the resources can be uncertain.

    Feathercrown ,

    They want them to meet all of their impossibly high and contradictory standards at the same time. For free. What’s so hard about that?? /s

    gnuplusmatt ,

    I don’t know what the hell people want from them.

    these people are probably already using forks anyway

    TheGrandNagus , (edited )

    People don’t seem to realise that developing a browser (a real one, not Chrome with a different paint job), web rendering engine, having the top-notch security expertise that building a modern web engine requires, plus being on the board that decides web standards is expensive.

    It’s honestly at a similar scale and complexity to OS development.

    We’re talking hundreds of millions a year to do the work that Mozilla needs to do. People who say “oh I’d chip in a dollar or two, but only if they get rid of all other funding” as if it’s feasible kind of get on my nerves because they clearly don’t see the big picture.

    Any time Mozilla tries to diversify their income while still being broadly privacy-respecting they’re branded as evil or too corporate. Any time they ask for donations they’re being greedy beggars. When they take Google’s money they’re shills for big tech. They can’t win. People want Mozilla to work for free.

    priapus ,

    Exactly. Browser’s are insanely fucking complex, the codebases of Firefox and Chromium are MASSIVE. There is zero chance Mozilla could ever make enough money simply off of donations.

    Tregetour ,
    @Tregetour@lemdro.id avatar

    Not silly at all. It’s a ship of Theseus situation, and the ship has helmsmen with bad attitudes. Bad attitudes engender bad decisionmaking.

    tabular ,
    @tabular@lemmy.world avatar

    In a healthy market new browsers need to be able to enter… but browsers are so complex from the reckless, endless feature creep that creating a new browser securely (or at all) is unreasonable. (Luckily they are open source and can be forked but the changes are minor compared to the base. A Chromium fork is still Chromium at the end of the day).

    Supporting the ad-driven internet is contrary to what is wanted by many users of Firefox/flavors and there is no alternative. It was said that they would destroy the Sith, not join them.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Supporting the ad-driven internet

    The thing is that there’s not really a good alternative. There’s real costs in running a service - servers, bandwidth, staff, etc. Either you pay for content directly (subscription services), someone else pays for you (which is the case with many Lemmy servers where admins are paying out of their own pockets), or ads cover the cost for you. People want to use the web for free, so ad-supported content is going to be around for a long time.

    explodicle ,

    I would rather pay for works directly, so I prefer a browser with no ads ever.

    dan ,
    @dan@upvote.au avatar

    Sure, that makes sense. A lot of people can’t afford that, though, especially in poorer countries.

    explodicle ,

    But then advertising to them is less lucrative too.

    tabular ,
    @tabular@lemmy.world avatar

    I disliked adverts so much as a time waster of limited human life. There may not be a good alternative to dumping toxic waste into a river, for example, but I still think we shouldn’t do it.

    Can’t speak for others but I do donate (not as much as I’d like) to Wikipedia and buy merch from some creators (if I like it for what it is).

    anticurrent , (edited )

    Mark my words! the outcome of this will be like a mountain giving birth to a mouse.

    Microsoft came out of such antitrust lawsuit unscathed and a decade later went back to pushing its browser down everyone’s throat.

    WoahWoah ,

    A mountain giving birth to a mouse? Is that a translation from another language? I’m not being critical, it’s just oddly specific and bizarre.

    anticurrent ,

    Yeah it is a french expression, the english equivalent is " a long harvest for a little corn "

    Here is a link to read about it, its meaning and use and its equivalent in other languages : link

    WoahWoah ,

    I’ve heard long climb for a short slide.

    spirinolas ,

    Portuguese too: “a montanha pariu um rato”

    explodicle ,

    What did we expect? There’s no “monopolistic competition” in an industry where everything depends on everything. We granted them a monopoly and now play whack-a-mole when that monopoly gets “too” big.

    Eldritch ,

    Biggest “so far” they’re far from the only.

    HubertManne ,

    we have so many freaking monopolies now a days. we really need to keep companies from owning so much. bring back the media limits and no company should be able to own multiple areas of healthcare and such.

    Bob_Robertson_IX ,

    Will this mean that no one will be able to pay to be the default search, or just that Google will no longer be allowed?

    Honestly, Google is still the best free search even though it isn’t as good as it used to be… and if this ruling means that no one can pay to be the default then Google will still win based on name recognition and performance. Plus they will save money by not needing to give it to Apple.

    The real loser here is Apple who is going to lose a fairly large revenue stream.

    TheGalacticVoid ,

    I imagine that, if regulators go hard enough, it’ll make sweeping changes company-wide. Google does a lot of anti-competitive behaviors that don’t involve money and are very sneaky, and as a result, we might see a lot of features be changed in the long term.

    chiliedogg ,

    I think this may also end up killing their deal with reddit.

    Cornelius_Wangenheim ,

    The biggest loser is Mozilla, who will lose about 80% of their revenue. If they enforce this, Firefox will pretty much be dead.

    Fades ,

    FUCK YEAH!!! NOW BREAK THOSE BASTARDS UP!!!

    nintendiator ,

    So now Mozilla can stop receiving their hush money, right?

    prosp3kt ,

    Maybe we should not let companies to work in a lot of areas. For example Amazon, SaaS IaaS Paas Ecommerce, ARM processors, among others. Maybe we should contain megadiversified enterprises??

    BrownianMotion ,
    @BrownianMotion@lemmy.world avatar

    Not sure why ARM is on your angry list. They are more than happy to sell rights to other manufacturers. As far as I can tell, they have not done anything wrong, yet.

    zaphod ,

    The example is Amazon who have their own ARM CPUs for their datacenters. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWS_Graviton

    Patch ,

    The corollary of that line of thought though is that by preventing tech companies from dabbling in microprocessors you reduce competition in the microprocessor space- a sector which has proven very prone to the formation of monopolies/duopolies. If anything, we want to encourage more new competitors in that space, not fewer.

    Also, it’d be essentially arbitrary. Is it OK for Apple to design its own microprocessors, but not Amazon- and if so, why? Is Google allowed if it uses them in phones like Apple, but not if it uses them in data centres like Amazon?

    fne8w2ah ,

    Might not do much for the upcoming Manifest v3 doomsday but at least the current government recognises the ills of big tech as it currently stands.

    Jarix ,

    But is this just tactics to win an election? Will they go the distance on any trust issue, or is it all vapour?

    Electric_Druid ,

    Finally, some good fucking news

    Jocker ,

    Nice… Now do it… Break them

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