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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…”???
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.
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.
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 good on 70% of the market isn’t a good thing?
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.
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.)
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…)
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
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.
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.
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?
Steam…
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
So because they’re treating you right it’s ok to put 70% of the market in the hands of a single person?
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.
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.
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?
Oh so you believe that margins high enough that the owner is a billionaire don’t hurt your wallet?
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.
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.
You know Valve doesn’t set the prices right? The developers do
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.
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.
It’s not different, when did I say it’s a Steam only issue?
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.
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.
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…”???
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.
Steam isn’t actually a monopoly in a meaningful way
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.
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 good on 70% of the market isn’t a good thing?
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.
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.)
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…)
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.
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).
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.
You know anyone can be sued for anything right?
Being sued doesn’t mean a damn thing, the case judgement is what matters.
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.
Their market dominance isn’t because of anticompetitive practices, it’s because of customer-friendly practices. People like it, so people use it.
Majority also like Google. Like it or not, they still provide the best search engine.
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.
Lol, they absolutely do not. Their search results have turned to shit.
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.
I bought a Kagi subscription within hours of finding the site. They’ll eventually enshittify but they’re very good for now.
https://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.
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”
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.
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
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.
immediately reacts
“Let’s wait for them to start doing illegal stuff before we use the law against them.” Yeah, of course.
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.
You still have yet tob porpoise any same solutions.
What do you propose they “break up” into?
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?
SHHHH!!!
Monopolies and authoritarians aren’t bad as long as people like them! Hadn’t you heard?
Join a decentralized platform because fuck Spez, defend a centralized platform because yay Gaben!