Comment on Valve Announces New Steam Machine, Steam Controller & Steam Frame
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 3 days agoThe difference is that a monarchy usually rules over everything and has the last say.
Steam is a monopoly only because every competitor has tried but failed to make a new compelling service.
Steam does have the last say within their platform (usually it’s the correct say), but they don’t disallow competition by lobbying or with other anti-competitive practices.
Some company just has to make a better service.
It’s not impossible, just no one wants to do it because they can’t make bajillions like they usually do in their other sectors where they can freely abuse the customer because there isn’t someone like Steam looking out for them.
Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 3 days ago
Monarchy only works because every competitor who tries to change something has failed.
Monarchies would as well not have been established, if they where not making better services than competitors, and when they reached power the got out of control.
Same will happen to steam, it is just how things are, it is just a matter of time, until centralised power gets abused.
Our legal framework does not protect us from this, most monopolies are not illegal in current law.
The current state of capitalism is that companies try to get good brand recognition to get support and establish their monopol position, ant then, the enshitification starts slowly.
Back to the monarchy similarity: Most monarchs had great support at the beginning or even for generations until that power gets abused.
If we have no tools against an entity that can abuse power, we have to establish those tools while we don’t need them, or it gets very hard to do something against it when it happens.
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
I agree we should have better laws to protect people against evil monopolies (google, etc).
Steam has been at the top of pc gaming for a very long time, so they would have enshittified by now if that was the plan, but luckily they are a private company and their leadership caters to their user base.
If someone evil took over Steam somehow then yea that’s bad news and the laws we should establish will help if that happens.