It isn’t a monopoly because they don’t require you to use their store. Epic has a monopoly of epic exclusive games.
Exactly. The number of people on Lenny who simp for Valve’s monopoly just because Epic (along with every game developer, big or small) stands to benefit is kind of shocking.
Pollo_Jack@lemmy.world 1 day ago
richardwallass@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
How do you call a corporate driving 75% of the digital distribution market for PC games ?
HailSeitan@lemmy.world 1 day ago
And ecommerce sellers don’t “have to” sell on Amazon, so they don’t have any market power they can abuse to extract 40-50% fees from sellers, right?
pennomi@lemmy.world 23 hours ago
They don’t. My small business sells direct from our site instead of in Amazon, and we do okay.
Pollo_Jack@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
Amazon requires price matching for most sellers, which is shit and makes this an apples to oranges comparison.
Could Steam back down on their 30% cut? Sure, but not a monopoly.
HailSeitan@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
It’s not apples to oranges, because the network effects (and coercive pressures they create) are in fact incredibly similar: sellers have to go where most customers are, and most PC gamers begin and end their search for games on Steam, just like most online shoppers begin and end their searches on Amazon.
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 20 hours ago
Its an effective monopoly, that’s not really disputable. This lawsuit isn’t even about them having a monopoly, its about them allegedly abusing it.
orclev@lemmy.world 22 hours ago
It doesn’t have anything to do with Epic, it’s because Steam provides a great service with a ton of features nobody else offers, and Valve has demonstrated time and time again that they make policies that benefit consumers.
It would be great if Steam had some competition, but Epic ain’t it. What people want is another service of equal quality to Steam. Instead the best we have is GOG and that still falls well short of feature parity nevermind the anti-consumer cesspool of Epic.
Suing Valve isn’t going to do anything to improve the situation. Realistically what could Valve do to be “less of a monopoly”? Lower the percentage they take of sales? Consumers wouldn’t see any benefit from that only developers. Ironically it would also increase Valves monopoly because if they took a smaller cut there would be even less reason for companies to sell on Epic as Epics lower cut is literally the only reason developers (outside of Epic literally paying some of them mounds of cash by way of exclusivity contracts) pick Epic over Steam.
If Epic really wants to do something about Valves monopoly it’s simple, they just need to offer all the same features that Steam does. Things like family sharing, streaming support, a cross platform store and launcher, and an excellent review system so people can better understand the games they’re thinking about buying. Until that happens yes people will stick with Steam because it’s the objectively superior experience.
lastweakness@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
You know what annoys me about the people defending Epic’s lawsuit? The fact that there are actually legitimate issues with Valve and somehow they’re hyper-fixated on the non-issues. If they were instead talking about CS2 gambling, lootboxes, etc, I would be in support of it. But no, it’s about how they’re a “monopoly” because they’re one of only two stores that seem to care about their customers…
richardwallass@sh.itjust.works 3 hours ago
It’s not a reason to charge 30% The $500 million Gabe Newell’s superyacht is here to remind you that prices are too high.