Comment on Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?

• MrQuallzin@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  looks at Hytale doing quite well without even touching Steam

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  • dukemirage@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Hytale has incredible publicity for an indie release and caters to a target group that’s used to a separate launcher. Not comparable to the usual release.

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  • Nelots@piefed.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Got any other modern examples than just the one game that had a massive following for the last 7 years of development?

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    • MagnificentSteiner@lemmy.zip ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Anything by Blizzard, Escape from Tarkov, Minecraft, Roblox, Valorant/LoL/TFT, Genshin Impact/HSR, Fortnite and more.

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      • Nelots@piefed.zip ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Notably, almost none of those are indie games, and almost any indie game that you did list came out in the 2000s like Roblox, before Steam was the behemoth it is today. Half of them are games by the same sets of AAA studios like Epic Games, Blizzard, and MiHoYo, and most Blizzard games have an entire franchise of games older than Steam itself to piggyback off of. Speaking of, anything by Blizzard isn’t even true… their most recent games like Diablo IV and Overwatch 2 are both on Steam. Tarkov is also on Steam now, but I’ll admit I’m splitting hairs here since it spent nearly a decade off of it. Though the fact that it released on Steam with its 1.0 update does say something.

        So I really don’t think any of those games aside from debatably Tarkov shows that modern indie devs can be successful outside of Steam.

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    • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Star Citizen I guess. If by “well” it is meant “making lots of money”

      But yeah it’s not realistic at all for 99+% of devs/games

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• fyrilsol@kbin.melroy.org ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I would say they aren't.

  Because, they aren't like Epic, who has been going around and locking games behind exclusivity deals. Name me one game by one developer, who Valve went to and was like "hey, I'm going to give you a $5 Million exclusivity deal. I'd like for your game to be available on our Steam platform for 2 years before you're allowed to sell anywhere else!"

  I'm sure nobody can find that game. Meanwhile, Epic has done this to Metro: Exodus, Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2 for the PC and outright buying studios going "hey, delist your game on Steam and only be available to our platform."

  How the fuck can that broad be so stupid to not notice that? But it's all Valve's fault, somehow.

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  • kinsnik@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I don’t know if valve are or aren’t abusing their monopolistic position. I am not a lawyer and i don’t have a horse in the race.

    I was just answering to someone who said “if you don’t like valve policies, dont publish your games there”, which would be true for a normal business, but specifically not true of a monopoly, which steam is, unquestionably

    Epic can do things much more freely, because they dont hold a monopoly on pc games

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    • fyrilsol@kbin.melroy.org ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It's hard to really call Valve a monopoly when, there is competition. If there's no competition, then Valve would clearly be a monopoly.

      It's not like back in the 90s when Microsoft bundled their Windows OS with Internet Explorer that edged out Netscape back then. Because there really wasn't a lot of browser alternatives available to have made it where competition was there. Microsoft was considered a monopoly back then because competition was very little during their peak then.

      In the digital PC gaming landscape, it's entirely different. There are numerous marketplaces for digital games. And they're big enough to where Valve is just simply an alternative and can go without if someone chooses.

      Valve doesn't force anyone to use Steam or strong-arms people to buy games from them. They just exist, the people have spoken both by their own loyalty and their wallets. And that made companies like Epic mad and jealous.

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  • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    hey, I’m going to give you a $5 Million exclusivity deal

    This isn’t something they need to.do, as they have a monopoly.

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    • doublah@sopuli.xyz ⁨17⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      They could still compete on I don’t know, features, quality instead of anti-consumer practices.

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      • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        Also true, but that’s not what I’m replying to.

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    • fyrilsol@kbin.melroy.org ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      ...Okay?

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      • ripcord@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I don’t understand the reply. I was replying to the topic. I’m not a fan of Epic either but people are being kinda stupid about some of the justifications for the hate.

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• bryndos@fedia.io ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  There are not many objectively provable monopolies and i doubt that English law would support that claim without extremely strong evidence, generally utilities are the only ones that'd get close. A necessity with high fixed costs and infrastructure lock-in.

  Steam has high market share in a segment, but not necessarily a distinct segment, I'm sure steam would argue that there are enough consumers who can and do substitute between pc and console and mobile, as well as other vendors so that their market power is mitigated by a fair amount of consumer mobility.

  So what you're looking to prove is unlikely to be a pure "monopoly" but 'excess market power', and 'abuse of market power'. That is a complex legal art that the competition regulator is usually not that successful at proving, at least in English law.

  Abuse of market power has to impact consumers not producers. There are always marginal producers struggling to make a profit - that happens in competitive markets, producers bidding prices down, some going out of business. I'm not saying I agree, but that's more or less how the law sees it, lookup what they let supermarkets get away with in contracts with farmers.

  To show consumer harm from upstream market manipulation you'd probably have to show a material dearth of choice being created by steam policies in order to jack up prices. Maybe that can be demonstrated, but it's not simple and more likely to come down to subjective interpretation of the arguments and evidence from both sides rather than any unarguable objective truth.

  If it were unarguable or objectively true then the CMA might lead the investigation itself instead of this being a private action. Though maybe this is too small a market for them to worry about.

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  • squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    You have to differentiate between a monopoly in economics and a monopoly in law.

    In economics a monopoly is the only seller of a good with no other competition. If I am the only one who owns apple trees, I got a monopoly on apples.

    In law a monopoly is someone who owns so much of the market that they can charge unfair prices. If I am the only one who owns large orchards full of the best kind of apple trees, it doesn’t really matter to me that someone else has a couple mediocre trees in their backyard. I am not a economics-monopoly, since someone else is also selling apples, but I hold enough of the market that I can set the price to whatever I want.

    (Ok, the analogy isn’t perfect, but you get it, I hope. Basically the “excess market power” thing you talked about is the legal definition of a monopoly.)

    Customers don’t necessarily need to be end customers. If steam is charging their business customers too much, that counts too. (It also affects the end customers too, btw.)

    So the question is: If I don’t release a game on steam, will that cause it to underperform significantly? If so, does steam charge a lot above market price? If both of these questions are answered with yes, a lawsuit could be successful.

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    • bryndos@fedia.io ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      UK law basically doesn't use the term.

      My point was that proving dominance and abuse is rarely objective fact. It sure isn't showing market share and that some games companies go out of business. They have to show the things that valve does to restrict competition - being popular isn't enough alone.

      Your last question is quite a good example of how hard it is to prove because it includes counterfactual comparisons.

      This might be why it seems (if the journo is to be believed) that they're going down the tie-ins angle for the DLC, not necessarily headline pricing. Thou the latter would probably a worse outcome for valve if guilty.

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