Comment on Epic win: Jury decides Google has illegal monopoly in app store fight

• Rose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Google made the same argument in this case, but Epic responded by saying that impairing the competition is sufficient to describe the behavior as unlawful. Like Google, Valve control the vast majority of the market, charge a fee that is way above the cost of service, and have rules that make the competitors less appealing. Like this one:

  In response to one inquiry from a game publisher, in another example, Valve explained: “We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam key or not, as a part of the same shared PC market- so even if you weren’t using Steam keys, we’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. . . .”

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Google made the same argument in this case but Epic responded by saying that impairing the competition is sufficient to describe the behavior as unlawful.

    But Valve doesnt do anything to impair competition. Google owns and controls the operating system, require their store to be installed, and pay off other companies to be the default. Valve doesn’t do anything like that.

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• MrSqueezles@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  You mean like Play Store?

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No, not even a little.

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    • MrSqueezles@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What? Oh FFS. Context. Yes, Play Store has competitors, so yes absolutely a lot.

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• vsh@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  The landlord also has several competitors, but when he gets all the properties for himself and the rest gets almost nothing he’s a monopolist, no? Look what Microsoft and google and hundreds other companies did to become Monopoly.

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  • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    but when he gets all the properties for himself

    Then he has no competitors.

    Look what Microsoft and google and hundreds of other companies did to become Monopoly.

    What exactly did they do that Steam has also done?

    Steam does nothing to prevent others from competing, to my knowledge, other than just being the best at what they do.

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    • vsh@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If you’re thinking steam isn’t a monopoly then why is it nearly impossible to create a gaming platform that competes with these giants? If you can’t even enter the market because of ONE company, then something is very wrong.

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      • helenslunch@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        If you’re thinking steam isn’t a monopoly then why is it nearly impossible to create a gaming platform that competes with these giants?

        Depends on what you mean by “monopoly”. In the strictest sense it means they have zero competition, which is clearly untrue because we have Epic, GoG, Origin, Battlenet, Meta, etc. etc.

        In the case of Google, it means they take anticompetitive measures. I’ve asked you what anticompetitive measures Valve takes but you don’t seem to want to provide an answer. Why is that?

        It’s not “impossible” at all. It is very difficult because you’re fighting established brands that are not regional, and have decades of experience and brand recognition on you. Competing with them would require a fuckton of money and also some sort of novel features to bring to the market that they’re not. These are not anticompetitive measures, it’s just effective business.

        How would you go about even trying to rectify that? Would you force Valve to give other companies money and promotion to a competing service?

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