The legality is not very interesting imo. Monopoly law has been absolutely gutted by Reagan, and weakened by every single (yes, every single) administration since.
The question of whether having a monopoly position and not abusing it is something we as a society should do something about is, to me, equivalent to the following. If someone owns an automatic rifle, but isn’t shooting or threatening anyone yet (i.e., using it to harm society), should we do something about it? What about a bazooka? More abstractly: should society aim to prevent harm when reasonably possible, or only punish it after the harm is already done?
I think the issue is, realistically, what CAN we do about it. They didn’t come by their position through shady or abusive practices, but by simply making the best platform. Customers feel Steam treats them well. Even if you tried to break it up, customers would just glomp onto one of the shards and we’d be right back here again. Would be like taking the rifle away, but society just being like “No, we WANT them to have a rifle” and giving them another one every time you take it away.
Absolutely. If steam was pulling 1/10th of the stuff Google and Apple does on their marketplaces, that would be a problem.
The reason Steam is dominant is its better than the others. So long as publishers are unwilling to pass the lower cost of the platform into consumers, there is no incentive to change.
Also, Steam is the only platform that gives regional discounts in many regions. Its the main reason I don’t use GOG as much as I would like to.
A very easy solution would be for Steam to transition to the GOG approach optionally: Preserve games without any sort of DRM or online-only feature. Releases past a set amount of time could drop DRM (they already have this option AFAIK) and they would also need to have a sort of non-steam-services connected variant.
Combine this with completely FOSS SteamOS/Steam Client, and Valve would do everything right.
Realistically, Steam is a monopoly.
That’s not illegal. In fact, it’s not even (necessarily) a problem.
If they misuse their monopoly position, then it becomes a problem.
The legality is not very interesting imo. Monopoly law has been absolutely gutted by Reagan, and weakened by every single (yes, every single) administration since.
The question of whether having a monopoly position and not abusing it is something we as a society should do something about is, to me, equivalent to the following. If someone owns an automatic rifle, but isn’t shooting or threatening anyone yet (i.e., using it to harm society), should we do something about it? What about a bazooka? More abstractly: should society aim to prevent harm when reasonably possible, or only punish it after the harm is already done?
I think the issue is, realistically, what CAN we do about it. They didn’t come by their position through shady or abusive practices, but by simply making the best platform. Customers feel Steam treats them well. Even if you tried to break it up, customers would just glomp onto one of the shards and we’d be right back here again. Would be like taking the rifle away, but society just being like “No, we WANT them to have a rifle” and giving them another one every time you take it away.
Absolutely. If steam was pulling 1/10th of the stuff Google and Apple does on their marketplaces, that would be a problem.
The reason Steam is dominant is its better than the others. So long as publishers are unwilling to pass the lower cost of the platform into consumers, there is no incentive to change.
Also, Steam is the only platform that gives regional discounts in many regions. Its the main reason I don’t use GOG as much as I would like to.
Yeah. GoG used to have regional pricing, but they weren’t able to keep up with the costs of it and had to stop or go under.
A very easy solution would be for Steam to transition to the GOG approach optionally: Preserve games without any sort of DRM or online-only feature. Releases past a set amount of time could drop DRM (they already have this option AFAIK) and they would also need to have a sort of non-steam-services connected variant.
Combine this with completely FOSS SteamOS/Steam Client, and Valve would do everything right.