Edit: Funny how I was replying to a comment with examples of companies that wish they had 70% of the market under their control yet people didn’t disagree with OP but bringing up Valve? Oh man, Gaben can do no wrong! 70% of the market under the control of a company owned by a single man? No problemo!
You can’t break up steam and improve the market in any particular way. Since they’re not really big on exclusivity agreements, there’s also very little a court order would do to make the market more competitive.
What’s a better alternative? Have tried all major ones except paid ones and I always return to Google. Maybe for basic stuff Duck Duck Go / Bing is fine, but once you start searching for local / non-English stuff, results were underwhelming.
There are lots of articles about how they make their search results worse on purpose for more profit. They alter search queries on the server side to give results for a search which is more aligned with an advertising partner. They inject AI into search results which can be wildly wrong.
Neither did google. The problem is that this case, from the title stated in another thread, Google are doing anti-competitive shit to make sure they maintain the dominant position. But steam does not practice in anti competitive behaviours (as far as I know anyway). In fact, the competitor can arguably be held to anti competitive behaviour depending on how you spin it.
Steam is currently being sued for anti competitive practices and do we really need to wait until they do bad shit before we start to consider that a single company having a good on 70% of the market isn’t a good thing?
And that practice is what? Providing value to the consumer? The thing that MAYBE can be used against them is the clause for selling STEAM KEYS outside of steam. But that is it. Take a look at mindustry, the game is free everywhere else but steam. But that did not violate steam ToS since they didn’t sell the steam keys for less than what is listed on steam.
It’s in front of a judge right now and information is public if you want to know more, and no they’re not getting sued for providing value to the consumer (but don’t worry, they charge you enough that they can provide value AND make Newell a billionaire… so maybe you should be angry about that if you don’t care about the rest.)
Have you read the filings? The complaints are that steam listings for a game have to match the lowest price for the game, that keys can’t be sold for less than the steam listing (I’m not really sure how this is a different thing from the low pricing), and that steam takes too big a cut of the proceeds. That last one is particularly hilarious, in that they are bringing this lawsuit to a court that respects USA business laws, which pointedly do not hold that ‘being too greedy’ is a problem (outside of price-gouging laws, which are not relevant here…)
Other retailers take a smaller cut. But because Steam mandates that the Steam storefront always gets the lowest price, publishers can’t take advantage of that lower cut to offer lower prices. They can only lower the price to something that doesn’t torpedo them with a 30% cut on Steam.
Steam…
Edit: Funny how I was replying to a comment with examples of companies that wish they had 70% of the market under their control yet people didn’t disagree with OP but bringing up Valve? Oh man, Gaben can do no wrong! 70% of the market under the control of a company owned by a single man? No problemo!
You can’t break up steam and improve the market in any particular way. Since they’re not really big on exclusivity agreements, there’s also very little a court order would do to make the market more competitive.
Their market dominance isn’t because of anticompetitive practices, it’s because of customer-friendly practices. People like it, so people use it.
Majority also like Google. Like it or not, they still provide the best search engine.
Lol, they absolutely do not. Their search results have turned to shit.
What’s a better alternative? Have tried all major ones except paid ones and I always return to Google. Maybe for basic stuff Duck Duck Go / Bing is fine, but once you start searching for local / non-English stuff, results were underwhelming.
https://searx.space/
My current favorite search engine. Just pick one that’s running out of your country or close to it. Hope it works as well for you as it does for me.
There are lots of articles about how they make their search results worse on purpose for more profit. They alter search queries on the server side to give results for a search which is more aligned with an advertising partner. They inject AI into search results which can be wildly wrong.
Steam isn’t actually a monopoly in a meaningful way
Neither did google. The problem is that this case, from the title stated in another thread, Google are doing anti-competitive shit to make sure they maintain the dominant position. But steam does not practice in anti competitive behaviours (as far as I know anyway). In fact, the competitor can arguably be held to anti competitive behaviour depending on how you spin it.
Steam is currently being sued for anti competitive practices and do we really need to wait until they do bad shit before we start to consider that a single company having a good on 70% of the market isn’t a good thing?
And that practice is what? Providing value to the consumer? The thing that MAYBE can be used against them is the clause for selling STEAM KEYS outside of steam. But that is it. Take a look at mindustry, the game is free everywhere else but steam. But that did not violate steam ToS since they didn’t sell the steam keys for less than what is listed on steam.
It’s in front of a judge right now and information is public if you want to know more, and no they’re not getting sued for providing value to the consumer (but don’t worry, they charge you enough that they can provide value AND make Newell a billionaire… so maybe you should be angry about that if you don’t care about the rest.)
Have you read the filings? The complaints are that steam listings for a game have to match the lowest price for the game, that keys can’t be sold for less than the steam listing (I’m not really sure how this is a different thing from the low pricing), and that steam takes too big a cut of the proceeds. That last one is particularly hilarious, in that they are bringing this lawsuit to a court that respects USA business laws, which pointedly do not hold that ‘being too greedy’ is a problem (outside of price-gouging laws, which are not relevant here…)
This is an issue because of Steam’s 30% cut.
Other retailers take a smaller cut. But because Steam mandates that the Steam storefront always gets the lowest price, publishers can’t take advantage of that lower cut to offer lower prices. They can only lower the price to something that doesn’t torpedo them with a 30% cut on Steam.