• misk@sopuli.xyz
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    2 months ago

    You don’t seem to understand what a monopoly is. Having some small competition that’s not ever going to threaten you because you can leverage your dominant position is also a case of a monopoly.

    Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it. How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on? This is why they need to be broken up or brought to order via regulations. Companies are not your friends.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it.

      Yes, Into fortnite, not EGS. The eggs spent all their money on timed exclusives instead of a better product, and that’s why they failed to make a steam competitor.

    • rtxn@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Success is not illegal. Valve isn’t buying up smaller competing storefronts, or paying off developers for exclusivity, or burying competition in legal fees and prepared 80-page lawsuits. The only thing holding back real competition is the competing platforms being dogshit.

      I was excited for the EGS when it was announced. Then it turned out to be a garbage platform with the shady exclusivity deals that turned Steam into an ad platform for games that had been poached by Epic. Valve responded to it with the Steam Deck and Proton.

      • misk@sopuli.xyz
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        2 months ago

        Leveraging dominant position to keep your monopoly is illegal even in the US.

          • misk@sopuli.xyz
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            2 months ago

            At some point you’re so entrenched in the market you don’t have to do anything anymore. I was quite surprised that Valve somehow evaded EU Digital Markets Act gatekeeper criteria.

            • tyler@programming.dev
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              2 months ago

              Ok but you made a claim that they were leveraging their market position to maintain a monopoly. So please describe how they are doing that in any way shape or form.

                • tyler@programming.dev
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                  2 months ago

                  Just because someone claims something to sue a company does not mean it’s true. You gotta go through the whole court process and prove it.

                  It says Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms

                  I’ve never seen any publisher claim this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But it sure doesn’t sound like that has anything to do with being a monopoly. Epic, GoG, Ubisoft, etc. could all do the exact same thing.

                  Anyway, thanks for the link. I was not the one to downvote you on your last comment. You did what I asked.

    • ampersandrew@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on?

      They could offer their games DRM-free, guarantee that their multiplayer games have LAN or provide servers and/or at least provide that information clearly the consumer, write an open source drop-in replacement for Steam Input and Workshop, guarantee more uptime on their matchmaking/friends servers, retain old versions of games that they distribute, and allow for user-customized or open source clients to fit all sorts of UI preferences, off the top of my head.