Re: The GOG/Amazon Link

On Tue, 17 Dec 2024 12:36:48 -0500, Xocyll <Xocyll@gmx.com> wrote:

Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com> looked up from reading the
entrails of the porn spammer to utter  "The Augury is good, the signs
say:

On Mon, 16 Dec 2024 13:49:54 -0500, Mike S. <Mike_S@nowhere.com>
wrote:

On Mon, 16 Dec 2024 13:29:50 -0500, Spalls Hurgenson
<spallshurgenson@gmail.com> wrote:
>

Not a Monopoly in any sense really, they don't control the market, they
don't control the pricing
They were just the first one into it, and that gave them a massive
advantage, in a market ignored by everyone else, but there are
alternatives now and you can still go and sell elsewhere if you want.
>
This Wolfire bunch want to have their cake and eat it too.

To be on Steam for the exposure, but sell it cheaper elsewhere so they
get more money and cut Valve out.

Steam has an unsurpassed dominance on the market, estimated to be
above 75% of all digital PC game distribution sales. Saying 'they can
just go elsewhere' is disingenuous; as a business, you need to go
where the customers are and, for PC games, those customers are on
Steam. Selling on other platforms does not make you money.

And the point of the lawsuit /is/ that, to some degree, Steam is
setting prices, by requiring that publishers not undercut Steam by
selling their games cheaper elsewhere. Originally, it was believed
that this restriction was only limited to Steam keys but new evidence
suggests its far broader than that.

I've said it before: I believe Valve has been, on the whole, a good
curator of the PC gaming market. Certainly I feel other companies --be
they Epic, EA, Microsoft or whomever-- would have been far worse and
more rapacious. I also think that --given the services Steam
provides-- their 30% cut is equitable, despite other platforms like
Epic or Microsoft offering discounted rates. But their overwhelming
dominance is troubling and arguably stifles competition. Are they a
monopoly? It seems likely. Being a monopoly  itself is not illegal,
but it does put the company under further restrictions, and Wolfire's
case argues that they have violated those restrictions when they acted
in an anti-competitive manner.

And if the judge agrees with Wolfire, the potential fallout for Valve
could be very, very expensive.

Valve is not above reproach. They do a lot of things I strongly
disagree with. For instance, a good chunk of their income derives from
facilitating gambling sites that use cosmetics and other in-game MTX
as tokens, with each transfer or sale netting Valve a profit. Valve is
very well aware what these tokens are being used for, and does very
little to police it because it brings in so much money. As good as the
company might be in comparison to others, Valve still need policing.
This case seems to strongly indicate this is another area where
Valve's policies stepped over the line.