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It's not stupid. Monopoly does not mean there's no competition. Google has been legally declared a monopoly and they have tons of competition.
Steam does a lot of shitty things — including using gambling mechanics on kids and failing to moderate the neo-nazi clubhouse that are their forums — but they are not a monopoly and do not behave in a monopolistic or anticompetitive manner whatsoever. Their success and market share is genuinely earned on merits.
Personally, I would prefer GOG, but many games don’t release there, or release there much later. Epic could compete, but their heart is clearly not in it as they refuse to give customers features they want out of a platform and do engage in anticompetitive practices.
Oh there's plenty said about Valve, like their dirty skin gambling underbelly.
People like you can't seem to differentiate wanting solid criticisms of Valve and Steam rather than just theory crafting all the worst things that can happen with them. The Steam hysteria makes no sense when its a storefront on open software platforms and the ones that are on closed software platforms aren't doing what people are gearing Valve would do whenever Gabe dies or if Valve went public
At least put effort into explaining why Steam will become this terribly blood sucking store on PC where people can download from numerous options as compared to platforms like Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, iOS where you don't have freedom to install anything you want. As a developer you can't just distribute software and have them installable.
If people that wanted to make people concerned about Steam put more effort into their arguments, maybe people on Lemmy would give their concerns more credence. It's surprising that on Lemmy, people who seem to value art and expression so much are so bad at expressing why people should be concerned about what they are concern about
Lemmy is not a person
Technically, Lemmy was a person.
God so many people dont understand what a monopoly actually is. Listen carefully: despite the name MONOPOLY DOESN'T MEAN ONE!
You boot licking capitalist just can't get past this. God i wish the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt could arise to beat some sense into all of you.
Steam is 100% a monopoly, they just happen to be a benevolent monopoly... but like all, that can change.
Oh look, yet another person who doesn't understand what monopoly means.
A monopoly is a market structure with a single dominant seller in a particular industry.
Sounds like Steam fits that description pretty well. I agree that steam isn't a strict monopoly, there is competition, but they are so far and ahead they still function as a monopoly in their area.
Since you'd rather throw mud than talk terms, I guess that’s where this ends.
I think the issue is, that if we're going to call steam a monopoly (and maybe they are), then we've got to call Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo monopolies.
What I don't want to see is legal attacks against steam while letting worse behavior off the hook.
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