I love this new narrative that undercutting the competition is anti-competitive and not just competing.
Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit
Spedwell@lemmy.world 7 months agoWolfire originally operated Humble Bundle, and they have a very legitimate case. Steam uses anticompetitive pricing policies that makes it difficult for other marketplaces to compete.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 months ago
Mango@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s not Steam’s price to control. It’s the developers’.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 7 months ago
Not talking about the game prices, which are already set by the developers.
MrSqueezles@lemm.ee 7 months ago
I can’t believe that a company that puts out a device running Linux that gives you access to the OS in a few clicks and provides guides for how to install competing distribution platforms is more anticompetitive than Sony, Apple, Nintendo, Microsoft, Google. Valve and Steam aren’t perfect. It’s difficult to accept that having a store and charging for it is worse than, for example, Sony buying studios and paying millions of dollars for some games to be exclusive on their platform.
woelkchen@lemmy.world 7 months ago
You know that court cases are not competitions about who’s the most illegal, right?
Zozano@aussie.zone 7 months ago
They should be.
jimbo@lemmy.world 7 months ago
[deleted]Spedwell@lemmy.world 7 months ago
It’s a certain policy publisher’s have to agree to in order to list on Steam, called a Platform Most Favored Nations (“PMFN”) clause.
Similar thing is used by Amazon, for equally monopolistic reasons.
Zozano@aussie.zone 7 months ago
If anticompetitive means “it’s your choice to enter into an agreement in which we host your game for 30%, and its distribute it on our platform, with unlimited patch updates, and unlimited user downloads, and a fuckton of features like community forums, guides, groups etc., also if your game is good we will promote it free of charge”
Then I suppose companies like Epic who choose to run at a loss, as opposed to providing a good service, have no chance, and Steam is anticompetitive.
The counter narrative exists though, Steam is just a good service, and if you want to compete with them, you need to provide a good service, like GOG.
spark947@lemm.ee 7 months ago
That us all fine. David is alleging that Valve is trying to restrict other platforms wolfire can sell their cases on. Valve needs to compete, not threaten to stop distributing a game if they don’t like how it is selling elsewhere.
Zozano@aussie.zone 7 months ago
I’ve never heard of Valve trying to prevent a developer from distributing their game on other PC store platforms, it’s quite an assertion.
spark947@lemm.ee 7 months ago
Yeah, it will be interesting to see how the case goes.
Spedwell@lemmy.world 7 months ago
The Platform Most Favored Nation policy employed by Steam is the one at issue in this case. And yes, it is anticompetitive. It abuses userbase size to prevent alternative marketplaces from providing fewer services for smaller cuts
Zozano@aussie.zone 7 months ago
Again, it just sounds like Valve is offering a good service and other companies don’t want to compete. If it’s Valves fault for providing a good service and lots of users choose to use their platform instead of others, I fail to see what they could do to rectify that.
Spedwell@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Valve offers a great service, and I enjoy it a lot. But it’s very difficult for a competitor to enter the market because they won’t be able to match Steam’s services immediately. Typically in a market the approach is then to undercut Steam, but that is exactly what this policy is designed to make impractical by forcing publishers to overprice, on penalty of losing Steams’ userbase.
I mean I don’t know what else to say. It is anti-competitive. It doesn’t take too much to see why. There are many good articles and legal briefs on the matter. It hurts you and me, the consumer, and it hurts publishers. It enriches Valve, benevolent though they may appear. You shouldn’t like this type of strong-arming the market when Amazon does it, and you shouldn’t roll over and take it from Valve either.
Doesn’t even matter, the court is going to sort it out for us. But I hate to see the reputational hit Wolfire is taking here. I like their studio, I believe their developers are operating in genuine good faith, and I think they are doing consumers a favor.