Comment on Court rules Gabe Newell must appear in person to testify in Steam anti-trust lawsuit
Spedwell@lemmy.world 11 months agoYes, that is problematic. Not by itself, but coupled with a large captive userbase it is. As an example:
Let’s say you want to start a game marketplace, which simply runs a storefront and content distribution—you specifically don’t want to run a workshop, friends network, video streaming, or peer multiplayer. Because you don’t offer these other services, you keep costs down, and can charge a 5% fee instead of a 30%.
With Steam’s policy, publishers may choose to:
- List on your platform at $45, and forego the userbase of Steam
- List on Steam and your platform at $60, and forego the reduced costs your platform could offer
Obviously, pricing is much more sophisticated than this. You’d have to account for change in sales volume and all. Point is, though, that publishers (and consumers!) cannot take advantage of alternate services that offer fewer services at lower cost.
The question the court has to answer is whether the userbase/market share captured by Steam causes choice (2) to be de-facto necessary for a game to succeed commercially. If so, then the policy would be the misuse of market dominance to stifle competition.
And I think Wolfire might be able to successfully argue that.
Maalus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Yeah they can, they just don’t have to sell on steam.
Spedwell@lemmy.world 11 months ago
This… misses the point? Of course the can not sell on Steam. That’s always an option.
The antitrust aspect of all of this is that Steam is the de-facto marketplace, consumers are stubborn and habitual and aren’t as likely purchase games less-known platforms, and that a publisher opting not to sell on Steam might have a negative influence on the games success.
If that consumer inertia gives Steam an undue advantage that wouldn’t be present in a properly competitive market, then it there is an antitrust case to be made, full stop. The court will decide if the advantage is significant enough to warrant any action.
But I really don’t like seeing Wolfire—which is a great pro-consumer and pro-open-source studio—having their reputation tarnished just because Lemmyites have a knee-jerk reaction to bend over and take it from Valve just because Steam is a good platform.
Maalus@lemmy.world 11 months ago
Can I create a shitty service that only me and my brother use, and then sue Steam cause they have more players? It’s a dumb lawsuit, plain and simple
Spedwell@lemmy.world 11 months ago
As I said, no need for us to argue further. The lawsuit has grounds, even if you don’t understand why. Read articles and legal briefs on the matter if you would like to learn more.
spark947@lemm.ee 11 months ago
Steam runs weekly deals and daily sales all the time. I doubt they have to check with gog.