Comment on AMD say the Steam Machine is "on track" for an early 2026 release

• Fubarberry@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Usually when you think of something being anti-competitive, it’s because it’s bad for consumers. But you can also be anti-competitive by doing things that are appealing to consumers in the short term (like selling a product at a loss) but help ensure market domination for the longer term.

  Valve’s position here is tricky, the steam machine would have a small marketshare compared to consoles, but as a PC it could be considered furthering Valve’s PC game “monopoly”.

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• cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  I am not a lawyer, but as far as I know that’s actually incorrect, selling a product below cost is considered predatory dumping, as it means literally nobody can afford to compete with you on anything resembling a level playing field. How is any competitor supposed to release a competing product when Gabe is using his own financial resources for “eating the price spikes”. Unless you have your own financial resources or massive speculative investment, you cannot also “eat the price spikes” so your own products will have to be priced at realistic levels so that it is something that actually earns you some level of profit in order for your business to continue and grow, and thus those products will be far more expensive than Valve’s subsidized product, and thus, you probably won’t sell any unless you have some significant further advantage, which you shouldn’t need to have in order to simply compete with the market leader. That’s a clear barrier to entry, and is the definition of anti-competitive.

  Usually, this would be done to lock the subsidized buyers into a particular ecosystem, or even just to bundle that ecosystem by default (aka illegal bundling, like Microsoft did for years) from which additional profit can later be expected. In Valve’s case, this would be Steam, and it pretty clearly would profit them in the long run, and this strategy also keeping all competitors out by dumping hardware below cost, thus abusing their Steam distribution monopoly to fund a second monopoly on the Steam Machines market to maintain their first monopoly. That’s literally what antitrust laws were designed for. Just because we don’t really effectively enforce them anymore I feel like people have started losing sight of what they mean and what they are supposed to be for and I don’t think we should just normalize that this is how businesses are supposed to operate.

  And that’s why Valve probably won’t do that. (at least I suspect they won’t, based on my view of their history, I have no insider knowledge)

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  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Selling hardware at a loss when you make it up in subscriptions or sales in that ecosystem is incredibly common.

    Sony is a prime example of doing this in the same market, they’ve sold generations of Playstations at an initial loss knowing games sale and subscriptions would make it up.

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    • cecilkorik@piefed.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      It is definitely incredibly common, yes. Like I said, the laws are generally not effectively enforced, and they’re also intentionally limited. For some reason, we have decided it is totally acceptable to do that when you don’t have a recognized monopoly position, which Sony doesn’t in that market. It’s very particular, it’s very specific, and it’s very subjective, which is probably a huge part of why they aren’t effectively enforced. Also, companies know all the ways to get around the ways the laws are written if they really want to.

      We still don’t really follow them even when the laws probably do apply though, it’s just vestigial at this point. We’re supposed to believe the antitrust laws were only meant for those old, bad monopolies like Standard Oil and Ma Bell. We don’t really have monopolies like that anymore, all our monopolies are the good kind of monopolies that don’t harm society, or they’re not monopolies at all, they’re coordinating oligopolies that constantly partner with and all own chunks of each other, which means they’re also perfectly fine and not any kind of bad monopoly at all.

      I didn’t write the laws, there are lots of things about them that I think could be vastly improved. But I do agree with their intent, and we shouldn’t forget what their intent is, just because our current financial and political environment is not interested in them.

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      • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago

        I’m not a lawyer either, but I think you’re missing some aspect of intent that would be required to make it against the law.

        Rivian for example was (is?) selling their cars at a negative gross margin because they couldn’t sell them for a profit for years. If you can’t sell something at a loss, so many businesses would be breaking the law when they start out.

        If the intent was to destroy another company by doing it, then that could fall under anti-competitive laws. In this case, the intent isn’t to destroy other hardware, it would be to help stabalize the ridiculous increase in prices knowing they could make it up in game sales.

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  • iamthetot@piefed.ca ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    That makes a lot of sense, thanks for explaining it.

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• Eufalconimorph@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨6⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

  Selling products below cost is legally anticompetitive behavior. Anticompetitive behavior is only illegal for monopolists, which Valve aren’t. But they have been accused and sued, part of why those suits haven’t lead to them being declared a monopoly is because they don’t engage in enough anticompetitive practices. So adding anticompetitive practices would be extremely risky for Valve.

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