this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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Dusk Developer David Szymanski: I'd rather pay Valve 30% and put up with their de facto monopoly than help Epic work towards their own (very obviously desired) monopoly (twitter.com)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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If I'm honest, I don't disagree.

I would love for Steam to have **actual competition. Which is difficult, sure, but you could run a slightly less feature-rich store, take less of a cut, and pass the reduction fully on to consumers and you'd be an easy choice for many gamers.

But that's not what Epic is after. They tried to go hard after the sellers, figuring that if they can corner enough fo the market with exclusives the buyers will have to come. But they underestimated that even their nigh-infinite coffers struggle to keep up with the raw amount of games releasing, and also the unpredictability of the indie market where you can't really know what to buy as an exclusive.
Nevermind that buying one is a good way to make it forgotten.

So yeah, fully agreed. Compared to Epic, I vastly prefer Steam's 30% cut. As the consumer I pay the same anyways, and Steam offers lots of stuff for it like forums, a client that boots before the heat death of the universe, in-house streaming, library sharing, cloud sync that sometimes works.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I was reading about the Unity debacle and thought thank ~~God~~ Gabe that Steam has never pulled shit like this.

I think part of the problem is too many companies are controlled by venture capitalists, or private equity, or whatever you call it. The point is that a single entity owns multiple companies from the shadows.

Companies are supposed to compete and the best company win, that's good in theory. But when a single shadow entity owns multiple companies they'll do something like squeeze customers of one company, which drives customers to their competitor, which, surprise, is owned by the same shadow entity.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You seem to know what you are talking about, so this is for those who don't, the "illusion of competition" has become such a staple in the modern world. In the US (and much of the world as I understand it) eyeglass sellers are all owned by the same company. Pearl Vision, LensCrafters, and I think even the Walmart vision centers are all owned and operated by Luxottica. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxottica

It is a vertical monopoly that controls everything from materials acquisition to sales, directly "competes" with itself, and lies to customers every day to make them think they are actually in control.

Then you have companies like 3M, or Nestle, who control most of the entire industries. A good 85% of all food on the shelves in the USA is produced by one of 4 or 5 companies that definitely collude to fix prices and use aggressive tactics to protect their position. They also follow the "compete with yourself" model to make you think you are actually making a decision with your money. You aren't.

Then there is the big Ag companies. In Ohio they have actually gotten laws on the books that make it illegal to do Farm Shares, where you purchase a share of the crops they produce for the year and for about 8 months a year you get a big basket of fresh produce delivered to you. An ex and I got to do it for a year before we split and it was amazing. It was a ton of food and only cost us about $150 for the half-share we purchased. It would be amazing right now with prices and it would help local private farms, which is precisely why they pushed it out.

I can rant for hours... So I cut here. This whole topic just infuriates me to no end.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Illuminatus