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72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 5 days ago by mr_MADAFAKA@lemmy.ml to c/steam@lemmy.ml
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[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

It's amazing how many people don't actually understand what a monopoly is. Every time the topic comes up you see people say things like "well there's more than one store therefore it's not a monopoly." That's never been the actual use of the word in practice. If that were true it would be so stupidly easy to circumvent monopoly laws and regulations. I mean more than it already is of course.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/monopoly

[-] rapchee@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

your own source says

A monopoly is when a single company or entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in a market. The term “monopoly” is often used to describe instances where there is a single seller of a good in a market.

also wikipedia

"A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell') is a market in which one person or company is the only supplier of a particular good or service. A monopoly is characterized by a lack of economic competition to produce a particular thing, a lack of viable substitute goods, and the possibility of a high monopoly price well above the seller's marginal cost that leads to a high monopoly profit."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

the problem with the "steam is a monopoly" argument is that they are not abusing their position, like the companies that got into hot water before (like microsoft with internet explorer, trying to push web standard their way)

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

Yes, when an entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in the market. As Steam has an overwhelming control of the market that absolutely qualifies. Also I'm going to go ahead and quote the rest since you left it out for some reason. Probably because it was devastating to your argument.

A monopoly is when a single company or entity creates an unreasonable restraint of competition in a market. The term “monopoly” is often used to describe instances where there is a single seller of a good in a market. In a legal context, the term monopoly is also used to describe a variety of market conditions that are not monopolies in the truest sense. For instance, the term monopoly may be referring to instances where:

  • There are only two sellers of a given good (duopoly)
  • There are very few sellers of a given good (oligopoly)
  • There is a single buyer of a given good (monopsony)
  • There are only two buyers of a given good (duopsony)
  • There are very few buyers of a given good (oligopsony)
  • There are many buyers or sellers, but one actor has enough market share to dictate prices (near monopolies)

In essence, the term monopoly may be used any time that a market for a good is controlled by a limited number of actors.

[-] rapchee@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

so okay the first 5 is irrelevant (right?), so it's a "near monopoly", one actor dictates the prices
but it's ea and the like floating 100$ games, valve is just taking their 30% cut of whatever people ask, and do their own thing. other platforms can do what they want on their own platform, as long as they're not selling steam keys.
i'm not buying the "market is controlled by steam" argument
i get that as a dev, if you want the best exposure on pc, your only realistic choice is to sell on steam, because it's so popular, but many people start out on itch, and when they get big enough, launch on steam. and they're still on itch too.

[-] njm1314@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

All right the fact that you just said you have no choice but to sell on Steam has pretty much invalidated all the other parts of your argument. That alone is enough.

Also you might want to check a little bit about steams practices when it comes to pricing. They have a lot more influence on pricing than you seem to imagine.

[-] rapchee@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

i didn't say steam was the only choice, in fact, i just described another way that many devs choose

regarding the price: is it steam that keeps raising them?

[-] Lfrith@lemmy.ca 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Or what Google is planning to do with Android wanting to require verification for non Google Play apps so they can gatekeep what can be installed on the entire OS even if its not even their app market.

this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2025
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