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$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players (www.gamesradar.com)

submitted 3 months ago by Dadifer@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[-] RandomException@sopuli.xyz 11 points 3 months ago

What would be the solution here that could drive the prices down? Limit profit levels per company?

I feel like it's not even capitalism itself being the problem alone, but also the entry cost for all these services. Building a competitor to Steam is pretty much equal to building a competitor to Youtube which means it's almost impossible due to the running costs of the service AND you would have to be somehow wildly better as in not gather as much money from your customers. It would be lovely to see some resolution to these problems without going full communism first.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 months ago

Break it down, it clearly has too much power over the gaming sector. Impose a maximum share for distributors because clearly 30% is way more than they actually need.

[-] RandomException@sopuli.xyz 18 points 3 months ago

Okay, but who gets to decide what's the maximum profit margin allowed? How would it be determined so that it wouldn't also prevent new competition from growing up because that 30% is the only thing that allows the companies to make some money from their service and use that money to develop said service.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 points 3 months ago

Base it on market share and revenues.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 1 points 3 months ago

Nothing really. Publishers already all want to go up to 70 base price, and most bigger games already effectively cost 100-200 between pre-orders, deluxe editions and mtx (I don't know the designed price point, but years ago I was talking to the team of an in-dev game who planned for 110 being spent on average per buyer for their game).