Steam Owner Valve Faces $900 Million Lawsuit Over PC Monopoly Claims, Following UK Tribunal Ruling - IGN
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I'm not really trying to critique you, I just know that a ton of people only read the headline or don't read things thoroughly, or don't even click into the actual article at all.
I am just adding my 2 cents as someone with a degree in economics, so I'm not citing the article, I'm citing my years of education in economics and years of work that made use of it.
The article does not really go into the difference between US and UK law around monopolies, so I wanted to explore that a bit myself.
Also, when you say 'the first lines of the linked article says what I said'... do you mean the OP linked article, or the lexology link that I provided?
Because the IGN article says nothing about whether simply being a monopoly is illegal, that's why I provided the lexology link, to clarify that.
Sorry if I am not quite understanding what you are saying.
I am not talking about the IGN article, but about the link you gave me.
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Having a "Monopoly" that occurred naturally isn't illegal. Misusing the position and eliminating any competition is illegal. Besides that, the monopoly situation is open and there is competition. They just suck. Imagine filing Nintendo a lawsuit for having a monopoly in handheld consoles...
Yeah this is so stupid, just sounds like a baseless money grab.
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Oh yeah totally. But it deals with proprietary drivers...so im not 100% sure what the restrictions are there. The mapping could be done open source if there was a need/want.
Believe you can download the this project https://github.com/Alia5/SISR and get what you want
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Timmy Swiney is goint to lose money again.
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im so fucking american.
thanks for the correction
We could see that
And Republican I suppose ?
If someone from the US break a law in a foreign country, why shouldn't it be prosecuted ?
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This is a great write up to which I can only add that I know that in the ongoing US case, Valve has been arguing that not only is the 30% cut not particularly onerous, and is actually pretty close to the industry norm...
... they also make the argument that Steam provides much, much more to both the consumer and the prospective game seller that....well they just do actually offer many more features and services than existing comparable platforms.
The DLC thing is an interesting idea, but... oh god, basically, is my database manager brain's response to that.
You'd have to construct like a shared standard of game key liscenses across all digital platforms, you know, the not unlike the kind of thing every single idiot a few years back claimed would be possible with their NFT games.
This is... an interesting idea, but I don't see how you could actually implement this in practice without basically creating a government agency to manage it.
... Which would then also probably mean that said government would now directly know every game you own.
And then you'd have to think about how that would play with things like game key selling sites...
Yeah. This would be a nightmare to try to actually implement.
Now the government would be directly involved in DRM. Like uh, potentially, verify your actual identity with face scan to log in to your game library of any kinds of games... that kind of involved.
There are many other complexities and problems than that.
Blockchain game ownership.
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Is there any launcher that doesn't offer free cloud saves these days?
(not neglecting that Stream normalized it, for the record)
Consoles, though I suppose those aren't what you're talking about.
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We could see that
And Republican I suppose ?
If someone from the US break a law in a foreign country, why shouldn't it be prosecuted ?
Heh. No, just confused.
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I don't think this has happened yet with video games, however it is in no way illegal for Valve to do this. There's been plenty of examples of other media being ripped away from consumers, like "purchased" movies and music.
On Steam, you are purchasing a license to play a game, not the game itself. At any point and for any reason, Valve can legally revoke this license or restrict access to it.
Other cases that have happened relate to failure to upkeep services needed to access content. Companies stop supporting devices, close down servers, etc. Many consumer rights orgs fail to protect in those cases, but they could easily defeat any measure to introduce a conscious, intentional, mandatory monthly fee.
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Heh. No, just confused.
Well, I agree that US companies do get fined a lot in the old world... The question is, is it because they break the law all the time or because of some sort of conspiracy?
According to Ockham razor, the first should be considered first, then, if disproved, the second can be considered.
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They're all just mad that Steam is that good and the alternatives are just fucking garbage.
Rockstar, Ubisoft, EA and Epic can all choke on themselves because they only wish that they can create a rich experience when playing games that Valve did. All that they ever provide is "here is store, library, friends list and that all you get, enjoy".
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im so fucking american.
thanks for the correction
Yeah there was like, a whole thing about that
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To add to what you have said:
Valve is an effective monopoly.
A lot of people seem to think 'monopoly' means 'literally 0 alternatives for the consumer', but this is not the case in either actual economic jargon/theory nor in basically any legal definition of it I am aware of.
To be a monopoly you basically just need to be the clear dominant actor in some market. Not the only one, just the main one, such that you can make pricing decisions in a way that other actors in the same market can't, basically.
Its... very rare for a 'true' or 'perfect' monopoly to ever exist for basically anything other than a public utility/service. It almost never happens.
This is the kind of pedantry that is annoying but unfortunately important, similar to how 'Impeachment' by the House on its own is actually pointless beyond a mark of shame unless it is also followed by a 'conviction' by the Senate.
You are correct that in US law, a major factor that is considered is whether or not the company did abusive, deceptive, underhanded stuff to achieve its monopopy status.
But UK law appears to be different:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c5b1e681-5fb5-4161-bebf-823034fab751
You could be doing 'abuse of dominance' whether or not you achieved that dominance by underhanded means.
So... while I am not a lawyer, I would be genuinely surprised if Valve was found in serious violation of existing US monopoly laws, but I would be less surprised if they were found to be in violation of existing UK monopoly laws.
Game prices are set by their publisher, and prices are consistent across various platforms, regardless of market presence. So, Steam is the same price but a better service generally.
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Having a "Monopoly" that occurred naturally isn't illegal. Misusing the position and eliminating any competition is illegal. Besides that, the monopoly situation is open and there is competition. They just suck. Imagine filing Nintendo a lawsuit for having a monopoly in handheld consoles...
That isn't necessarily true, companies with SMP have additional regulations. Steam having terms in their contracts preventing sale for cheaper elsewhere would be abuse of their SMP.
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To add to what you have said:
Valve is an effective monopoly.
A lot of people seem to think 'monopoly' means 'literally 0 alternatives for the consumer', but this is not the case in either actual economic jargon/theory nor in basically any legal definition of it I am aware of.
To be a monopoly you basically just need to be the clear dominant actor in some market. Not the only one, just the main one, such that you can make pricing decisions in a way that other actors in the same market can't, basically.
Its... very rare for a 'true' or 'perfect' monopoly to ever exist for basically anything other than a public utility/service. It almost never happens.
This is the kind of pedantry that is annoying but unfortunately important, similar to how 'Impeachment' by the House on its own is actually pointless beyond a mark of shame unless it is also followed by a 'conviction' by the Senate.
You are correct that in US law, a major factor that is considered is whether or not the company did abusive, deceptive, underhanded stuff to achieve its monopopy status.
But UK law appears to be different:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c5b1e681-5fb5-4161-bebf-823034fab751
You could be doing 'abuse of dominance' whether or not you achieved that dominance by underhanded means.
So... while I am not a lawyer, I would be genuinely surprised if Valve was found in serious violation of existing US monopoly laws, but I would be less surprised if they were found to be in violation of existing UK monopoly laws.
Isnt a natural monolpoly something like YKK who just have the economics and processes in place to capture the market?
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That isn't necessarily true, companies with SMP have additional regulations. Steam having terms in their contracts preventing sale for cheaper elsewhere would be abuse of their SMP.
Except that's not what their terms say. Their terms prohibit you from selling a steam key cheaper than on Steam, they don't regulate your game price on a different store if you're not offering a steam key together.
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Believe you can download the this project https://github.com/Alia5/SISR and get what you want
Oh wow thanks
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Having a "Monopoly" that occurred naturally isn't illegal. Misusing the position and eliminating any competition is illegal. Besides that, the monopoly situation is open and there is competition. They just suck. Imagine filing Nintendo a lawsuit for having a monopoly in handheld consoles...
Also monopolies are cool now, just as Google.
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Except that's not what their terms say. Their terms prohibit you from selling a steam key cheaper than on Steam, they don't regulate your game price on a different store if you're not offering a steam key together.
"would be", its an eample of abuse of the SMP
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I'm going to nitpick the controller stuff too, because they could have done it in a way that was store agnostic, but of course, they benefit if they don't do it that way.
Yeah, Steam Input could have been huge for the entire gaming industry, but instead it's only for Steam and so only can get fixed by Valve, who just doesn't really care about coming back to things and keeping them working after initially building something. Frustrating to see something almost so good just kinda limp along, accumulating bugs no one will fix because Valve doesn't really care beyond the simple button mapping use.
Just like how dynamic collections could have been pretty great, but Valve got a rudimentary version working, patted themselves on the back, and left forever without even implementing the most basic tools anyone would need to actually use them (boolean combinations, actually using the tags you set on games, etc). It could even have been a slick new interface to Steam's tagging (imagine if you set a collection specifically as a tag, and Steam took your manually adding and removing games there as tag votes) that might've helped ease some of the dumb problems tags have (there'd be a lot more info for Steam to draw on than just the people actually updating tags on the store page).
I'm kind of impressed no one makes a better gaming social-launch client than Steam, but then Steam's own client has a massive lock in advantage so you basically can't make something that wholly replaces it, and Valve doesn't care to play nice when they want that obvious Steam-game vs non-Steam-game divide.
