Post #2262798

2026-05-01 23:26 UTC

It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to ask “are other companies bad?” when trying to determine if a company is a monopoly. One thought experiment I like to do is pretend the CEO dies and is replaced by Satan. How much damage could he do? If it’s a lot, then probably you’ve got a monopoly. Suppose Gaben dies, and he’s replaced by Satan. Could he do damage to the gaming community by doing something exorbitant, like charging a 30% cut of game sales from the folks who actually develop the games? Could they do anticompetitive vendor lock stuff like only allowing you to purchase DLC through steam? Only time will tell. And it will, because at some point Gaben will die, and he will be replaced by someone less magnanimous and angelic than him.

Replies (5)

@LodeMike@lemmy.today 2026-05-02 03:40

30% isn’t a big cut, and the DLC thing is to prevent customers from getting scammed

Open ##2262797
@SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 2026-05-02 06:02

Yes, an evil ceo could do much harm by turning steam into the companies shooting themselves in the face. However, they are currently one of the only ones not doing that, so that’s where gamers will go. There’s a difference between a monopoly that exists because all other options are shit and a monopoly that exists because of anticompetitive practices.

Open ##2276302
@Holytimes@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-02 00:45

That also makes no sense. Literally any large company could do great deals of harm even if they have countless competitors if they set out for the goal of just doing harm. There is a serious fundamental difference between a monopoly and a general market preference. If every single one of your competitors all decide to be stupid and you don’t you arnt a monopoly. You just are the only one not being stupid.

Open ##2284973
@courval@lemmy.world 2026-05-02 09:11

Haha love this post. I find it astonishing how “leftist” lemmy can’t see this and keeps defending this obvious Monopoly just because the current CEO is an intelligent greedy guy… Happy slaves all around I guess…

Open ##2298017
@megopie@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-05-02 09:43

They do have competitors, they competitors just aren’t very popular. There is the colloquial definition of monopoly, and a different legal bar for being declared a monopolist under US law. To be declared a monopolist requires that a company already has destroyed or is actively seeking to destroy competitors through anti competitive behavior. Even if people mix terms, the general idea is that they’re not doing anything unreasonable and anti-competitive to gain their position in the market. They have competitors, they’re just not popular, and steam has not done anything to make them unpopular. The real danger is that if steam decided to suddenly start being externally anti consumer, like many of it’s competitors already are, it would be difficult for people to migrate away due to a lack of interoperability between services. Users can’t transfer licenses to play games between services, nor can they easily interact with social features on other platforms. But that’s not really steam’s fault, that’s how all the competitors (for the most part) work as well.

Open ##2303869