• warm@kbin.earth
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    14 hours ago

    Technically Steam is not a monopoly, but the way people commonly use the term these days is as simple as “majority market share”.

    • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.de
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      14 hours ago

      Treat customers right and you get rewarded. They are the majority market shareholder because they have earned it, not through deceptive business practices but through being a great company.

      If they were a monopoly they wouldn’t allow other game catalogs on their systems, yet I have GOG and Epic on my Steam Deck. In fact, there isn’t even a requirement for me to have Steam on my Steam Deck. Just because a company is the market leader doesn’t mean they got there through unethical means.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        14 hours ago

        You are equating “monopoly” with “abusive monopoly.”

        Google got its monopoly in internet search by being better than the competition. It’s still a monopoly, even though it mostly plays by the rules.

        • warm@kbin.earth
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          13 hours ago

          No, Google pays off other browsers to use Google as the default search engine, among many other actual monopolistic practices. Steam does none of that and simply provides a product.

          • FishFace@piefed.social
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            9 hours ago

            Paying people to promote your stuff is not an abuse of monopoly position, because Duckduckgo is perfectly capable of doing the same thing.

            Abuse of monopoly position would be leaning on search results to promote Chrome or Android (for example). And they have been caught doing some anti-competitive shit.

        • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.de
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          13 hours ago

          You are equating “monopoly” with “abusive monopoly.”

          No, I’m not. I’m saying they aren’t a monopoly by the simple fact that they aren’t the only providers of the service they sell. And while they are currently in a position to use their power to make themselves a monopoly, they are not doing that and instead are playing fair with their competition.

          • FishFace@piefed.social
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            9 hours ago

            I refer you to the other comment subthread where I mentioned textbook examples of monopolies which had 80-odd percent market share, you asked me if Steam had that, I said yes, and then you went quiet.

            Don’t bring up points that you were already challenged on and had no reply to - it’s lying, because you already know it’s wrong.

            • Bob Robertson IX @discuss.tchncs.de
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              7 hours ago

              The gaming market is much larger than PC gaming.

              And Steam does not have an 80% market share on PC gaming, so who’s lying?

              And finally, who the fuck do you think you are that I owe you a response?