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YongYea; Execs Stupidly Claim Steam Has A Monopoly And Get Mocked... (youtu.be)

submitted 4 days ago by Tattorack@lemmy.world to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca

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Link to youtube video. Tracking removed.

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[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I guess then MS doesn't have an OS monopoly, because you can not only buy an Apple computer, but also install Linux.

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[–] orioler25@lemmy.ca -1 points 3 days ago

This is exactly why it's important for people to learn about how capitalism functions instead of how to identify morally condemnable behaviour. A liberal with think Steam is fine so long as they remain "horizontally" organized and Gaben remains the special boi he is, but will only be bad if it the company gets "greedy." There is no benefit to PC game distribution being controlled privately; any media distribution.

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip -3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (4 children)

Not on games per se but almost on mods. Yes, there are other platforms, but the majory and newest are on Workshop. And they make it hard to download them, if you don't own the game on Steam (and Valve has it in their terms that they own the mods hosted on Workshop).

So one could argue that they use the indirect peer-pressure approach to market dominance, similiar to Google on Android.

I wouldn't complain if they just had a "Download" button on their web version. But they don't, you have to use the finicky steamcmd intended for server administration.

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[+] Prove_your_argument@piefed.social -7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (13 children)

Steam will get the social media warrior upvote brigade on their side every time, despite being a single point of failure that at any moment can change it's operations to restrict anything and everything they wish unless you pay up.

Already we can't transfer ownership once we die. We can't port out our licenses to anywhere else. We can't even reinstall a game without an internet connection afaik. If I could port my entire library to GOG I would.

There's no good competitors because the money isn't there to build one. Developers don't want to maintain yet another platform and gamers don't want another application to manage all their shit. Would take tens of billions of dollars today to get in there on top of having near feature parity.

I've been worried for a long time about what will happen when GabeN dies and someone else takes the reins. The only reason why the platform isn't royal shit is because it's his company and no grubby MBAs have managed to take it public. That can change on a whim.

Potential enshittifications:

Subscriptions. MBAs love them!
Advertisements. Think on-launch forced ads that play in steam before launching a game unless you pony up perhaps $15/mo in platform fees to bypass it. Maybe they'll start with a much lower insignificant price to make it whatever for users to add a credit card and allow autobilling... for later price increases.
Download fees. Watch this quick 2 minute advertisement to begin the download for free right after!... or just $5 per download / $30/mo for unlimited ad free downloads for your whole family (up to 5 people on the same ip! geolocation restrictions apply. Max 1TB per account per month)

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