I’m not hoping for regulation to catch up. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think it counts as a monopoly when you reach your market saturation by just being better than your competitors without putting your thumb on the scale. If it did count as a monopoly, I’d hate to break up the best market actor as punishment for giving people what they want. I’m hoping for the competitors to actually compete. Right now, I’d say the only option out there other than Steam is GOG, and there’s a lot I’d like to see them improve too.
If SteamOS comes to dominate the handheld market, I could see them being forced to make an API so that other stores like Epic and GOG can have the same quality of integration in the non-desktop interface.
If you have two products that are both the best at their respective thing and you tightly integrate them, it makes it incredibly difficult for a competitor to match you. That is abusing a monopoly in each space to benefit the other.
The handheld PC market is still small. Nobody else in the digital space has taken it seriously yet.
If you look at iOS, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s effectively two products, a piece of hardware and a digital store. To beat it, you have to beat both the hardware and the store at the same time. It took the entire mobile hardware industry forming an alliance with one of the largest software companies in the world to even try to compete with it.
Regulation isn’t just about breaking them up. I was more thinking along the line of applying the DMA and DSA to Steam proper, which would only lead to benefits for us. The presence of the speculation casino that is the Steam Market into the hands of kids without any regulation is nuts, and that’s not saying anything about the current hypertoxic state of the Steam Community forums. That’s not okay, and Valve seems reluctant to fix that (the former becausr it brings them a metric ton of money, and the latter probably to avoid pissing off the gamergate libertarian crowd). Regulation could force them to do so.
Sure, but that’s tangential to their market position relative to their competitors. CS2 loot boxes are a problem, but they’re not responsible for Steam being the biggest PC game store.
Sure, but that’s tangential to their market position relative to their competitors. CS2 loot boxes are a problem, but they’re not responsible for Steam being the biggest PC game store.
You are completely right. What I meant, is that since PC Gaming is only considered a subset of PC & Console gaming market (as opposed to, say, Mobile gaming), if it were to grow in share within said market, it will likely attract the eyes of regulators who could improve the current situation.
I’m not hoping for regulation to catch up. I’m no lawyer, but I don’t think it counts as a monopoly when you reach your market saturation by just being better than your competitors without putting your thumb on the scale. If it did count as a monopoly, I’d hate to break up the best market actor as punishment for giving people what they want. I’m hoping for the competitors to actually compete. Right now, I’d say the only option out there other than Steam is GOG, and there’s a lot I’d like to see them improve too.
If SteamOS comes to dominate the handheld market, I could see them being forced to make an API so that other stores like Epic and GOG can have the same quality of integration in the non-desktop interface.
If you have two products that are both the best at their respective thing and you tightly integrate them, it makes it incredibly difficult for a competitor to match you. That is abusing a monopoly in each space to benefit the other.
Neither of them has even tried to distribute their own store as a Flatpak. That doesn’t strike me as Valve abusing a monopoly position.
The handheld PC market is still small. Nobody else in the digital space has taken it seriously yet.
If you look at iOS, you’ll see what I’m talking about. It’s effectively two products, a piece of hardware and a digital store. To beat it, you have to beat both the hardware and the store at the same time. It took the entire mobile hardware industry forming an alliance with one of the largest software companies in the world to even try to compete with it.
Regulation isn’t just about breaking them up. I was more thinking along the line of applying the DMA and DSA to Steam proper, which would only lead to benefits for us. The presence of the speculation casino that is the Steam Market into the hands of kids without any regulation is nuts, and that’s not saying anything about the current hypertoxic state of the Steam Community forums. That’s not okay, and Valve seems reluctant to fix that (the former becausr it brings them a metric ton of money, and the latter probably to avoid pissing off the gamergate libertarian crowd). Regulation could force them to do so.
Sure, but that’s tangential to their market position relative to their competitors. CS2 loot boxes are a problem, but they’re not responsible for Steam being the biggest PC game store.
You are completely right. What I meant, is that since PC Gaming is only considered a subset of PC & Console gaming market (as opposed to, say, Mobile gaming), if it were to grow in share within said market, it will likely attract the eyes of regulators who could improve the current situation.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear before.