this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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Failure of larger companies to make a competitive alternative to steam is not anticompetitive behavior on the part of Valve
Seems like a good example of how running a company for the shareholders doesn’t produce a a better product after all.
Precisely what the share holders don't want people to know. They worship money and what the public to think more money = more good. If people realize these investor backed products are generally not anything better than someone can make in their garage they'll stop buying overpriced junk. So here we are about to see how the sausage gets made.
Well, that literally is the only reason to become a shareholder, right?
I mean, technically you're participating in the management of the company and can influence decisions such as environmental benefits, but it feels like that only happens when there's secondary benefits that also improve profit.
Product becomes the byproduct. Dividends and massive returns are the #1 priority.
B-b-b-bingo
The case seems like such a reach. At worst it's an effective monopoly for devs, not consumers. Devs have a really hard time selling elsewhere.
That said, I love Steam and think it's genuinely one of the best companies out there. And whilst it's not great that they're so big, they aren't that big due to anti-competitive behaviour. It's quite the opposite. You can add non-Steam games to your library and use Steam features. The fucking Steam deck isn't locked down, and you can install non-Steam games. Just because Uplay wants to log me out every time I reboot doesn't mean Steam should be sued.
There are so many other companies more deserving of the lawsuit
Nintendo for example
Had me in the first half ngl
Yeah who TF are their lawyers? Anticompetitive behavior is just that—there have o be actions taken, at least in the United States. And Steam doesn't have exclusivity agreements so IDK what they're gonna argue.
The closest thing they can argue to any kind of "exclusivity" is that the free steam keys developers can generate for their games may not be resold for a lower amount than the game can be purchased for on steam outright. That says nothing about other means of distributing the game outside of steam, and nothing about alternative platforms the devs might want to use. It's a tiny and far away straw to grasp at.
TF2 lawyers, it would seem.
Their legal Offense has evidently been workgrouped by Scout, Soldier and Pyro, judging by this particular legal argument. To think the Mercenaries would turn on their creator... Well, they're mercenaries!