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1, Amazon runs the platform that sells the games - Amazon 2, Amazon runs the platform that people use while playing the games - Twitch 3, Amazon runs the plat
by InsomniacL 4y ago
1, Amazon runs the platform that sells the games - Amazon
2, Amazon runs the platform that people use while playing the games - Twitch
3, Amazon runs the platform that hosts the servers to play the games - AWS
4, Amazon runs the platform that you play the game on - Luna
5, Amazon runs the platform that creates the games - EA
how is this not anti-competition for anyone running a company that competes in only one of these fields..
- shultays 4y agoOther than Twitch (and maybe AWS, I don't know enough), none of those are monopoly or capable of anti-competition. Even twitch has youtube as alternative
- foepys 4y agoJust because there is one other competitor doesn't mean it's not a valid target for antitrust. If both were to cooperate and segment their markets in secret, it would be highly anticompetitive.
- shultays 4y agoTrue I guess, but hard to say that Twitch and Youtube is doing that. Even Steam is in this picture I think although they are less relevant maybe?
- Cthulhu_ 4y agoAnd Twitch can be replaced / surpassed. Its technology is nothing new, right now it mainly has critical mass due to the amount of people using it. It only takes one mistake for them to lose a lot of that engagement.
- paulryanrogers 4y ago> It only takes one mistake for them to lose a lot of that engagement. How true is this? Because YouTube and Google have made plenty of mistakes yet it continues to dominate.
- friendzis 4y agoYoutube is a library, Twich is about live streaming, so in theory it is much easer to replace. However, critical mass is very hard to move, because platform switch would be revenue loss for streamers.
- InsomniacL 4y agoI didn't intend to mean they are the monopoly within their market segment but what's stopping Amazon from creating a game and locking others within their segment out 1) that's only available on Luna sold via Amazon 2) DLC only downloadable with Twitch participation/Prime membership 3) Amazon force EA to use AWS Instead of making their product compete with their 'competitors', they buy the customers (EA) and force them to use their product. At that point, taking AWS for example, GCP/Azure are no longer 'competitors' and if the end-consumer (me and you), want to play a title, we pay extra because there's no competition in the chain...
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- speed_spread 4y agoThat's vertical integration and is mostly orthogonal to anti-competitive behavior. A million dollar startup could do those things too.
- shakes_mcjunkie 4y agoA million dollar startup could compete with these platforms all owned by Amazon?
- speed_spread 4y agoA million dollar startup could own their servers, run a social platform, develop games, sell merch and license some IP on the side. I didn't say they would actually compete significantly with Amazon. Just that you didn't have to operate at a monopoly scale to control a significant portion of your business stack.
- NicoJuicy 4y agoA million dollar startup can buy EA?
- pc86 4y agoThis seems like, at best, intentionally misunderstanding the GP to try to make some political point that isn't even grounded in reality. It's fairly well established that vertical integration is not only not anti-competitive, but benefits both corporations and consumers.
- NicoJuicy 4y agoBy which standard or understanding? I'm going to need some more details before it being accepted as a fact...
- beezlebroxxxxxx 4y agoNot that I agree with this argument, but I imagine Amazon might claim that Alphabet was essentially doing the same thing with Stadia, Youtube Game streaming, the Play store, and presumably cloud offerings (I don't know that one for sure though). Though I suspect the claim that "We at least compete with this other giant tech company hell bent on crushing competition" is probably not the most sympathetic argument in the current antitrust atmosphere.
- 1over137 4y ago>current antitrust atmosphere What current antitrust atmosphere? What was the last trust busted?
- Dudeman112 4y agoI think they are referring to the population at large being aware of it instead of actual actions taken Like with the mainstream media and the fact that no one has put the Murdochs in a rocket to Mars
- atlasunshrugged 4y agoAlso probably the addition of Lina Khan to the FTC who has a more aggressive stance on antitrust than regulators in previous years. See their recent filing against Meta's acquisition of a VR fitness co https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/technology/ftc-lina-khan-meta.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/28/technology/ftc-lina-khan-...
- drexlspivey 4y agoYes you can stretch anything to fit a narrative. Amazon runs the platform that sells everything so they shouldn’t be allowed to buy anything.
- shakes_mcjunkie 4y agoNot a bad idea
- killyourcar 4y agoIt's not stretching the narrative at all, this is exactly how the executives think at Amazon. Everything must be connected and used to showcase the other parts of the business.
- dd36 4y agoThe incentives become perverse once relatively unrelated businesses are combined. History also shows conglomerates don’t out perform the stand alone companies and it hurts competition and innovation. I think there’s a certain point where executives run out of ideas but have to be doing something. Then you have investment bankers and advisors pushing these ideas and copycatting each other for that sweet, sweet commission payday. And it’s not so much that these are great ideas, it’s can they sound okay enough to get that payday before everyone realizes it was all a stupid waste of time five years later. That is, after the acquired company gets its souls sucked out, the talent leaves, and the acquirer discards the husk at a discount.
- stickfigure 4y ago> History also shows conglomerates don’t out perform the stand alone companies This is a self-correcting phenomenon.
- ElevenLathe 4y agoIt self-corrects on generational timescales, which is arguably not good enough. The last "fad" of conglomeration happened in the "go go years", and a generation of business and finance types learned it was a bad idea. Now those people are all retired and a new generation is learning the lesson.
- dmurray 4y agoThis is vertical integration. Horizontal integration is usually what is considered anti-competitive.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoWasn't Standard Oil vertically integrated?
- KoftaBob 4y ago"Standard Oil dominated the oil products market initially through horizontal integration in the refining sector, then, in later years vertical integration"
- paulryanrogers 4y agoCompany towns were vertically integrated. I wouldn't call them a bastion of free markets
- KoftaBob 4y agoThey were technically horizontally integrated too, since the entire reason they were able to exist is situations where jobs like mining were created in isolated areas with no other places to live. Workers had no other options but to live in that company town and spend their money in company town stores. All vertical integration means is that a company has direct control over most/all of the supply chain they need to get their product made and sold. They don't need 3rd parties to supply them with any of the steps in the process. That obviously gives them a competitive advantage, but it doesn't involve directly removing other competitors the way horizontal integration does.
- paulryanrogers 4y agoI'm not so sure that vertical integration is much more innocent than horizonal. Once a single company dominates an industry it has negative effects on the competitiveness of that and adjacent markets.
- nojito 4y agoBecause they don't have a monopoly in any of those things. Vertical integration should be pursued by any and every company.
- feanaro 4y agoWhy? I'd argue a world in which succeed to make vertical integration minimal would be a better one, with less manipulation and corporations vying to become states.
- scrollaway 4y agoA word with minimal vertical integration is a world filled with middlemen and rent seekers. The alternative to VI is every single piece of your stack is another company seeking its own piece of whatever pie you’re building (and that company in turn facing the exact same dilemma — nobody builds original things anymore, it’s b2b saas Lego all the way down)
- feanaro 4y agoThere's quite a lot of legroom between a moderate amount of vertical integration where you attempt to own key parts of your supply chain and being a megacorporation which owns absolutely every piece of your stack, including towns for your employees. I'm suggesting the optimum for human freedom, welfare and prosperity is achieved when striving closer to the former rather than the latter, not that companies should strive to depend on others as much as possible. (Though my use of "minimal" in the original post might've been misleading.)
- InsomniacL 4y agoAnti-competitive practices are business practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market.
- nojito 4y agoOnly if you undertake them to protect a monopoly.
- rvz 4y agoIt is a Big Tech consolidation. If the Microsoft, Blizzard and Bethesda isn't an example of consolidation (Which is clearly is) with also Amazon's acquisition of One Medical, then nothing is. The FTC probably knows it is overdue to break up the Big Tech takeovers, but needs more evidence of this consolidation and behaviour to outright prevent more of this and eventually break them all up.
- datavirtue 4y agoYeah, the antitrust eyes are clearly blind to the unimportant/unnecessary game industry.
- ThunderSizzle 4y agoA large part of it is the political convenience of corporatism. It's easier to "regulate" 1 massive company - hell, they'll do it for you too so you help them guarantee they'll be the only game in town. It's a lot harder to regulate 1000s or multiples of 1000s of smaller businesses. Regulation also includes targeted political censorship in this case.
- roflyear 4y agoCan you explain how vertical integration is anti competitive?
- InsomniacL 4y agoIf you run a business selling hosting services for game publishers to run their games, is it not anti-competitive for a competitor of yours to buy your customers and force them to use their services instead of yours?
- roflyear 4y agoNo. No one should be forced to use a product.
- last_responder 4y ago>5, Amazon runs the platform that creates the games - EA "The Games" - No. Some games yes. The people I game with pretty much despise EA and look at them as the company that buys up smaller studios and destroys the culture.
- AlexandrB 4y agoAgreed. I think EA has really popular sports games, however I can't recall the last EA game I played. It might be Titanfall 2? There's also BioWare - but their last few releases have been disastrous. Edit: Oh, more recently I loved the Command & Conquer remaster - that maybe counts as an EA game? It was published by them, but I don't think Peteoglyph is owned by EA.
- 8note 4y agoPetroglyph is the old Westwood who left it after the acquisition. They also have what's basically a renegade sequel
- dktp 4y agoNone of these are monopolies. Twitch and AWS are biggest players in their fields, but both have healthy competition I think it would be way easier to make a case that Microsoft shouldn't be able to buy Activision. It seems like major gaming studios are slowly getting acquired by either Tencent or Microsoft
- dd36 4y agoVertical integration used to be just as strictly limited for competitive reasons. We know it’s bad, just look at how Amazon leverages it’s sales data to compete against products it sells. They undoubtedly do the same thing with AWS and every other business they own.
- falcolas 4y agoDon’t forget the Embracer Group. A nearly silent megalith of game development studios.
- InsomniacL 4y agoI'm not saying they are a Monopoly. Anti-competitive practices are business or government practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market. Amazon purchasing a company and forcing them to use their services means their services no longer have to compete against their 'competitors'...
- seydor 4y agoThey dont have a payments processor yet. Someone tell Jeff But also: do they disallow competitors to use their services/sell their games? AFAIK antimonopoly litigation requires the existence of an actual market obstruction, not its hypothetical existence.
- stickfigure 4y agohttps://pay.amazon.com/ https://pay.amazon.com/ has been a thing for a very long time. I integrated it into a site back in... the late 2000s, I think?
- rocketbop 4y agoI think that's vertical alignment rather than a monopoly.