4 ms·

>Steam ... is a monopoly >Its competitor Epic

gruez 3y ago
To be fair "monopoly" is so abused now it basically means "entity that controls the market". eg. "amazon is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are obviously other e-commerce sites, "uber is a monopoly" despite the fact that there's other ride-hailing apps, "google is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are other search engines.
- whaleofatw2022 3y ago
  Idk if steam is a true monopoly though. Almost every big US publisher has their own platform (i.e. Origin, EGL, whatever the hell Ubi is doing nowadays) for distribution. There is also GoG, but I feel like that is not a good option for Indies. Still, they get a huge shout out because of their retro collection and friendliness to that subgenre. For indie developers, there's always Itch.io with the option to try Steam or somewhere else later. As it stands I still have more options from where to buy a given game than 10, even 20 years ago. Not to say this current course is sustainable, of course...
  - belltaco 3y ago
    And many of those publishers are now also publishing on Steam because it's close to a monopoly. Like Blizzard recently with Overwatch and soon their other games. And Microsoft published games.
    - sickofparadox 3y ago
      Once WoW is on Steam, then this argument might hold water. Overwatch being put on steam was a desperate attempt at boosting the player count of a game suffering severe player drop-off. Steam was simply an untapped well of users to draw from for Blizzard.
      - belltaco 3y ago
        They did put CoD back on Steam, and Destiny went back too.
belltaco 3y ago
Epic is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year on it and will eventually shut it down. The only reason it ran for so long was because it's not a publicly held company and Tim Sweeney never liked stores taking a lot of developers' revenue.
- mannerheim 3y ago
  >A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell'), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular thing.

To be fair "monopoly" is so abused now it basically means "entity that controls the market". eg. "amazon is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are obviously other e-commerce sites, "uber is a monopoly" despite the fact that there's other ride-hailing apps, "google is a monopoly" despite the fact that there are other search engines.

whaleofatw2022 3y ago
Idk if steam is a true monopoly though. Almost every big US publisher has their own platform (i.e. Origin, EGL, whatever the hell Ubi is doing nowadays) for distribution. There is also GoG, but I feel like that is not a good option for Indies. Still, they get a huge shout out because of their retro collection and friendliness to that subgenre. For indie developers, there's always Itch.io with the option to try Steam or somewhere else later. As it stands I still have more options from where to buy a given game than 10, even 20 years ago. Not to say this current course is sustainable, of course...
- belltaco 3y ago
  And many of those publishers are now also publishing on Steam because it's close to a monopoly. Like Blizzard recently with Overwatch and soon their other games. And Microsoft published games.
  - sickofparadox 3y ago
    Once WoW is on Steam, then this argument might hold water. Overwatch being put on steam was a desperate attempt at boosting the player count of a game suffering severe player drop-off. Steam was simply an untapped well of users to draw from for Blizzard.
    - belltaco 3y ago
      They did put CoD back on Steam, and Destiny went back too.

belltaco 3y ago

Epic is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year on it and will eventually shut it down. The only reason it ran for so long was because it's not a publicly held company and Tim Sweeney never liked stores taking a lot of developers' revenue.

mannerheim 3y ago
>A monopoly (from Greek μόνος, mónos, 'single, alone' and πωλεῖν, pōleîn, 'to sell'), as described by Irving Fisher, is a market with the "absence of competition", creating a situation where a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular thing.