The only thing Valve has done with Steam that apparently is anti-competitive, is actually having a decent product with good features and no one else is capable of actually delivering parity with it to be a viable competitor.
A natural monopoly is a far cry from one built through anti-competitive practices, and easily toppled by competent competitors.
Perhaps if Valve's competition was competent, there would be better options.
True. But Google became the number one search engine by creating a better product and basically got a natural monopoly. And now look what kind of monster the company has become.
Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean it will stay that way in the future. Therefore I rather not see Steam be the only game store left in the pc gaming space.
But Epic is a shitty store today. I'm not going to use it out of fear the Steam might become a shitty store tomorrow.
That’s fine, neither do I. Because as a customer we have a choice. But we only have that choice if devs make their games available on all stores.
Epic has in the past declined hosting games that don't agree to exclusivity, so it's not always the dev's choice.
Then get mad at the weak-ass competition. Start a fire under their asses to make something that is actually just as good, if not better.
Punishing the one good product for being good is just gonna lead to there being no good products and only shitty ones just as much as your slippery-slope scenario. 🤦♂️
Well no. Google used to steal results from other search engines initially.v And then suppressed search results for competing products for at least the last 20 years.
The only thing Valve has done with Steam that apparently is anti-competitive, is actually having a decent product with good features and no one else is capable of actually delivering parity with it to be a viable competitor.
A natural monopoly is a far cry from one built through anti-competitive practices, and easily toppled by competent competitors.
Perhaps if Valve's competition was competent, there would be better options.
True. But Google became the number one search engine by creating a better product and basically got a natural monopoly. And now look what kind of monster the company has become.
Just because Steam is a good store today doesn’t mean it will stay that way in the future. Therefore I rather not see Steam be the only game store left in the pc gaming space.
But Epic is a shitty store today. I'm not going to use it out of fear the Steam might become a shitty store tomorrow.
That’s fine, neither do I. Because as a customer we have a choice. But we only have that choice if devs make their games available on all stores.
Epic has in the past declined hosting games that don't agree to exclusivity, so it's not always the dev's choice.
Then get mad at the weak-ass competition. Start a fire under their asses to make something that is actually just as good, if not better.
Punishing the one good product for being good is just gonna lead to there being no good products and only shitty ones just as much as your slippery-slope scenario. 🤦♂️
Well no. Google used to steal results from other search engines initially.v And then suppressed search results for competing products for at least the last 20 years.