That’s the easiest task for a criminal!

I had Ark which I want to play for over five years by now but considering I never thought about it again till now it’s probably not the biggest loss!

I made a account ages ago and got two or three free games but I can’t find it anymore and honestly don’t really give a shit ether, I got more than enough unplayed games on Steam!

I mean, hot naked people seem to be one of their best selling point so it’s a very fitting bug for sure!

True, their games have quite a few very questionable mechanics!

Honestly, I don’t care to continue this conversation, even the attempt to convince people like you is rather pointless

Well the relation is wrong but it’s a real thing, they have a duty to grow infinitely or the sroxk price will crash and since that’s impossible to achive they essentially have to squeeze their users for short term gains to seem like they still grow sooner or later

What would you call the 30% Steam tax, a justified price? Furthermore you can have a monopoly even if alternatives exist because especially at a certain size many of your users will be lazy and/or simply don’t care enough to switch. I like Steam and their service and prefer it over other storefronts except itch.io because they do a fantastic job and don’t act especially evil in most ways but I also aknowledge that a small developer essentially has to eat that fee. The only real competitor is Epic and that’s just a terrible user experience so many (including me) will rather buy a different indie game than use that and releasing a game on your own can be hard and expensive, well and also comes with less publicity because Steam is also a great way to get some promo.

I never played much CoD so I might be wrong here but there is a difference betwesn debicting war and rewriting history in favor of the US and I think that’s what the author wants to point out, the US loves to be debicted as the good guys even if it’s anything but true and their collaborations with Hollywood show that really fucking well.

Fuck, this is so stupid it’s hard to even responde… Steam has a monopoly on game distribution but Minecraft isn’t a Steam competitor just like Fortnite isn’t a Play Store competitor! I am done with this thread, it’s frustrating to try and explain so many people such basic things if they don’t want to hear them!

I don’t think there is much of a point in it judging from the rediculess replies I got from you and others but that’s just plain fucking wrong, a monopoly is a entity with abusable position and not a entity abusing it’s position! “In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly

The historical term has nothing to do with todays use, that’s just the roots of the damn word. According to your logic monopolies can’t exist, Microsoft wouldn’t be one and Amazon and so on, that’s plain wrong…

No, the market position makes a monopoly! What you are talking about are anticompetitive practices, a monopoly enables you to leverage those in a damaging way but they aren’t part of a monopoly…

Other games aren’t a competition for a platform like Steam, that’s a different market. Steam has a monopoly because they have a extremely dominant position without real competition in their sector, they don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices against games outside of steam to have that…

That’s not at all what a monopoly is, it’s simply the absence of competition aka the market position. You don’t have to engage in anti-competitive practices to havw a monopoly, I don’t get why that’s so hard to understand for many here…

A monopoly refers to the market position, you don’t have to abuse your monopoly to have one…

I bet they make a shit ton of money but they certainly seem to reinvest enough of it too. There is a interesting concept called purpose companies here in Europe but it’s not especially wide spread or planned by regulators so the transition is extremly complicated and expensive. The search engine Ecosia is a relatively well known one, it’s basically a company in self ownership where no one from outside can become CEO and no one can sell or go public, they are obligated to their chosen purpose and that’s where their profits go (in the case of Ecosia that’s planting trees), not sure how it works exactly or if it’s doable in the USA at all tho.

Well, what makes a monopoly is the position in the market, without the obligation to infinite growth that doesn’t have to involve anti-competitive prectices.

Everyone likes to shit on Epic so it’s probably not a very unpopular opinion ether but there is a big difference between the App and Play store and Steam, only one of them doesn’t use anti-competiive practices and the other two also force their payment provider which is rather shitty!

I wish something like that existed, once you go public you are obligated to grow and that has limits so you always end up squeezing your users! :/