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[–] Spedwell@lemmy.world -2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Sigh... I'm getting tired of the Valve apologetics in every thread. They make good products, yes. They also abuse their market share to implement anticompetitive policies. The first doesn't absolve them of the second.

Truth is, no one has any idea what it would look like if there were actual competition among the PC games platforms. Steam may be the best possible world, or maybe we don't know what we're missing.

To learn more about Steam's anticompetitive practices:

See the complaint from the pending class action case Wolfire Games v. Valve (at a minimum items 204, 205 on pg. 55) for how Steam's PMFN clause affect publisher pricing.
See Cory Doctorow's Amazon's financial shell game let it create an "impossible" monopoly as a starting point for how a PMFN affects the market unfairly and harms the consumer.

[–] ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

What is a PMFN?

[–] Spedwell@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

"Platform Most Favored Nation". It's a type of clause in platform/marketplace agreements that prohibit a seller from listing their product for a lower price on a different sales platform. Specifically, it prevents selling on a different marketplace with lower fees (e.g. Epic Games or a publishers own website) and passing the difference as savings to the consumer.

[–] ALostInquirer@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago

Oh, I hadn't read of it in that form, thanks!

[–] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Doesn't Amazon have the same stipulation on every item listed on their site?

Edit: I think I misunderstood you here. I thought Amazon's game division was complaining about Steam. That would have been very hypocritical.

[–] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Epic gives me free games and I still don't like them... The "problem" is Valve is Steam-rolling the competition because people want to give them money.

[–] Spedwell@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yep. Because honestly, Steam is better than Epic in almost every way. When you want to buy a particular game X, you get a lot more from your purchase if it's on Steam (workshop, friends, multiplayer, etc.). There is strong inertia and network effects that keep us all preferring Steam.

Epic can't compete with the Steam experience. But if Epic was able to list everything 18% cheaper (the difference in fees between Epic and Steam)—then they would rightly be able to compete on price.

[–] mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

I understand now and that does make sense. No point in undercutting your competition if you can't pass those savings to the customers.