Does Steam have an unfair monopoly over PC gaming?

[JohnTC02]

IMO, it just the case of Steam being so popular that all the rest just can't compete.

Valve launches its Steam game-download platform for Apple Macs this month, with the Half Life publisher planning to release all games and all updates simultaneously for Mac and Windows in future.

It's a massive deal, but at the same time it also begs the question: "Does Steam have an unfair monopoly in the PC gaming market?"

http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming/does-...-gaming--681773

[Bota:16]

Monopoly? Maybe

Unfair? No, when you make a superior product, you tend to do better than your competitors. It's called capitalism, it's still legal in this country. It annoys me to no end hearing about people moan about monopolies.

[petsfed]

Monopoly? Maybe

Unfair? No, when you make a superior product, you tend to do better than your competitors. It's called capitalism, it's still legal in this country. It annoys me to no end hearing about people moan about monopolies.

The reason antitrust laws exist is specifically so that companies that seem to control the market cannot stifle innovation from their position.

To this point, I haven't seen Valve aggressively buying out competitors and then not using the innovations they just bought, nor is there egregious price gouging at work. They aren't operating an illegal monopoly, just being the most popular provider. Sure, Valve has all the Valve games and Modern Warfare 2. But any store has the right to not carry a certain brand. And every brand has the right not to do business with certain stores.

Monopolies can be dangerous for the consumer (OPEC's control over the oil industry led directly to the ridiculous price fluctuations we saw a few years back, for instance) but that's what regulatory bodies are for. If a company manages to force all of its competitors out of business, then it has no reason to provide the best possible product, just a good enough product (at a just-barely-low-enough price) that the consumers still buy it. The point of antitrust laws are to prevent prices being defined only by the maximum that the customer is willing to pay.

Personally, I think the continued increase of game prices will lead to a similar outcome to what happened to the oil industry a few years back: the loss of sales will outstrip the increased return from higher prices and the market will violently adjust.

[Bota:16]

OPEC had nothing to do with the huge jump in oil prices, but that's for another discussion.

For one this about video games, it's not life or death. Valve is not sitting on the cure for cancer and charging people for treatment when they could be curing them instead.

Secondly anti-trust and monopoly are not necessarily tied together. Companies can break anti-trust laws without remotely being considered a monopoly. Also you can have monopolies and not break anti-trust laws.

Thirdly, if you have something against a monopoly, the don't buy their product/service. I'm pretty sure there aren't any monopolies out there that would cause someone to die if they didn't purchase their product or service.

[petsfed]

Secondly anti-trust and monopoly are not necessarily tied together. Companies can break anti-trust laws without remotely being considered a monopoly. Also you can have monopolies and not break anti-trust laws.

Considering that the only laws available to punish monopolies in the US are the anti-trust laws, I think your statement is a bit contradictory.

And as I pointed out, Valve hasn't done anything that might be considered the formation of an unfair monopoly, thus they can't be tried under any anti-trust laws.

You're right that OPEC didn't have a role there. I didn't do my homework well enough on that statement. However, the sudden drop in price had everything to do with the fact that attempts to scale back use by consumers finally had an aggregate impact on overall demand. Even so, I think game prices are headed for the same thing. More so, since these are non-vital products. Eventually, we'll stop buying as many games or DLC (I love how various manufacturers tout miniature expansion packs as the wave of the future, despite the premise being older than a great many gamers out there) and the price will have to go down.

[WhiteKnight77]

From where I sit, Valve delivers a superior product compared to other direct to drive models. Direct2Drive from GameSpy/FilePlanet was first and originally trouble plagued (and still is from what I have read) and you have problems playing games you bought in other countries, such as servicemen who bought the games in Japan did and trying to get them to authenticate properly). GameSpot has a direct to drive service also, but I can say I do not know how well it is working. Stardock's Impulse seems to work OK.

Valve took the time to work Steam out and has been proactive in giving gamers what they want and added offline mode when gamers objected. Listening to what gamers complained about and fixing the problems that were complained about help vault Steam into the powerhouse it is.

Steam a monopoly, no, but a leader in direct to drive sales, yes.

[Bota:16]

Secondly anti-trust and monopoly are not necessarily tied together. Companies can break anti-trust laws without remotely being considered a monopoly. Also you can have monopolies and not break anti-trust laws.

Considering that the only laws available to punish monopolies in the US are the anti-trust laws, I think your statement is a bit contradictory.

So is Intel a monopoly? What about Microsoft? Samsung? Nvidia? ATI? This list can go on. None of those companies are monopolies, yet that have either been investigated and/or fined for breaking anti-trust laws.

And it's why I said "anti-trust and monopoly are not necessarily tied together"

Edited April 8, 2010 by Bota:16

[Daywanderer]

Agree with WK here, Steam is an excellent service and pretty much my the only thing I use nowadays, both both for buying and playing games. Like I tend to say, as long as I have Steam and Spotify on a computer, I'm happy

The only negative thing I can say about it is how Modern Warfare 2 is "build into it". IWNet is unstable enough, but when I can't play my favorite multiplayer game online because Steam is down for maintenance, it makes my blood boil.

[petsfed]

So is Intel a monopoly? What about Microsoft? Samsung? Nvidia? ATI? This list can go on. None of those companies are monopolies, yet that have either been investigated and/or fined for breaking anti-trust laws.

And it's why I said "anti-trust and monopoly are not necessarily tied together"

Well, the proceedings against Microsoft were specifically to prevent an unfair monopoly, but today, no, they aren't a monopoly. What other purpose does automatically uninstalling netscape serve (yeesh, that was more than a decade ago, wasn't it? Now I feel old). Two of your examples, by the way, were never actually found guilty of any antitrust violations. The actions that Intel have been accused of are all monopoly building actions. The point of bribing merchants to not sell your competitors' products is not to encourage a multi-manufacturer market. I'm not saying that Intel's guilty of it all, but there's no other point to engaging in the things they've been accused of but to try to form a monopoly. Samsung's actions are the only one that are not obviously with the intent of forming a monopoly. Rather, it was a price fixing scheme.