They fucking DMCA'd a tf2 mod because their entire legacy is built off a modded quake engine and a lambda shaped carrot on a string. They know competition when they see it. God I hate valve apologists

Unless Valve employees are making anywhere near $700k on average, they're still getting business as usual.

I don’t really understand the monopoly claim for Steam lol. I can buy keys from Russians for dollars or from legitimate resellers. How is it any different from the ‘monopoly’ Xbox and PSN has for games being bought in their stores only being playable on their systems? If Valve is getting sued why not sue the two large conglomerates first? They own the medium, the product, and the store.

They should be sued for exploitation of consumers, especially the impressionable children. But monopoly? People flock to Steam because it offers a little bit of what they want. If you want socializing, it has friends and groups and reviews. Want to mod? It has a workshop. Want to just play games? You can do that. You can do all of it or some of it or none of it. But what do other storefronts like Ubisoft, Epic, GOG do? Well, GOG provides DRM-free games; that’s a good incentive whether or not it provides any other feature Steam has. Epic games? It dangles some free games and tries to dangle expensive exclusive contracts to draw players and devs, but other than that it provides nothing valuable for any type of consumer. I don’t think Valve offers any kind of contract like that, so exclusivity on steam is your choice.

How would you even break Steam if it is deemed a monopoly? Breaking up the store and marketplace is fine. But thats not what they’re complaining about. This isn’t standard oil. You can’t just roll up to BP Steam and ask for a little bit of GTA and then go to Shell Steam to buy DLC and talk to your friends from Chevron Steam. I can’t imagine “breaking” Valve’s “monopoly” will bring anything good for consumers or developers considering how not a single company has created an alternative that works half as decent besides GOG. I can understand if Valve was overshadowing a dozen smol beans trying to compete, but these are multi billion dollar companies, some probably worth more than Valve. Microsoft is part of the fucking military industrial complex for fucks sake. Their 30% cut is high but seems pretty standard for big name distributors. Epic will never be keep up its nice guy persona if enough people migrated to it because there’s no plan to actually make anything equal or equitable.

Oh right. I forgot our politicians and company executives care about fairness which means they’ll force everyone to publish contracts and rates so companies can compete snd developers have a lot of choices. Right?