A new Dutch class action has been filed against Valve Corporation, the company behind Steam. The case is brought by the Stichting Consumenten Competition Claims (CCC), which has launched the proceedings under the name GameClaim. The foundation acts on behalf of all Dutch PC gamers who have purchased games through Steam or other PC distribution platforms since 2013, IGN Benelux reports.
First we take down valves “monopoly”, then we yell hurray and watch all the other companies suddenly turn good?
What do you propose should be done?
First, Stopping a monopoly from doing monopolistic things isn’t the same as breaking up the monopoly…
Holding the biggest player accountable for shitty behavior sets a precedent that you’ll keep the rest from doing it, too.
Arguing that any other business would do the same thing in defense of this shitty action, doesn’t help anyone.
Agreed but the issue here is what are the monopolistic things things valve is doing. What’s the shitty behavior we’re trying to hold them accountable for?
Because if we break up a company for good behavior then we’re setting a precedent that other companies with good practices will be broken up too.
Literally no one but you has talked about breaking up/destroying the company.
Price fixing is what these lawsuits are all about. 4 of them now, that I’m aware of.
That’s the behavior being pushed against here. You’d have known that of you read the article. Or any of the others in the past few months as these come out. You should be against that. But your playing the ignorant just asking questions game as interference for the perpetrator instead.
Jesus okay sorry. I miss lemmy before redditers showed up.
Because they let you say false shit with impunity?
No need to put monopoly in quotes. Owning 85% of the market is a monopoly. Do you want them to reach 100% for you to go “yep, now it’s a monopoly, now we should do something”?
A monopoly doesn’t need monopolistic behaviour to be a monopoly. The monopolistic behaviour Steam has is what’s being targeted. If Steam were impeding competition in other ways, those would have to be dealt with too.
Just because you have a favourite friend, doesn’t mean they can’t do wrong.
well, i guess if they stop them from being monopoly it lowers the risk of valve going bad. if they went bad it would be a nightmare scenario for games. At the very least for me since proton is only way i can even play stuff easily on linux.
Again, stopping them from being a monopoly isn’t the goal here. If it were, I don’t even know how they would approach it, because from what I can tell, Valve owns the market so much because it simply is good.
But yeah, Valve going bad would be a catastrophe for gaming.
only way to stop them from being monopoly would require anti-consumer actions, penalizing them for providing better service than others (which is what i assume is the goal of the “competitors” such as epic so they dont have to provide good service to compete).
Imo, these things should always be done user interests first, companies will manage always anyway. In the worst case the ceo can buy few yacts less.
And no one will do anything to stop it—just hoping and praying that Gabe doesn’t die or turns ‘evil’ to them.
Well, I’m not buying Steam games anymore, so I’m doing my part 🤷
That doesn’t actually do anything…
Opting out of buying from a service only hurts them when the service is anti consumer.
When the service is large due to pro consumer reasons then not buying just hurts yourself.
An anti consumer service relies on momentum to maintain it self. Hoping people are too lazy to leave. Since growing the customer base is near impossible with out dirty tactics.
A pro consumer service grows regardless, since it’s the best option. It doesn’t have to do dirty things to grow a customer base since by default the other options are worse.
If you just stop buying games entirely then you also do not matter you removed yourself entire from the equation.
You would need to start buying games from non valve sources that are in direct competition with valve. So things like the Amazon store, Uplay, etc.
Which do the same things and worse.
Functionally you do not get a choice of voting with your wallet. Because it doesn’t apply here. So all your doing is being stupid at worse and nothing at best for the cause.
You ARNT the customer being hurt here. You can’t vote with your wallet. The game studios and devs are the customer in question. THEY have to vote with their wallet by not putting games on steam.
You as a gamer physically can’t vote with your wallet unless you directly go to the competition.
“Doing something actually does nothing, just don’t do anything”
If you want to religiously be cucked by all of big tech and their USAian buddies, go ahead. Just don’t try and convince me to take the dick because you like it. Keep that sodomy to yourself.
P.S if you think Steam is the only way to get “ethically” get games, you’re even a bigger cuck than I thought.