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Remedy and Annapurna announce a strategic cooperation agreement on Control 2
(www.remedygames.com)
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2024
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But it does, paying third parties to not publish on your competitors platform is the oldest anti-competitive behaviour in the book.
It would have been completely fine if they started out with actually funding development of new games and only releasing them on their store.
I would have even given them some slack for their bad launcher since they were new to this.
Instead we are here, almost 6 years later. Their launcher is still trash, their exclusive deals were a complete money sink, EGS is still not profitable, they burned all bridges to Valve and are not one step closer to their claim that 30% is too much and they can do it with ~~8%~~ 12%.
I would argue that even restricting sales to your own store is anti-competitive tying. You're avoiding competing on the merits of a store using exclusive licensing of a creative work.
Again, not a fan of the tactic, but they are trying to break an entrenched monopoly with a ton of network effects which is near impossible.
Their launcher is perfectly fine.
Not really. They weren't as effective as they wanted them to be but they did ultimately gain a significant chunk of market share.
No, they needed to gain more market share to break even.
But they are. They're not losing that much money, even with a tiny portion of market share. Valve having far more market share means they should be able to do it for an even smaller percentage than what epic is using, especially since Valve has 21 years of infrastructure to lean on.
A creative work which you made yourself, which you can sell wherever you want.
Should you sell it everywhere so as many people can play it as possible? Sure. Do you have to? No.
Let's reverse the roles for a second: EGS is the big player and Steam is just getting started. EGS suddenly starts paying all publishers to only publish on their platform. Does that sound like competition to you? You don't break a monopoly by using tools used by monopolies.
Fine? Yes. It does the bare minimum of being able to buy a game and start it. Does it do everything I expect a modern game launcher to do after existing for almost 6 years? Nope.
They are "not losing much money" while providing a fraction of the services Steam does. They say 30% is too much, we can do it in 12% and yet they severely lack in social features, have no modding support, no VR support, no in-home streaming, no Remote Play Together, no Big Picture, no Family Sharing, a barely functioning Steamworks alternative, no Steam Deck support, no Linux support and absolutely zero open source contributions. That's just the obvious stuff I can think of right now, every single menu you open in Steam you find a barebones menu in the EGS.
They don't even need 21 years of infrastructure for most of these, they just need to fund development of it. Which they seem to be unwilling to do so.
You're so close to figuring it out yet you pass right by it...
Also, Steam can have all the extras you mentioned while also making Gaben a billionaire so they do in fact get a huge surplus by charging 30% and found absolutely afford to give you all those extras with a smaller cut
We're not talking about what you currently have to do, we're talking about anti- competitive behaviour and what you should do.
If you set up your own shop to avoid paying a middle man for something you can do yourself fine. If you set up your own shop and then use your exclusive games to grow your shop into something bigger, then that's anti-competitive tying. Your shop is not competing on its merits as a shop.
There is a fundamental difference between using anti-competitive behaviour to break a monopoly, and using it to entrench a monopoly. That's like arguing that a bully using violence and someone standing up to a bully using violence is the same thing.
Where do you think the funding for Valve's system came from? 21 years of taking 30% of virtually every single PC game sale.
Yes, and as we all know, a company that gets to the top using scummy tactics will definitely change them once they're on top. /s
How fucking naive are you? There's no difference between the two because the later turns into the former every time. You're just defending your favored party using shit tactics, which is why you can't defend the opposite.
If you have to use violence constantly to survive and thrive, violence is your only tool. Once the bully is defeated, the victim will begin bullying, continuing the cycle of violence. This is no different.
Lol no. It's called competition. It's the literal entire basis of how our economic system is supposed to work and remain balanced, and having two competitors inherently creates more competition than just one where their inherently is no competition.
Now who's naiive, you really think that every time someone has stood up for themselves that they've gone on to become a bully?