Read on Twitter
"Valve is being sued for a Steam agreement that forces developers to list the same game prices on other platforms, possibly eliminating competition.": https://screenrant.com/steam-lawsuit-monopoly-pc-game-store-ubisoft-cdpr/
Personally, I doubt this lawsuit will go anywhere, but others will follow in its wake. The Steam Monopoly is protected by a legal army. Literally, sitting right next to the guys keeping the servers (barely) working, is an army of lawyers. Their job is to keep the monopoly going.
They're incentivized by huge bonuses, and probably (these days) via massive stock option grants. They get bonuses for winning and filing lawsuits.
You need to understand that Valve has an early company trauma: the Sierra/Vivendi lawsuit which literally almost destroyed the company: https://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-vs-vivendi-universal-dogfight-heats-up-in-us-district-court/1100-6107712/
They are well prepared for lawsuits now. They hire the best and pay them extremely well. They can of course afford to, because that 30% skim is *massively* profitable. The game industry crunches away to basically keep these guys on top of their monopoly.
The video game industry foolishly handed a single corporation 30% of its PC income for nearly two decades. This is one reason why you are crunching so much: bad business decisions.
I would argue that the most important employees at Valve aren't programmers, artists, or game designers. It's by far the lawyers, distantly followed by the Steam client and server maintenance folks. It's a huge money making op fueled by an army of crunching video game devs.
That's my 2 cents anyway. One day this will be fixed and real market competition will come to the PC, probably after the feds come in.
Valve and its lawyers will read this and get angry at me for commenting in public. It sure wouldn't be the first time. But hey guys, you are the ones who built a potentially *illegal monopoly*, not me. I'm just eating popcorn on the sidelines, watching this unfold.
If I was at Valve, or I was an ex-Valver sitting on piles of private stock or options, I would ask: What are the odds the feds will come in and fix the broken PC video game software market by squashing illegal monopolies? Can I cash out before this happens?
