So, I guess Steam does have a pretty large market share of games sold digitally or whatever. Apparently it was facing a lawsuit not too long ago for being potentially a monopoly or at least big/potentially buying out competitors. Though I don't know how legitimate this lawsuit is. https://www.kitguru.net/gaming/matthew-wilson/judge-approves-wolfires-antitrust-lawsuit-against-valve-over-steam-monopoly/ That said, I'm kind of interested in knowing what folks here think about primarily digital/digital sales based corporations and whether some have gotten a bit too large proportionally. I kind of like and trust Steam, personally, given that it allows pretty much any game that is legal to have itself sold. Much though that means things I don't agree with will be sold, I appreciate consumers having the choice and cultural dialogue not being suppressed. But that doesn't necessarily mean regulation is amiss in that whole digital sales area, I guess, and if it had banned any games or has banned users on the basis of politics or speech, I would probably change my tune a bit as regards innate trust.
Thread necromancy, ahoy!
Honestly, I don't see how Steam falls under a monopoly, and I'm not sure antitrust regulations are applicable. Valve has done very little in the way of actual game releases beyond HL:Alyx.
If Wolfire doesn't like dealing with Steam, they can always move to Epic Games Store.
Fair enough, I guess. I had kinda forgotten about Epic Games, and I guess that shows they have at least one competitor. There are probably more out there, though I haven't really heard of them. I think the argument was less about monopoly on game production, and more control of the market on digital computer game sales, of which they get a non-negligible cut, when they could theoretically deny computer game producers access to such a big cut of digital consumers. That and their supposedly having bought similar hosting services out to prevent producers from selling through other venues. That said, I like do like them and their policy as a company, so I'm kinda uninvested. Also, as hedgehobbit has reminded us, I guess not all digital games are computer games.
Regarding thread necromancy on this site, what is normally considered the grace period after which a thread should not be disturbed, so to speak? I guess 5 months, now that I look at it, was admittedly a bit much. It was still on the front page, so I didn't really bother to check the dates. I'll admit that was my bad.