I mean yeah… The reason why Valve is so profitable is because they have the total monopoly of the market. This is another contradiction of capitalism. Liberals are always pointing out that competition is great, but who wants to install 50 different apps, on their PC, to manage their games? It’s much more convenient, to have it all in one place.

Another thing that should be pointed out, is that Valve and Steam add no real value to the products they sell. They sell games that aren’t theirs to begin with. They’re just the middleman, but being a useless middleman in capitalism is insanely profitable.

And yes, the lootbox fest needs to end. It’s online gambling, where children are the main target. Every company that has used lootbox mechanics, with real money involved, needs to face charges for exposing children to gambling.

An antitrust lawsuit put forward by… massive gaming and tech corporations who want a total monopoly.

Those “low prices” they’re talking about is selling games at dirt cheap prices through a subscription model. Meanwhile paying developers fuck all, and then when the competition goes under they jack up prices through “fees”. Another way they plan on reducing prices is playing ads in-game through kernel level players you can’t block, wonderful. No free modding either, you might add things that prevent the company from making a profit, and we need you to buy our premium currency like Roblox.

Also better hope you don’t develop any “problematic” games or you might get blacklisted from ever selling a game again due to Visa and Mastercard wanting more profit too.

Steam seems like such a weird situation. Because like, yeah, it’s obviously fucked for them to use their market influence to control prices like that. But also, if things were left up to “competition” without regulation, what we’d probably see is the game digital marketplace looking something like how film streaming went. New platforms who can take the loss having lower prices to pull people from Steam, then upping the prices once they have a share of market control. Which is likely what they were trying to do that drew Steam’s ire, considering we’re talking about Ubisoft and Warner Bros, not John Doe’s Lil Local Game Shop. It’s not like Ubisoft is a good and wholesome company who would be doing lower prices out of the goodness of their heart.

As it is, game prices as a whole are FUBAR and this aspect of it is more window dressing than anything else, as far as I can tell. Cause when you can look at a big game release and face down special edition, season pass, MTX, lootboxes, and more, the base price of the game is kind of beside the point. The pressing issue is that game publishers get away with creating what are essentially virtual casino experiences meant to keep you playing for as long as possible and spending indefinitely, not because you are rich and can afford it as “whale” spenders were sanitized by capitalist-captured games media, but because you have poor impulse control and are more easily manipulated into spending beyond your means.

Which game platforms are available to host this nightmare of an experience seems little important to me, next to that being such a normal part of the industry now.

So, not surprised that Valve acts capitalist, but also, not going to sympathize with Ubisoft, ya know.