PC Gaming

8668 readers

543 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

Be Respectful.
No Spam or Porn.
No Advertising.
No Memes.
No Tech Support.
No questions about buying/building computers.
No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

319

Gabe Newell says no-one in the industry thought Steam would work as a distribution platform—'I'm not talking about 1 or 2 people, I mean like 99%' (www.pcgamer.com)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

75 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't agree that being the best at a thing is a monopoly. Being the literal only thing is a monopoly.

[–] mindbleach -2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

No monopoly has ever been literally the only thing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

there are thousands of government-granted monopolies where they are literally the only thing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

SiriusXM is that kind of monopoly right fucking now. They are the only provider of satellite radio and have no direct competition after XM and Sirius were allowed to merge.

[–] mindbleach 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Wow, hopefully we'll invent some competing way to listen to music in a car.

But y'know what, sure, my absolute was overreaching.

Yours still was too.

Standard Oil never had all the oil. AT&T never had all the phone lines. The worst, most blatantly illegal monopolies had competitors. They were still monopolies. What the word almost always means, does not require 100.0% market share. Shit gets weird well before that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

AT&T did have all the phone lines in a given area. They still do. Just like cable. The market isn't always as broad as the entire world, the entire country, or even an entire state. Comcast has a monopoly in many places by being the only provider of cable service in a lot of places, just as AT&T was the only provider of phone service to a lot of places.

[–] mindbleach 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

And if a single house in the county has DirecTV, it doesn't count. Right?

AT&T tended to have abundant small competitors, even since the 19th century. They just kept suing them out of existence or buying them.

All of which is really missing the fucking point - absolute monopoly is rare and weird. Most monopolies have competitors. They're still monopolies. They command overwhelming market share, which lets them single-handedly shape the market. Having that power is what makes them a monopoly - abusing that power would make them a trust.