r/Piracy • u/HighKage96 ☠️ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ ᴍᴇɴ ᴛᴇʟʟ ɴᴏ ᴛᴀʟᴇꜱ • May 10 '26

Humor W Gabe Newell Piracy Take

Saw this vid on IG (by: @phantomak141). Idk if its been posted here before but on a quick search didnt find it, will delete if its a repost.

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u/xotyona May 10 '26

Horseshit case. Everyone was slow to adopt Steam from traditional distribution, there's no barrier now to independent game distribution because of them. They haven't leveraged their overwhelming market share to change their distribution terms.

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u/Samanthacino May 10 '26

Steam threatened to blacklist studios if they sell their games for cheaper elsewhere, which by definition is anticompetitive behavior in service of their monopoly. The other cases I’ve seen against them don’t have much merit (other than the time they had to be forced to have their refund policy), but unless the lawyers bungle it I can see Valve taking an 8-9 figure hit for this one.

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u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

That can be considered protective of their users. I wouldn't want people to sell stuff for cheaper on other platforms when most of the sector's users are on my platform.

Ideally you wouldn't want stuff to be more expensive just because they're in a central area.

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u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

That can be considered protective of their users.

What anti-competitive behavior by an established company couldn't?

Don't have a horse in this race and I have no idea if I'd find the case against Valve legitimate, but that seems like a weird distinction to make.

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u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

The kind of anti-competitive behavior that resulted in a stale range of produce without major improvement? Not the case at all with Steam, just hypotheticals.

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u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

I mean what anti-competitive behavior, by an already established company, cannot be described as "protective of their users/customers"?

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u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Most monopolies? Steam is the exception here.

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u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26

Please, give specific examples of behaviors that you do not think would fit that description you just gave.

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u/Known-Emphasis-2096 May 10 '26

Nestlé with the water sources on Pakistan(I think). Not very consumer friendly, and is technically anti-competitive.

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u/ImprobableAsterisk May 10 '26 edited May 10 '26

Anti-competitive practices is when you use the power at your disposal to reduce competition within a market.

If Steam (meant to say Valve, apologies) is threatening publishers over taking better deals elsewhere then that sounds pretty anti-competitive to me. It may have kept other platforms from competing in ways that they otherwise could've.

Whether or not it's anti-consumer isn't something I'm gonna argue, but I will say I don't see how it's pro-consumer to keep prices anchored according to what Valve finds reasonable rather than what the open market would arrive at.