And then we have the joke that all the Handhelds from Nintendo where Region Free until the 3DS who whas suddenly region locked. On Nintendo console site I know that at least N64 and Wii U where region locked and it whas considered a big win that Switch whas region free again

Not true anymore. Since the Microsoft takeover you can now also buy WarCraft I & II and Diablo 1 + Hellfire on Battle.net.

Meh.

Quite frankly if you figure you can force me to buy your game on Steam ... I will assume you hate my money and move on.

No matter how good a game is ... its just a friggin game. I have plenty games already. I cant play your game ? Big whoop.

Even if there woud be never a good game released again, ever, I would probably just get into BG3 modding.

You can say that you're not defending Steam all you want, but you're still essentially defending Steam and refuting what I'm saying on the basis that Steam is more lightweight and laptop friendly than everyone else. But instead of caving in and running off to Steam, I'm going to point out something that's even more friendly to laptops than Steam.... and that's not having your game DRMed to Steam so that you can go 100% launcher-free if you need to.

Battle.Net is Blizzard though. They should have all of their games on their store if they have a store, but it doesn't change the fact that the game isn't on Steam. If Steam is your be-all-end-all for computer games, no Diablo 1 for you....

And you just reminded me of something else not on Steam: Warcraft 3. I specifically mean the original not Reforged version that some of us are still enjoying because we have the disc. It's definitely an awesome game that everyone should enjoy and not on Steam.

Or you know, reveal/release trailers clearly announcing it's cheaper on their own store, youtubers and ads announcing it, the first post on the Steam discussion forums obviously mentioning it... So far you've only mentioned logical, reasonable actions. From what I remember there's nothing preventing GOG from getting discounts first, or sales first. As long as Steam also gets them within a certain time frame (think it was several weeks)

Also, weren't at least some of these rules about selling on other stores using Steam keys?

From the section on Steam keys:
> It's OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.

AFAIK, every store can adapt the discounts within a certain frame (depends a lot on contractual details, of course) to give potential customers an extra incentive to buy in their store, instead of the competing store(s).

Whenever I see "weird" discounts (e.g.: 47% or 78%, etc), I can't help but think, that the discount given at that time, by the devs/publishers, is actually 45% or 75%, and that the rest 2%, resp. 3%, are granted by the store itself - to "stick out" of the mass of sales as "the cheapest offer".

Which, of course means, that these additional 2% or 3% have to be paid for by the store.
In form of revenue which they waive, to sell more games.

(example: a game costs €10,- the devs/pubs set a discount at 75% (= buyer has to pay €2,50), but the store sets the discount at 78% (= buyer has to pay €2,20)...that means, the store has to compensate €0,30 per each sold game to the devs/pubs - out of its own revenue)

And - naturally, the more money the company behind a store has, and the bigger their potential buyer base is, the easier it is for them, to grant these (slightly) higher discounts.

I'm pretty sure, the (as it's called by many here) "DRM-free tax" (aka: a 1% to X% lesser discount on GOG in comparison to other stores) is in fact the price, the other stores are paying for the privilege, to "stick out of the mass".
A "privilege", with which GOG can't compete (all the time), because THEY don't have that kind of money/buyer base behind them.

I saw this happen IRL.
A few years back, just prior to x-mas, when I was buying a loaf of bread and a few buns from a local baker, with whom I was friends, he disclosed to me, that he was closing shop, come new year.

When I asked for a reason, he took me to the doorway, pointed to a recently opened chain store bakery three doors up the street and said: "I can't compete with that. They mass produce their wares in the bread factory and sell them under cost. If I'd do the same, I'd be filing for bankruptcy before the end of next year. Might as well pull the plug, while I still have some financial reserves left."

That's the reality of business. It's harsh and unfair.
Has not much to do with the fantasy land, that some here constantly dream up.
Money is the maker - and money is the breaker.

Edit: added "bakery" to "chain store" to make it better understandable

If that is true, and I'm inclined to believe it, then my point stands, the word monopoly has lost all its weight. By that extraneous definition, literally every industry has an actor in it that has "monopolistic power".

I do agree that some sort of state control would be needed to enact a total monopoly, but at that point it wouldn't really be one either. It would be just another government service. Also, it would probably be tyranny, but that's a whole other point.

So now you have everyone going crazy pointing out who has a "monopoly" and where. Ok, well if we go by that sort of broad definition than pick anything successful. If that's the case, then so what? By those definitions Steam has monopolistic power... and so what? That's inevitable according to those stupid breakpoints.

Personally, I'd prefer if the term monopoly was used where actually warranted. Steam doesn't have one. It has market power, sure. All active and successful companies have some form of market power. Some might be more than others. So why don't we call it that instead?

No, you missed the point. In terms of monopolies as they are discussed in a legal and economic sense, it has been this way for at least the last 100 years (if not more); this is not something recent. The point that you are missing is the one just before the clip you made of my quote:

'Monopoly power is harder to define because it depends on the market, the different actors within it, and the market share of the company.'

So, there is no set criteria; legally, it needs to be justified on a case-by-case basis. If you have 250 actors within a market, and one of those actors has a market share of 35% while the other 249 have an equal share, that would make that actor proportionally more powerful than any others and likely to dictate what happens in that market - giving them monopoly power. In most cases, the percentage of market share required to grant a company monopoly power tends to be larger than 35%, often above 50%.

If legally and economically they were only talking about monopolies in terms of true monopolies, then this discussion would be all pointless. As I said in that post - true monopolies are as good as non-existing; they just don't happen. So, when it comes to all antitrust legislations, it has always been about monopoly power, never true monopolies

Edit - The best examples of this are when (here in the UK) the Competition and Markets Authority blocks mergers of companies because such a merger would most likely result in the new company gaining monopoly power within the market. For example, the merger between Sainsbury and ASDA in 2019, or the merger between Fox and Sky in 2016.
(In the USA it is the FTC's Bureau of Economics that has the power to stop such mergers)

Personally I think the economic and legal monopoly are good to define. A legal monopoly whas for example Venice and their mirrors in the 17th century. There it whas by law forbidden to leak the production method making it a legal monopoly.
Well a century later france got that production secret and so massproduced the mirrors so that everyone could afford them so by this time they had an economic monopoly as no one could afford to produce mirrors in this capacity.

Well, economists define monopoly or rather what they call market power like this:

In order for a market to be free of market power, there have to be at least about 25 companies competing in this market and none of them can have a market share of about 5% or more.

Any market that doesnt look like this has ogliopolys, or even a monopoly, forming.

Olgiopolys are a lesser variant of a full monopoly, i.e. a small number of companies completely dominate a market. In effect its the same as a monopoly - the consumer has no power because the companies observe what the other companies are doing and will copy their actions in order to maximize their own profit and minimize their own expenses.

Once the accumulation of market power has started, a single company or a group of companies have gained so much market power that their income is more and more guaranteed and they can act more and more independent of the desires of the consumer, because the consumer simply loses access to alternatives.

Yep, as I suspected.

You created a thread and sucked a bunch of us into it, never posting again after the opening post ... at least at this point 4 days later.

Did you get your jollies, get your rocks off? Or are you just a simple bot?

We should have known of course, going by the temper and nature of your one and only post, and thread title.

Oh , Steam .

The digital rental service of a brainwashed generation with a game catalog of 99% trash .

Good points. Still leaves a bad taste when I hear everything being described as a monopoly when it's clearly not. To a point that I'm arguing that we should be calling it dominant market power rather than monopolistic power. Also, true monopolies do indeed exist, but they are almost completely region-locked. Take a look at what ISPs are doing... or many places with utilities being provided by a single vendor. There is absolutely no recourse for a consumer in those regions. That's what I think of when someone says "monopoly" anything.

With Steam? Though it's dominant, Epic was securing timed exclusives without too many issues. Still so against calling it a monopoly though even if it might fit the description somewhat.

The percentages thing is another weird one for me to accept. Does Sony have a console gaming monopolistic power? They certainly hold one over Xbox and Nintendo.

How about mobile gaming? That holds the supreme dominant market position over everything else put together, but I don't see it dictating the market like one would expect. In gaming, we wouldn't say that mobile has monopolistic power, would we? Just doesn't sit right.

Nintendo is almost on par with Sony at the current income in gaming only. Sony only got about 30% of their revenue from gaming, MS even lesser...

EGS had to pay a superload of money in order to get some "time limited exclusives", while Steam just needs to "sit there", in the sun, and wait for the moment those publishers are arriving... with big regrets.

Nvidia... well, they just need to shout out "AAA---IIII" and then their stocks are going up better than the best rocket. Their CEO is already so dirty rich... he could buy GOG, EGS, Steam and Intel at the same time with his personal bank account. Not even the AAA---IIIII-account required, because with this one i guess Apple or MS could be bought... although so far not both at once.

This world is not equal, albeit... but surely the most equal thing is actually Sony vs. Nintendo on consoles.

Regarding "lack of games on GOG": I can not agree. I can only agree on the term they do not own the same amount compared to Steam, thats clear. Question is just: Do i need it? Not really... i got already more to play than i could ever handle. Sure, some titles from that other platform i like to have... but if not DRM free... it is THEIR lose... i can compensate with another game.

Actually... using PS5 as a co-machine for the stuff missing on GoG, i can play as good as any game already.

To be a bit blunt and rude, though - that is more of a you problem then a problem with definitions. That is the way it is used, and have been used. And is not going to change just becuase you do not like it.