Hello,

dude please don't shoot him just yet. He isn't trying to get us to buy the game over on steam, rather than getting the pub to release the game here. I wonder if they have similar CoC on steam forums that the pub moderates and disallows links to other stores too.

Likely such high profile release won't happen anytime soon here, but someone has to try to raise the awareness that there's is some demand at least.

Stop calling people dude and stop trying to play the fanboy straw man to ridiculous arguments.

Steam were well within their rights to delete OPs post on the Steam forums. They didn't have to but they chose to.

It's not censorship - it wasn't a general comment about GOG or even comparing the merits of the platforms, it was inciting people to lobby for a publisher to release on a rival platform, which would be to the direct detriment of Steam.

Dude, I'll fanboy for steam any day I want. Long live Gaben!

Selling has nothing to do with it. You're not allowed to link to other stores on this forum, unless it's for a giveaway.
My point was that GOG forum rules are no different.

That's not how anti-competition laws work

"Opps I accidentally became a monopoly, looks like these laws designed to ensure competition don't apply to me"

It doesn't matter if Gabe grew a villainous moustache and planned with great detail how to corner various parts of the PC Gaming market, or if he just bumbled into it. As a commercial entity Valve has influence and control.

Yes companies "choose" to use the free bundled and integrated forum service opposed to the hosting their own forums or using an non-integrated service such as reddit, just as I was "free" to "choose" to use Microsoft APIs and services in the 90's when coding commercial software. Sure I could have chosen a Borland and Novell combination, and no bugger would have bought it.

Contrary to what Musk worshippers believe, "The Market" isn't ineffable and competition doesn't just magically appear to balance the cosmic economic scales. In fact it "effs" up all the time, which is why there are all kinds of regulations to ensure healthy markets.

This obviously is not the most consumer friendly policy, but capitalism rarely is.

That does not sound right to me, and i have never seen such a definition before. not sure I have even seen a "legal" defienition of a monopoly, i am not even aware that any such definition existed. (i know about "legal monopoly", but that is something different entierly). Surely it is dependent on the market and how many competiors there are in it? (e.g if it is three competitiors, then they can not have less than 33%, which means that each of them would be a monopoly if they have equal market share).

Do you have any sources I can have a look at? it would be interesting.

edit - in any case, anything that is legal is bound to the contry which those laws operate within. if you are in the UK, and use a UK legal framework, keep in mind that Steam is operating under USA law and legal frameworks. thogh if you have those sources, no matter from which country, I would be grateful.

Yes, that's not right at all.

If it were true, then everything is ruled by a monopoly of some kind.
Some supermarket chain has a market share bigger than that.
Some energy company has a market share bigger than that.
Some computer technology has a market share bigger than that.
And so on.

What I do know for a fact is that the definition of monopoly depends on the size of the market.
A while back some company gained about 80% dominance over some entertainment thing (don't remember the exact details), but it all happened outside competition supervision, because the value of the market wasn't big enough.

I don't know any exact percentages and monetary figures, but 25% certainly can't be right.
I would guess anything over 50% might be considered monopoly, although these things can be very complicated. I seem to recall that in some grocery store case it wasn't the percentage of customer business that mattered, but it was all about supply chain management.

There's a difference between the pure definition of monopoly (one company, 100% power) and the legal definition, used in assessing whether something could be to the detriment of consumers. While I can't quickly locate the 25% figure in the UK legislation (it's probably more a statutory instrument than being codified in law), I'd also point out that monopolies aren't automatically unlawful in the UK.

The 25% comes from the old Monopolies and Mergers Commission in the UK, who could review once market share hit 25%. Note that they were replaced by the Competition Commission and more recently the CMA. They have a guide on mergers that they can look at (https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/970333/CMA18_2021version-.pdf) - given they are most interested in mergers giving monopolistic power, the 25% on page three is quite telling) Other than that, the main references are in school and degree level economic textbooks - which admittedly aren't as good as a direct government source. The 25% is likely to also exist in any countries where the legal system is derived from the UK legal system.

In your example, three companies with 33% share each, you've got a classic Oligopoly. However, each company could also be exercising monopoly power given their level of market share. In that situation, any mergers would come under extreme scruitiny due to the concentration of power. You might also have a cartel if they are colluding...

I agree with your point on Steam being subject to US laws - but if they tried to acquire Epic (as an example), it could be blocked by competition authorities outside of the US. This is one of the areas where local jurisdiction doesn't usually come to the aid of companies.

You're so close to realising how messed up the free market has gotten.

Its down to influence
If you've got 25% of the market and your next nearest competitor only has 10% and the others are around 5%, you've have "Monopoly Power"

This means your ability to affect and alter that market is unchecked. You can alter prices, demand things from suppliers in ways your "competition" can not

Aye, I did desrcibe an oligopoly on purpose, but you can also have a monopoly within a oligopoly.

you are also right that the document you provided do not give any indication of any shape or form towards anything that can be seen as a monopoly, it is only the threashold where an automatic merger assessment will take place (though it can take placw with a smaller market share as well). The other threashold here is a purle monetary valu, which has nothing to do with market shares at all. However, iti is such ducments that would provide it, as it is a government that would deal with any monoply regulations. Where you are wrogn, is when you say "more a statutory instrument than being codified in law" - as the local statutory intruments has to follow the local laws - they cannot go beyond what has been codified. they cannot create legal definitions, if they did, then they would be illegal and therefore void.

i am questioning still the 25% rule, though, as I have never seen any defiinition of a monooply with such a small market share. it is beacuse I have never seen any legal framework at all that stipulats at what point something becomes a monopoly (neither UK not USA, or any other country) based only on a fixed % market share. When I have seen a monopoly being defined, it is always in relation to the market they operate within and the number of operators within it. there may be some rule of thumb going on, but still 25% to me sounds to low.

In fairness, I was quite careful to use "monopoly power" rather than monopoly in my first post. I was probably a bit clumsy in calling it a legal definition as it's not easy to find, but it's more a practical rule of thumb in the UK. I'd say that 25% as an ability to exercise monopoly power is also fairly widely accepted in economics (it's a while, but I seem to recall that my Blanchard text at university quoted it). It's fairly widely quoted if you google it, but unhelpfully without any underlying source attribution (which is why I vehemently dislike the internet) In any case, competition regulators typically only get involved when monopolistic power is increased by mergers and acquisitions - if you organically create monopoly power (as Steam have done), they usually see that as just being good at your job - unless you're being openly abusive. It's possible that the CMA dropped the MMC definition of 25%+ as it reduced their flexibility to ignore things.

Examples of secondary source, but unhelpfully without primary sourcing:
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/concentration-ratios/

Either way, given Steam has >50%, I think we can agree that they certainly have the ability to exercise monopolistic power

They've shut me down for linking in a giveaway. Pretty sure their policy is no links to other stores. What? Steam doesn't have to allow any content onto their site they don't want, and that includes promoting their competition. Why would you think there is any kind of violation or rule that would force them to allow you to promote their competition on their platform?

No game store cares about censorship. All they care about is money and PR. Steam forum moderators can be crazy and delete stuff at random, steam fanboys can be crazier and report stuff for no reason. Plenty of people don't want Hogwarts Legacy to exist on GOG, steam or anywhere. Don't become too invested in trying to talk sense to crazy people.

The latest game from the Detention devs has been refused for sale on both steam and gog because of its politics. That matter explains the whole ecosystem perfectly. Just look into before deciding what hill you're willing to waste time dying on.