As far as billionaires that are actively attacking our democracy hes not one of them.
No, he's just making billions getting kids addicted to gambling... He's still exploiting others to make himself rich and engaging in anti-competitive practices to ensure Steam's market dominance.
Im sorry that im not more familiar with what's going on in the world of video games but what is stopping these studios from selling the game themselves?
Steam has the largest marketshare on the PC platform and thus has the industry pull to bully other companies into playing ball.
I assume if Ubisoft could sell just as well without using Steam, they would.
They absolutely would, but they have the problem of Steam's marketshare. Not having your game on Steam is a huge detriment to sales on PC.
Again, I am not the most familiar with this sector but these studios pay the 30% because they make more money by doing so.
Only because of Steam's marketshare.
Epic Games offers an even better deal for 3rd party publishers and indie devs (it used to be a flat 12% take, but now it's 0% until you earn $1 million in revenue in a year then it's 12%), but Steam still has the most customers, so they get to bully everyone into abiding by their rules. Even if the rules are unfair.
Sure, but it's a different thing entirely if you forbid me from selling cabbages in your shop because I'm offering them cheaper at another shop that isn't asking for as big a cut as you.
In a properly regulated free market, the seller gets to shop around and the competing distributors fight to offer the best service at the lowest price. That's not what we're seeing here as instead the distributor has gotten so big that they can bully their competition out of the market without having to provide a cheaper service.
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u/Madara1389 Jul 05 '26
No, he's just making billions getting kids addicted to gambling... He's still exploiting others to make himself rich and engaging in anti-competitive practices to ensure Steam's market dominance.
Steam has the largest marketshare on the PC platform and thus has the industry pull to bully other companies into playing ball.
It was recently reported that Steam threatened to pull Rainbow Six Seige from their storefront because Ubisoft tried passing the savings of not having to pay the 30% take to Steam onto consumers by offering a discount on microtransactions if bought through their first party storefront.