Sony patents PlayStation controller that could accept tap-to-pay from phones and credit cards

[u/Nullhitter]

https://www.techspot.com/news/113988-sony-patent-shows-playstation-controller-could-accept-tap.html

[u/Nullhitter]

[u/DimensionalFruit → u/Nullhitter]

I really needed this the other day when some dumbass was calling valve a monopoly and is bad and should be broken up.

[u/TylerBourbon → u/DimensionalFruit]

If there is one thing confuses the F out of me, it's the "Steam is a monopoly" bs. They do nothing to stop people from selling games on other platforms. How would one even "break them up"?

[u/MultiMarcus → u/TylerBourbon]

Well, you don’t necessarily need to break them up. The issue is much more about them seemingly having a history of saying you can’t charge less for a game on other platforms, like if Epic wants to pay companies to sell their games cheaper on the Epic store, or Ubisoft wants to take a slightly smaller cut because they don’t have to pay Val anything on the Ubisoft store, they should be allowed to do that. Steam says that they are, but have historically said that they aren’t, and that confusion still persists.

Valve basically argues. that they only restrict the price of steam keys because, obviously, you should be paying something for this sort of steam ecosystem, but at least some companies have definitely interpreted that as not being allowed to sell games cheaper elsewhere, at least if we are to believe their lawyers.

[u/TylerBourbon → u/MultiMarcus]

I can understand that argument. But the thing is, Ubisoft can sell their games for whatever price they want, but they don't have a right to sell their games via steam. So that doesn't really seem like a legal case that has any sort of standing as Ubisoft is more than free to sell their games for less on Epic, or even via their own website, but it would be an obviously bad business deal for Valve to sell their games on Steam at the same time.

I get why Epic wants companies to sell their games for cheaper on the Epic Store, so they can undercut and steal customers from Steam. Lord knows they aren't doing it by making a store front that is just as good or better than Steams.

[u/MultiMarcus → u/TylerBourbon]

That’s basically text book how monopolies work.

A monopoly does not mean just being good at business. but it does mean that if you become a big enough player in a market you have to not try and suffocate competition before it can get up.

If steam was less successful and had more viable PC competition, this wouldn’t be a problem because they would not be a place that you practically have to be to be able to sell your games.

Making a storefront as good as steam won’t convince anyone to use it. You need to make winds on cost, but epic is not allowed to undercut steam on games that release on multiple platforms, Epic tried and is one of the largest companies in gaming, but still wasn’t able to make their store a success. Ubisoft and EA both stayed off Steam for many years. And even those huge companies in gaming came crawling back to Steam. Basically, the only company that’s managed to establish huge games outside of Steam would be Blizzard, with Battle.net and arguably Xbox to some extent, but really the big one is Battle.net, where people are buying games in large part because they are not available on Steam, but even they have had to release some of their games on Steam.

You can just sort of see here how valve is warping the market around themselves, which is not inherently wrong. The issue is that they are warping the market, and then also telling companies they can’t charge less on other storefronts. You can be doing basically one or the other, not both, because that is the sort of monopoly issue. Valve seemingly agrees because they argue that it’s not actually a policy they have. though whether it’s an unspoken policy is something that’s being covered in current court cases.

[u/drthrax1 → u/MultiMarcus]

I mean buying games and sales is really just the surface layer, steam offers so many other gaming functions like, reviews, workshop, community guides and discussions, VOIP/group chats, cloud saves, controller support, BIG PICTURE mode, game version control, steam family share and probably a bunch more.

None of the other services come anywhere NEAR these features, epic game store showed that just selling/giving away games cheaper is not enough to get people to actually regularly use the platform, steam has created an ecosystem that makes you want to exist in it, and have all your games in one places because it makes forming communities/discussions/servers or mods easier and more accessible, esp once you tie in the social aspect of steam profiles and friends.

And your right, people only use battle net because they need it to play exclusives, if they gave people the choice most people would just use steam because IMO its just a better service(and the bonus of everything being in one launcher) theres also been a bunch of times where I’ve had a game on steam but because my friend owned it on Epic we couldn’t play together, which kinda further isolated their service to me.

[u/MultiMarcus → u/drthrax1]

Yeah, and if that ecosystem is so strong, people would be willing to pay 10 or $20 more to buy their games there, right? Or skip out on the savings of $10 or $20; they might make on another platform, depending on which way you phrase it. Or willing to just add their games as third-party titles, which Steam does support.

I really don’t think it’s that hard. Give people the choice and the ability to buy games cheaper elsewhere if they don’t want to do that, then Steam will probably remain just as dominant as before. If they do want to do it, they’ll probably still remain very dominant, but at least there might be some argument for another platform having something to make them compelling beyond just sort of the user experience or whatever other thing people pretend that epic or anyone else could actually compete with.