products aren't markets. Steam is a market and many games only launch on Steam. That's a sign of a monopoly, be it deserved or not.

Still, I'd rather have some aspects investigated because monopolies are historally dangerous.

If people are willingly paying this because the promotion is worth it, that's not necessarily a monopoly. And you can tell if they're willingly paying it because they have the option to distribute to the same customers by other viable means, without paying the fee but also without getting the promotion. And then as we can see, some people pay and other people don't.

You could make the different argument that they have a monopoly on games promotion by itself. I don't know if you'd win that one or not, but regardless it's distinct from what Apple is doing.

>but the fee for the promotion

I don't think 'putting product on shelf' is 'promotion'. IF that's your only reason and begging the question leads to "becasuse we have 90% of the userbaase", that's a monopoly. Steam is lauded by their audience for only using their local history to recommend games (i.e. they have a realtively simple tagging system they rely on to serve games), so I wouldn't say this is anymore promotion that Google Search is promting "best game 2024" when I search "best game 2024" (in some utopia where the first 3 results were SEO slop).

>If people are willingly paying this because the promotion is worth it, that's not necessarily a monopoly.

I really hope people day understand the difference between "monopoly" and "monopolization", because this seems to always come up in this topic.

"Monopoly" is a very mechanical, neutral term, legally speaking.

>The term “monopoly” is often used to describe instances where there is a single seller of a good in a market...However, despite the general animosity towards monopolies, not all monopolies are illegal. Examples of permissible monopolies include... Monopolies created purely by one seller having a superior product, business acumen, or having good fortune (ex. online search engines, social media sites)

So yes, you can in fact say Steam is a monopoly (in an objective, legal sense), but also argue it not being illegal because "seller has a superiod prouct/business". Monopoly is not a scary word by itself.

In terms of its 90% marketshare and indusry warping effects, it'd be very hard to argue that Steam isn't a monopoly. It'd be easier to argue Google/Apple in mobile aren't monopolies; At least they have each other to shield from their duopoly. Steam has no contender in the US.

"Monopolization" is a scary word.

>In United States antitrust law, monopolization is illegal monopoly behavior. The main categories of prohibited behavior include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing.

One leads to the other, so I don't blame people for conflating one or another, but it's an important distinction if we're going to start trying to talk about what is/isn't a monopoly, or monopolizing behavior.

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So, does steam engage in monopolization? Yes, but in much more subtle ways than what Apple/Google are doing. They are very smart about it because they care a lot about consumer feedback, and consumer feedback drives a lot of discussion on social media. But that's a discussion for another inevitable day.

At least, that's the way I've seen people speak of monopolies exclusively.

You buy Adobe from Adobe, "Get" Adobe from Apple, and log in with an email.

Also, a minority of consumers by headcount choose Apple. A majority of wallet share is spent by those who do choose it. That's behind most of the sour grapes.

These conversations often seem to miss that Apple’s requirement is that consumer purchasing be presented as the singular option in-app, not that you have to pay Apple a cut for purchases outside the App.

Even Amazon Video supports in-app purchasing of a Prime account restricted to Prime Video access. They just know next to nobody is going to use it vs an actual Prime account.

This is the sort of thing where Apple is playing politics, disallowing the same behavior for others while carving an exception for the ones with enough influence.

Ask yourself why Adobe can do this but not Patreon.

> Also, a minority of consumers by headcount choose Apple. A majority of wallet share is spent by those who do choose it. That's behind most of the sour grapes.

This argument makes no sense. People don't want to be paying 30% to Google Play either. Maybe this is why they complain about Apple more than Google, but the nature of the complaint is the same regardless of how the user base is distributed.