Karma on reddit tracks the accumulated likes and dislikes a user has gotten on all of their posts. Lemmy does not have a number like that.

Edit: What this means in practice is that on Reddit there are some users who make a lot of low-effort posts to get that karma number to go up and get a sense of accomplishment from that (even when they get a negative reputation among the other users), whereas on Lemmy that’s not really a thing. Lemmy has power-users that become well-known, but they’re more well-liked because they aim to gain actual reputation instead of just farming a karma number.

I disagree with both of those takes.

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So, it’s not a monopoly… because there are no viable alternatives?

the power to charge overly high prices

One doesn’t have to actually use a power in order to have that power. If I was carrying a loaded shotgun, I would have firepower. I wouldn’t have to actually fire the gun to have firepower.

Also, one could argue (and Epic Games has) that Steam’s 30% cut is overly high for digital distribution. I’m not sure whether that’s true or not, but that doesn’t really matter to the question of whether Steam has dominant market power.

If you’re a game developer, then the ability to sell games does buy food and housing, and you sell a lot more games on Steam than anywhere else.

You’re using a different definition of monopoly from what I’m using. To quote Wikipedia:

In economics, a monopoly is a single seller. In law, a monopoly is a business entity that has significant market power, that is, the power to charge overly high prices, which is associated with unfair price raises.

I’m using the latter of those definitions. I don’t think it’s particularly useful to only consider it a monopoly when there are literally no competitors. I think it is useful to consider it a monopoly when it has dominant market power. Steam’s estimated 75-80% market share is dominant market power.

It’s true that I am not a lawyer, so feel free to not take what I say as what the law says. I think that the law certainly should consider Steam to be a monopoly with its level of market power, even if it doesn’t currently.

From what I have heard from actual lawyers, monopolies are not currently illegal under US law anyways. They’re only illegal when combined with anticompetitive practices. That’s my best understanding as a non-lawyer, anyways.

I agree that Steam is pretty good as it is, and there are certainly more pressing concerns. However, in an ideal world, what Steam does should probably be handled by the public sector because it’s a natural monopoly. People like only having to go to one place to find their games, but that place doesn’t have to be controlled by a for-profit corporation.

Whether something is a monopoly or not is independent of anti-competitive practices. It’s about market power.

GoG has, like, 1/5th the market share of Steam. It’s not nearly big enough to prevent Steam from having monopoly power. If Steam came out with a policy saying that games could not be on both Steam and GoG, the vast majority of devs would release on Steam. That’s monopoly power which Steam has, regardless of whether they are currently abusing it or not.

If Steam suddenly introduced a policy that prohibited devs from selling on other platforms alongside Steam, most devs would choose Steam because they would make way more money on Steam than elsewhere.

The power to do that is monopoly power, regardless of whether Steam is abusing that power currently. I think that their behavior on the whole is pretty good, but that doesn’t make them not a monopoly.

I’m pretty sure that that only applies to steam keys being sold on other sites. If it’s being distributed in some other form, it can be cheaper.

As far as I am aware, they only dictate the pricing of Steam keys on other stores. That seems fair to me, because they are doing the distribution in that case. Games that are on Steam can be cheaper elsewhere if they’re distributed separately.

That being said, I totally agree that they’re a monopoly based on their market power.

I think there is a distinction to be made between being a monopoly and doing anti-competitive behavior.

Steam hasn’t done any anti-competitive behavior that I am aware of, but they do have enough market power to be considered a monopoly. Consider how companies like EA and Activision tried to maintain competing platforms but caved because those platforms were not viable compared to Steam. That’s monopoly power.

I think it qualifies as a monopoly because of the network effect of having so many users and so many games on it. Especially on the developer side, it’s basically mandatory to release your game on Steam because the number of users you can reach is so much higher than any other platform.

That being said, it’s not a monopoly that most people have a problem with because they generally continue to serve users well even though they have enough market power that they could enshittify things. If they were a public company they almost certainly would have done that by now.

How is your early access category so small?

If the democrats lose the election, I fully expect them to roll over and let Trump take power. In that case, Trump would have the institutions on his side, even as he seeks to dismantle those same institutions going forward. Democrats constantly show themselves to be willing to play by the rules, even as Republicans show themselves to be willing to bend those rules.

If he loses the election, I expect there will be an attempt to take power anyways (again), but I think that attempt is likely to fail (again) when he doesn’t have the institutions on his side.

The degree of difference between the two potential outcomes is quite pronounced. You can say “Both sides bad” and you’d be right, but bad vs good is not a binary, it’s a spectrum, and there’s a huge degree of difference in how bad the two sides are.

We don’t live in those “generally” times, currently. One of our candidates is running on a fascist platform, tried to do a fascist coup (and got away with no consequences for it), and has both promised and planned to overthrow democracy if he’s elected.

Maybe he would be prevented from doing all that stuff even if he won, but I’m definitely not counting on that. I’m gonna be fleeing like a jew from Nazi Germany because quite frankly that’s what I see it potentially becoming, and they’ve definitely painted a target on the backs of trans people in particular.

I am under no illusions that the democrats will be fully on our side, but when the other side is specifically trying to wipe out people like my partner, they’re a very clear choice. I’d much rather live under a government that’s not actively trying to wipe us out.

We’re absolutely planning to live in a blue state. But the ability to be safe even in blue states is in question if Trump gets elected again. If he does, then we’re probably gonna try to get out of the country as quickly as possible rather than waiting around to find out.