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Comment by koromak | Hacker News Reader

I'm not even worked up about gaming specifically. I just think the FTC is failing horrifically at its job of protecting consumers from monopoly. The SEC is failing on its end too.

Everything will just get slowly worse.

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It wasn't fair to blame it on FTC and SEC. The blame is on the US Congress, they have the power to create and enact laws. They also can create law to limits the power of the federal agencies if they want to. They had a lot of opportunities to do something for us and they barely did anything except for corporations. Federal agencies only can do much within the scope of their power and laws.

And yet, how come congress keeps getting the same (or same type) of persons elected?

So in the end, the electorate is not choosing a representative that represents them. Or, these niche concerns are not the concerns of the majority of the electorate.

First Past The Post voting.

With something like Ranked choice voting, competition would be introduced into the electoral system. Making 3rd parties viable will also give a larger percentage of the electorate representation in government. Plus more people will be engaged in the political process.

CGP Grey has a short and informative video on the topic, as well as videos on alternative electoral systems we could use. All his videos on other topics are top notch if you got some free time, check him out.

How we vote is controlled by the states, so we don't need to beg the two mainstream political parties to get this done.

I believe a couple states already have done away with FPTP voting, so it's possible. Alaska and Maine IIRC.

Oregon recently is looking into doing it as well but I am not sure if they passed it yet.

I think this is a bit unfair, there's a real significant FTC upswell happening, but they're contending with decades of atrophy and an antitrust lobby that is extraordinarily powerful, not to mention the number of monopoly-friendly judges that are sitting in some of the most vital courts.

And this upswell can easily be squashed in just over a year's time. We are fortunate that any sort of effort is being made.

Atrophy of.....the FTC

> antitrust lobby

you mean protrust lobby :)

how can you possibly think monopoly is an issue when Microsoft is in clear third place in gaming behind Nintendo and Sony, and theres dozens of large publishers/studios and incredibly strong and thriving indie scene. I just dont get what you're talking about.

It is the purpose of copyright, explicitly, to incentivize creative work with the promise of monopoly power over its distribution. So it's a bit disingenuous to assert that microsoft is not a monopoly because other game companies exist.

Tech companies have long understood, and in fact may be entirely predicated upon the understanding that you can leverage one monpoly to create another.

If I make a game that can only run on your platform, then you gain a monopoly on platforms that can run that game. These platforms then become not fungible, and therefore de facto monopolies. There is a certain amount of "we haven't tried to port our game to other platforms", which probably shouldn't be an explicit violation of the law, but entering an exclusivity contract with a game studio is, in my opinion, a pretty clear restraint of trade.

All consoles have console exclusives. Nintendo has Mario/Zelda/Metroid/Pokemon, Sony has The Last of Us, and God of War Ragnarok, and others.

If you think I was arguing that Nintendo and sony do not have monopolies, then I believe you misread my argument. This is why I named Microsoft et al.

What I'm trying to say is that games that are differentiators between consoles are common, and this cannot be a basis of blocking such a deal. Indeed, it's no different than applications running only on ARM or x86, or requiring ray-tracing, or a specific Vulkan version support.

I believe if you read my argument, you would see that I explicitly name entering an exclusivity contract as the anticompetitive behavior.

Gaming is about as far from a monopoly as you can get.

Steam basically has a monopoly on PC gaming distro

Steam is overwhelmingly popular with users and publishers alike and so it's enjoying default status with both, but that's the fairest play in capitalism. There's little lock-in (non-transferable licenses and network effects are all I can think of) and I haven't heard of any anticompetitive behavior.

There are many other outlets for distribution, including the plain Jane internet, on all the platforms it's available for. Notably, this includes SteamOS devices like the Steam Deck, something no other console officially offers, as far as I'm aware.

Valve is remarkably fair.

Valve copies an approach of amazon that many (including, I believe, the USG) consider anticompetitive. Namely, requiring those who list on their store to not list for a lower price on other platforms. This prevents competition on price, an issue because valve charges a 30% fee, which many consumers might like to save on.

The best source on this that I could find is from ArsTechnica: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...

If it can be believed, then they don't appear to have an actual stipulation on this in their contracts, and Valve claims that the dispute isn't over pricing on other platforms but over selling Steam keys at less than the price on the storefront. That's a pretty big difference, if true.

The story also looks at whether publishers pass on savings in platform fees to customers. Naturally, they don't seem to.

If this is what you're referring to, it doesn't seem like a big deal.

I wonder why these distribution channels are converging on 30% of sales. What's with that number in particular?

I actually misread. The lawsuit itself is concerned with selling Steam keys, no claim from "sources close to Valve" necessary.

You can’t really exhibit anti-competitive behaviour if you don’t have any competition to speak of.

But you can, it's what distinguishes an illegal monopoly from a legal one.

With Microsoft track record of poorly managing its acquisitions, I don't think anything will get meaningfully worse.

if nothing is getting meaningfully worse, why is it considered a poorly managed acquisition then? At best they are neutral and is only changing where the profits of said acquisition flows, rather than changing the acquisition.

Which is why the FTC should break up Sony.

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