Who's building a monopoly?
- Thread starter Matthew Jabour
- Start date
Netflix seems to be doing a pretty good job of controlling the movie rental market. They've already killed actual outlets like Blockbuster where I live.
Not happy.
Not happy.
You know what's actually a better Monopoly? Brown and Light Blue (That's right, the beginning Row); they're cheap to build and they pay back so much that it's worth it. Every time I play the game, I go after Brown and Light Blue.NinjaSniperAssassin said:
OT: Monopolies aren't really a common thing in the modern day. No, the modern Monopoly is a Dualopoly (Which I don't support, but until I become president, they're gonna remain in power).
I have a monopoly on the purple properties and the light blues. Since they have hotels, i call it the "Don't collect $200" strip.
If you quote people, they receive a message telling them they've been replied to.Shrack said:
I probably should have made it clearer that I don't believe Valve have a monopoly of digital distribution, merely that I can see why people would say that they do.
GMG are probably receiving more money for each sale on their site, but I'm confident that Valve receive money for the sale of Steamworks titles, even if they weren't sold on Steam.
Still, I agree that they aren't a monopoly. In their Steamworks FAQ, they claim that they don't require any exclusivity. If this is true then the swathes of Steam-exclusive games are exclusive because the publisher decided that it would be so.
Even if they are a monopoly, it's a natural monopoly rather than one built out of ant-competitive practices. It's a great service (even if I really fucking hate the client).
Monopolistic.Easton Dark said:
Not hating or anything, just so you know.
Whether it costs money or not is immaterial to whether or not it is a monopoly and whether or not that is a problem.Shrack said:
See also: Internet Explorer, Microsoft.
The client IS an anti-competitive service.ScrabbitRabbit said:
You contradicted yourself within, like, a single sentence.
How so? It's an intrusive bit of DRM, definitely, but they don't require exclusivity. If the publisher allows it, you don't need the client to buy or run the game.Zachary Amaranth said:
If I buy The Witcher 2 through retail or on GOG, I don't need Steam to play it. If I buy any Ubisoft or EA game retail or on their services, I won't need Steam to run it.
The reason that the Steam client is a near-necessity for PC gamers now is because other publishers and developers choose to release their games exclusively on Steam or packaged with Steamworks. How is that Valve stifling competition?
Thank you.Zachary Amaranth said:
Games you buy on GMG require a steam account most of the time :l. Along with Amazon mostly if buying digitally.thesilentman said:
And jeez. I spend most of my days on the internet looking at geek stuff and I've never even heard of any of those OS's other than Ubuntu and Linux. Thing is, I doubt those put together make up 5% of the OS market. That's the assumption I was going on.
More formally, a monopoly is when a firm can influence or control all of supply, and sees all effects of demand.spartan231490 said:
Most monopolies don't actually work in absolutes (DeBeers was never the *sole* producer of diamonds in the world, but they owned or controlled so much of the supply that they might as well have), but behave as if they were absolutes.
Which is why for years I refer to the gaming industry as being ruled via an Oligopoly of Publishers.
(this is going beyond the expected "Natural Monopoly" that Copyright Law endows upon the Publishers for their games, and into actual %market control/presence)
The Big Three are very significant, but it's the Publishers who own and control the developers.
There is no industry without the developers, and the way the system is setup, if you're a developer you're basically playing from behind if you don't have a Publisher funding you. You may find the rare breakout success like Minecraft, but those are by far the exception and not the norm.
Just to emphasize the point, it took over half a decade of straight failure to down THQ (who initially grew as large as they did not on blockbusters, but shovelware).
While the Publishers control the purse, they effectively control the direction the industry takes.
Which is why I am so adamant about holding them to better standards.
(gamers would have far more control if they realized just how much power they collectively wield...but most gamers are uninformed or spineless gits who gladly trade short-term benefits for long term abuse, even when superior alternatives exist.)
Around here, Netflix has the internet part of that market cornered (not counting piracy and streaming sites like Hulu that just call themselves streaming sites, and not rental sites), while Redbox has the kiosk part of the market cornered. Blockbuster had a deal with the biggest grocery store in the area to have Blockbuster kiosks instead of Redbox kiosks for a while, but they seem to have given up on that, because even those stores are using Redbox now, and I haven't seen a blockbuster kiosk anywhere else since that store stopped using them. Actual video stores are all but dead -- I know of one Blockbuster video in my part of the state, plus an anime shop that has a large collection of anime rentals, and they're both in the same beach town. I'm guessing the blockbuster gets most of its income on rentals from people wanting a movie to watch on days/at times[footnote]during the Summer especially, it rains just about every day along the coast in Florida. It's caused by the wind coming off the ocean mixing with the wind coming off the land. When I was a kid, those storms tended to make it all the way to the middle of the state, not just the coasts, but, well, global warming.[/footnote] when the weather is too bad to leave the hotel room, while the anime shop works on a combination of that, locals and tourists buying merchandise, and locals ordering things you can't find in most stores, like obscure series and manga volumes. Although there's also three or four independent record shops in that town, so maybe it's just a weird place.SanAndreasSmoke said:
On a note related to the title, there's actually such a thing as a Make-Your-Own-Opoly where you can name the currency and locations etc. Fun times.
OT: I think Amazon has a huge monopoly over most retail things now. Places like Game, HMV, Blockbuster, Jessops in the past year have nearly (and some, completely) closed down because people can now order stuff online instead of being active.
OT: I think Amazon has a huge monopoly over most retail things now. Places like Game, HMV, Blockbuster, Jessops in the past year have nearly (and some, completely) closed down because people can now order stuff online instead of being active.