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Yeah Blizzard is notorious for this sort of anti-consumer stuff. It's frustrating that the crappy gaming companies that pull stuff like this continue to rake in billions.
It really only took off after they were acquired by Activision. It was all downhill after that.
Valve is the single guardrail keeping the entire industry from tumbling head over heels down the slippery slope.
Their ability to sort of 'impose' pro-consumer rules for those who want to use their marketplace is like the one and only place where the incentives are finally aligned towards gamer's preferences.
They’re the only ones who can even remotely make the appeal to both sides in a way that’s somewhat satisfying, but I still hesitate going all in on them. You let me download a fully open executable with no licensing requirements, I’ll save developers all the overhead costs of physically distributing their media. Only way I’d do it.
Of course that won’t prevent piracy, but it keeps honest people honest and stops legitimate buyers from defecting. “The suits” don’t understand that actual buyers have a direct incentive to reward developers and because if you like their work you want to continue to consume their content and keep turning it out. In all the times I’ve pirated games or movies I almost never did it was a way to give the parent studio a finger, I did it because it was easier to use and less punitive.
I'm just saying. If Gabe ever sells, we're seeing $100-$120 games being standard, DRM out the wazoo, and a complete lockdown on the user review system. Just to start.
Hence why I would like Steam to add a little button at checkout to let you donate to Gaben's immortality fund.
Except there are like five other companies champing at the bit to run what is basically a free money printer that Gabe has set up. Valve basically does nothing as a company and gets paid for it because of steam. The only reason it has no real competition is because they know they have to keep their customers happy. This isn't something "Valve is a particularly moral upstanding company" thing, it's a plain market incentives thing. If anything, it might be better if they had some real competition.
All of those are publicly traded and subject to different incentives/pressures.
Namely, the incentive to gobble up 100% of any consumer surplus that might exist in a product.
Gabe could maybe double his own net worth if he was willing to be less consumer-friendly. There's certainly ways he could exploit the access the Steam platform gives him to various valuable demographics.
At a bare minimum, they could serve targeted ads (for things other than Vidya) on the platform.
But he has no legal obligation to do so since 'shareholder value' is not his primary concern.
Just take a quick assessment of ANY other comparable industry and see if there's any exceptions to the general rule that publicly-traded companies enshittify their product once they've achieved market dominance.
This seems like a pretty personal feeling that you have and I'm going to require significant evidence (not just feelings, actual economic data of some sort) to accept the claim.
Just a few points here--first of all, market dominance isn't very common. Second, it usually ceases to exist once a company starts making bad products. That's kind of how markets work after all. Exceptions are usually products which aren't very susceptible to market forces like cable/internet companies that own infrastructure with high barriers to entry or government regulation keeping out competitors, which indeed often suck. Valve's business model is basically the opposite of high barrier to entry. It costs almost nothing to run and you just need the money to spin up some servers. Market dominance is completely held together by keeping their customers happy.
Beyond that, the idea that Valve is just magically more kind because its leader is some nerd saint strikes me as unbelievable. Of course different leaders create different results, but guess what, Gabe wants money too.
Lets discuss what sort of 'economic data' would capture the phenomena we're talking about. What is an economic term for 'enshittification' or whatever phenomena, and what metrics capture it? Consumer sentiment?
Of course, my point that "public companies will happily capture consumer surplus to maximize profits" is fairly standard economic logic, since private companies can have much larger time horizons and consider costumer retention through brand reputation and 'fair' pricing a more important factor. Similar incentive issues as public companies exist with Private Equity.
Thing is, I can probably point out a solid few dozen companies that are notorious for producing high-quality products or services in a particular niche, at reasonable prices, and are beloved specifically because they don't treat customers like cattle to be milked dry at every transaction.
One that I often come back to:
The Arizona Iced Tea company.
Privately owned by the same dude/family for 30-something years, and they have resisted raising the price above 99 cents a can despite the beverage industry as a class exploding in size and revenue.
Read that story about the owner and it is clear that its his personal philosophy that's holding the competitive pressures at bay, less so than pure economic sense. And they obviously don't have 'market dominance' so casting monopoly accusations at them would be absurd. The owner is, like Gabe, focused on keeping the quality of the product high, responding to consumer demands, and avoiding abrupt price hikes.
Obviously this guy could sell out to PepsiCo TOMORROW if he wanted, but his willingness to just... not, is only possible because he has no shareholders to appease. And a multi-billion dollar net worth.
And every time one of those drinks sells for a Dollar to somebody who would have paid $2 for it, that's $1 of consumer surplus in the buyer's pocket.
Some other similar companies:
Chik-Fil-A. with their NOTORIOUSLY amazing service and high quality.
In-N-out Burger.
Yeungling Brewing. A favorite of mine.
Canva. (compare to fucking adobe.)
Wawa. (compare to 7/11)
Buc-ees.
Craigslist.
Harbor Freight.
And many such companies that are primarily regional presences.
Note I'm not claiming such companies rarely/never take anti-consumer actions, but more that they optimize for a higher quality/price ratio (they resist enshittification) than comparable public companies, and are able to resist the trends that public corporations follow to the customer's detriment.
And I'm claiming that any of the above-named companies, if they went public, would rapidly see the introduction of more consumer-unfriendly practices and rising prices/slashing of quality to quickly squeeze out more profitability.
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