It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to ask “are other companies bad?” when trying to determine if a company is a monopoly. One thought experiment I like to do is pretend the CEO dies and is replaced by Satan. How much damage could he do? If it’s a lot, then probably you’ve got a monopoly.
Suppose Gaben dies, and he’s replaced by Satan. Could he do damage to the gaming community by doing something exorbitant, like charging a 30% cut of game sales from the folks who actually develop the games? Could they do anticompetitive vendor lock stuff like only allowing you to purchase DLC through steam? Only time will tell. And it will, because at some point Gaben will die, and he will be replaced by someone less magnanimous and angelic than him.
That also makes no sense. Literally any large company could do great deals of harm even if they have countless competitors if they set out for the goal of just doing harm.
There is a serious fundamental difference between a monopoly and a general market preference.
If every single one of your competitors all decide to be stupid and you don’t you arnt a monopoly. You just are the only one not being stupid.
![Steam competitors be like. [Extended?]](https://thelemmy.club/pictrs/image/8d2d46eb-234c-41bd-b7c1-fb9c4c9f2508.webp){kind=link}
It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me to ask “are other companies bad?” when trying to determine if a company is a monopoly. One thought experiment I like to do is pretend the CEO dies and is replaced by Satan. How much damage could he do? If it’s a lot, then probably you’ve got a monopoly.
Suppose Gaben dies, and he’s replaced by Satan. Could he do damage to the gaming community by doing something exorbitant, like charging a 30% cut of game sales from the folks who actually develop the games? Could they do anticompetitive vendor lock stuff like only allowing you to purchase DLC through steam? Only time will tell. And it will, because at some point Gaben will die, and he will be replaced by someone less magnanimous and angelic than him.
That also makes no sense. Literally any large company could do great deals of harm even if they have countless competitors if they set out for the goal of just doing harm.
There is a serious fundamental difference between a monopoly and a general market preference.
If every single one of your competitors all decide to be stupid and you don’t you arnt a monopoly. You just are the only one not being stupid.
Tbf they already take a 30% cut, I dont have a huge issue with it though.