Monopolies

[SansVarnic]

13 hours ago, Wictorian said:

Steam?

GOG Galaxy, Origin etcetera. may not be on the same level but they are competitors.

 

12 hours ago, Wictorian said:

What I understand by the term monopoly is a corporation that dominates a market. If it has a different meaning then that might be the cause of my confusion.

That would be an oligopoly.

Monopoly is when there is only one with zero competition, regardless of size.

[IPD]

I don't think the issue lies in "monopolies".  I think the issue is with vertical integration; namely having content providers in bed with content distribution.  This is why Net Neutrality is a big deal.  Because a company like Comcast can extort blood-money from Netflix to provide adequate service speeds.  Worse, Comcast could push its own proprietary streaming service and make it function better than any others--on its internet service.

 

Steam is fine with me.  Origin is not.  Nor is Battle.net.  Nor is Arc.  Netflix was fine with me--up until they started making their own content.  I understand why they did it; too many content owners trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip, and charging increasingly insane pricing structures for their old, outdated content and expecting services like Netflix to operate at a virtual loss to prop up these inflated margins.  Nobody should expect to make bank on a 10 year old show that only ran for 2 seasons.  But that's pretty much what happened with most of Netflix's 3rd party offerings.

 

And because of Netflix's success--all the "late to the party" players are now offering their own proprietary "me too" streaming services.  HBO.  Disney+.  CBS Go.  etc.  I'm not mad about having things legally available for streaming; it's a welcome change.  What isn't a welcome change is having 3 dozen streaming services all trying to compete; this only happened because each content owner is playing hardball with their libraries.  The solution is to prevent owners from owning distribution.  In a perfect world, Netflix is makes no content, and Disney can distribute no content.  Netflix won't be the only game in the segment (Curiosity Stream, and a lot of other streaming services exist).  And so long as Disney isn't allowed to buy any more companies--Disney won't be the only game its segment either.

 

Imho, it's the same with Amazon.  Great idea.  Should not allow 1st party sales on the site.

[Wictorian]

12 hours ago, IPD said:

I don't think the issue lies in "monopolies".  I think the issue is with vertical integration; namely having content providers in bed with content distribution.  This is why Net Neutrality is a big deal.  Because a company like Comcast can extort blood-money from Netflix to provide adequate service speeds.  Worse, Comcast could push its own proprietary streaming service and make it function better than any others--on its internet service.

 

Steam is fine with me.  Origin is not.  Nor is Battle.net.  Nor is Arc.  Netflix was fine with me--up until they started making their own content.  I understand why they did it; too many content owners trying to squeeze blood out of a turnip, and charging increasingly insane pricing structures for their old, outdated content and expecting services like Netflix to operate at a virtual loss to prop up these inflated margins.  Nobody should expect to make bank on a 10 year old show that only ran for 2 seasons.  But that's pretty much what happened with most of Netflix's 3rd party offerings.

 

And because of Netflix's success--all the "late to the party" players are now offering their own proprietary "me too" streaming services.  HBO.  Disney+.  CBS Go.  etc.  I'm not mad about having things legally available for streaming; it's a welcome change.  What isn't a welcome change is having 3 dozen streaming services all trying to compete; this only happened because each content owner is playing hardball with their libraries.  The solution is to prevent owners from owning distribution.  In a perfect world, Netflix is makes no content, and Disney can distribute no content.  Netflix won't be the only game in the segment (Curiosity Stream, and a lot of other streaming services exist).  And so long as Disney isn't allowed to buy any more companies--Disney won't be the only game its segment either.

 

Imho, it's the same with Amazon.  Great idea.  Should not allow 1st party sales on the site.

I agree it would be better if Disney couldn’t distribute its own content (They would find a loophole if it was enforced by law though.) but I don’t think there is a problem with Netflix making its own shows, except most of them suck.

[IPD]

Would that still be the case if Netflix wasn't simply a bit player?  It's easy to turn a blind eye to Netflix's in-house content, since they are so minor.  At the point Disney bought Fox, it had 9 of the top 10 grossing movies that week...

[Sauron]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

The reason exclusives and seals exists is bexause of the problem that happened back in the late 70s and early 80s, which led to a crash in the market.   So, don't expect that to go away.  It can also be problematic from the competition side as well, so you'd actually potentially be putting people out of work.

The media market of the '80s has nothing to do with the modern one. Besides it's not really my concern to ensure that media moguls make a payday at the expense of consumers. As for putting people out of work, that's the type of threat companies have continuously used to dissuade all types of regulation and guess what? It has never happened, because it turns out proper regulation doesn't make businesses unprofitable. It's still much more profitable to conduct a regulated successful business and hire employees with rights than not running that business at all.

[Sauron]

39 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Then why did several companies go bankrupt when what your proposing was in place?

I very much doubt any law regarding digital media distribution was in place in the '80s...

40 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I mean I get why consumers argue that there should be no DRM and no exclusives, but that has always made competition problematic.   Please, I'd love to hear your business strategy if there was no competition like this.  What angle would they have?

They should compete on convenience of the service, not on what is available exclusively on it. This is not an issue in any other distribution chain, nor is it one in digital distribution since spotify still exists despite the same music being available on youtube for free. People are willing to pay for convenience. On the other hand, if your service is only profitable because people want your exclusives then you open yourself to failure if those exclusives are ever less than stellar. Other than that, if your service is garbage I don't see why it should be artificially kept afloat with exclusives - if people risk losing their job then the solution isn't to prop up useless businesses but rather to more fairly distribute the wealth accumulated by the successful ones; in both cases the same money is being spent, at least it's not being pocketed by investors offering nothing of value in the latter.

[WkdPaul]

13 minutes ago, Sauron said:

They should compete on convenience of the service, not on what is available exclusively on it. *snip*

1000% this ^

 

Having exclusives is one thing, but basing your whole platform on exclusive content doesn't make much sense unless you hoard ALL the distribution rights for a LOT of media *coguh*Disney*cough*

 

A good example of a platform that should NOT count on exclusive content is Prime Video, the platform is horrendous and I'm wondering how that is possible in 2021 from a company making billions.

 

As for monopolies, the problem with movies and TV shows is they can argue they don't have a monopoly since anyone can go and buy a physical copy. This is much less possible with PC games, where the physical copies are now often just a piece of paper with a redeem code for a specific digital platform.

 

 

Pretty sure the solution is regulation, or more specifically, following the current one, and revamping it since it wasn't written for the digital age as we currently know it (subscription models, and digital purchases and perpetual access to what you bought).

[Sauron]

15 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Well, with spotify they have ads and also subscription fees.  The majority of people don't want ads, and they'd rather not pay for it.

Don't you see the contradiction in saying this despite the fact that spotify is clearly successful?

15 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

Valve's Steam kinda dictates how PC platforms work, I've seen platforms die off that couldn't compete that tried to by having games on both, and the only ones that are surviving are mainly doing it through exclusive deals.  They didn't die because of the quality of service.

That's because if your competitor has exclusives then you're giving them an unfair advantage if you don't have any. Which is why it shouldn't be allowed to have those exclusives across the board. Still, originally Steam was successful over alternatives (namely boxed copies) due to convenience rather than exclusive access to anything specific; if most titles had only been available through boxed copies we might still not have good digital distribution platforms.

15 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

The reason the other two options are fine is because yes people would prefer as little DRM as possible.

I also believe DRM should be illegal, make of that what you will  

[airborne spoon]

It doesn't matter what the product is, be it an ISP, or a program, or a product. monopolies are bad for the customers.

 

My favorite example of monopolies sucking ass is fucking Luxottica those asshats own the eye insurance, the eye stores, the eyeware production and all it has done is make buying glasses suck. Remember when raybans were about $5 yeah then they got bought out by Luxottica and suddenly they are $200 glasses. Same with Oakley but worse, they didn't want to sell so Luxottica stopped carrying their glasses in the stores and Oakley plummeted and then had to sell and then they were back on the shelves again at a higher cost.

 

Nothing good comes from one company owning everything

[IPD]

2 hours ago, airborne spoon said:

It doesn't matter what the product is, be it an ISP, or a program, or a product. monopolies are bad for the customers.

 

My favorite example of monopolies sucking ass is fucking Luxottica those asshats own the eye insurance, the eye stores, the eyeware production and all it has done is make buying glasses suck. Remember when raybans were about $5 yeah then they got bought out by Luxottica and suddenly they are $200 glasses. Same with Oakley but worse, they didn't want to sell so Luxottica stopped carrying their glasses in the stores and Oakley plummeted and then had to sell and then they were back on the shelves again at a higher cost.

 

Nothing good comes from one company owning everything

https://focusers.com/

 

I love these guys.

[Wictorian]

I think there should be an open-source platform containing all games.

[OneOfYas]

A monopoly is seen by the needy, The middle class see both poor and the rich as enemies and are the worst of them all.

 

[OneOfYas]

7 hours ago, Wictorian said:

I think there should be an open-source platform containing all games.

Linux is open source, look how well that's doing, it sucks for desktops but you see it in phones.

 

Can't delete post... made a double post...