I've been told that I don't know what I'm talking about, that my definition of "monopoly" is flawed and that I must have slept through economics, strange when you take into account the fact that my business sense made me succesfull enough to retire very comfortably two years ago at the age of 41
'Tis a sad fact of online forum debates - no-one can see or prejudge other posters (in the flesh, I guess you'd have enough grey hairs to give you clear seniority!
) and the (false) presumption of anonymity removes the need for some (including myself at times) to moderate themselves. It's easy to misread the intentions behind a post (such as mistaking an intent to educate and inform for arrogance or bossiness) and hard to 'fess up to a goof in public.
I never said it had anything to do with the UK though, legal definition being 25% in the UK, well it is different in the US, it requires alot more control of the markets.
A company with 25% share can exert considerable influence over the rest of the market, if the circumstances are right. I've not quoted US law since (a) I'm less familiar with it and (b) you have multiple state legislatures as well as the Federal law to consider. Doubtless someone else more informed in this area can provide better info.
...though Valve has stated they could impose fees the likely fallout of doing so would do more damage to the company then it would do good.
Really? There'd be PR fallout to be sure but that would hardly amount to much compared to a possible $1.4 billion/year extra income. And should Steam continue to grow, the amount they could rake in via a maintenance fee would increase geometrically since they could charge more per account (due to those accounts having more purchases locked in).
...if a client could request hard copies shipped to them at no cost as the steam version is legally their's (the person buying) and ths their property not Valves.
Sorry to have to stress this point but the
Steam Agreement makes this clear near the beginning at section 2A:
The Software is licensed, not sold. Your license confers no title or ownership in the Software.At the very least, take time to read the agreement you're bound by - the licensing clause is far from the most problematic in consumer rights terms. And it is this specific clause that was upheld by the Ninth Court in Vernor vs Autodesk that I linked to above.
You are speaking UK to US, I am telling you there is too much in the US going on with the games industry for Steam to be a monopoly here, maybe they are considered elsewhere but not by US legal standards.
The federal law covering monopolies,
USC Title 15 Chapter 1 Section 2 (aka the Sherman Antitrust Act), does not include a definition of monopoly, which would leave it to a court to decide on a case-by-case basis. A 70% market share however would seem to qualify given that a previous successful anti-trust action (the
DRAM price fixing scandal of 2001-2) involved companies with a combined marketshare of 81.2% in 2002 (according to
EE Times: DRAM bulletin).
Though I am suprised you did not bring to light that Electric companies are allowed and encouraged by the government to maintain monopolies within their respective counties, such as CELP here in my town.
Public utilities tend to be natural monopolies - as long as they are effectively regulated to prevent them abusing their power, this position can benefit consumers by providing economy of scale in supplying services (i.e. one big water company can supply customers at a lower cost than several could with multiple pipeline networks to maintain).
You can't use any game that has Securom without activating it online. The game is then activated to your hardware, instead of being activated to an account, but really just 2 sides of the same coin.
If SecuROM Online (to distinguish it from their disc checks) were a distribution channel then I would agree with you. However end users cannot buy anything from them so the situation is different. Also since different game activations are not, as far as I know, tied to a single personal account they do not have the leverage to impose extra fees that Steam, Gamersgate or Impulse do ("Hey look, SecuROM wants to charge me five bucks for this twenty buck game - well I'll tell them to shove off" as opposed to "Hey look, Steam want to charge me five bucks for this account with, uh, $300 worth of games on it - oh sh*t.").
You cannot reinstall a game after 3-5 times without first making a phone call and begging for a reactivation, if you did not first uninstall the game if the game happens to have a revoke with it.
This activation requirement, while obnoxious, is not on Steam's level (activation
every time you start a game) and doesn't pose the same risks to privacy or have the same leverage to extort future fees.
However I find it unacceptable, and if anyone from Larian is reading this thread, I will point out that I am boycotting FOV for
this reason alone. I've purchased all your previous games (including Divine Divinity
twice by picking up a
DRM-free copy from GOG). You clearly have had feedback from customers showing extreme dissatisfaction with this DRM so why not show the
courage that CD-Project has and release DKS/FOV on GOG?
