The “significant durable market power” part is why I went on to explain how they don’t lock you into their ecosystem. How can Valve raise prices or exclude their competitors when they literally do not have any mechanisms in place to do any of those things?
surrounded by weird people
Have you ever set foot in a city?
Imagine thinking that Valve has a monopoly.
Monopoly doesn’t mean “Largest market share”. It’s a real term with a real meaning.
Monopoly:
the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.
What, exactly, does Valve control? They don’t require exclusivity, they don’t require their DRM, they don’t require the use of their network system. Hell, they don’t even require you to to give them 30% if you sell your own key.
Valve is also not a publicly traded company, while this doesn’t mean you can fully trust them it does mean they aren’t required to seek profit at all costs. This allows then to do things like, support Linux, make their own hardware (twice after their first attempt was a failure), work on Proton, develope games that make them no money, etc.
Itch.io, GOG, EA, Epic, Windows Store, Game Pass, Humble Bundle, personal websites. These are all examples of places you can buy video games on computers.
Timmy Tencent’s propaganda is working on you if you think Valve is any sort of monopoly.
And the pricing is just very out of line.
It’s not really. You’re just used to subsidized pricing. Framework doesn’t give you a computer with bullshit anti-malware trial things or whatever other bullshit manufacturers install these days plus Microsoft bulk pricing. If you compare the a Dell Inspiron 5630 to the a similarly spec’d framework, the framework is only like $100-150 more dollars.
Left leaving people believe that every human is worth the same
I think we all wish that were the case.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with drinking distilled water as long as you are getting enough minerals and electrolytes from the rest of your diet.