A UK tribunal has given the go-ahead to a £656 million ($901 million) collective action lawsuit targeting Valve over alleged anti-competitive practices on PC storefront Steam.
A lot of people seem to think ‘monopoly’ means ‘literally 0 alternatives for the consumer’, but this is not the case in either actual economic jargon/theory nor in basically any legal definition of it I am aware of.
To be a monopoly you basically just need to be the clear dominant actor in some market. Not the only one, just the main one, such that you can make pricing decisions in a way that other actors in the same market can’t, basically.
Its… very rare for a ‘true’ or ‘perfect’ monopoly to ever exist for basically anything other than a public utility/service. It almost never happens.
This is the kind of pedantry that is annoying but unfortunately important, similar to how ‘Impeachment’ by the House on its own is actually pointless beyond a mark of shame unless it is also followed by a ‘conviction’ by the Senate.
You are correct that in US law, a major factor that is considered is whether or not the company did abusive, deceptive, underhanded stuff to achieve its monopopy status.
You could be doing ‘abuse of dominance’ whether or not you achieved that dominance by underhanded means.
So… while I am not a lawyer, I would be genuinely surprised if Valve was found in serious violation of existing US monopoly laws, but I would be less surprised if they were found to be in violation of existing UK monopoly laws.
To add to what you have said:
Valve is an effective monopoly.
A lot of people seem to think ‘monopoly’ means ‘literally 0 alternatives for the consumer’, but this is not the case in either actual economic jargon/theory nor in basically any legal definition of it I am aware of.
To be a monopoly you basically just need to be the clear dominant actor in some market. Not the only one, just the main one, such that you can make pricing decisions in a way that other actors in the same market can’t, basically.
Its… very rare for a ‘true’ or ‘perfect’ monopoly to ever exist for basically anything other than a public utility/service. It almost never happens.
This is the kind of pedantry that is annoying but unfortunately important, similar to how ‘Impeachment’ by the House on its own is actually pointless beyond a mark of shame unless it is also followed by a ‘conviction’ by the Senate.
You are correct that in US law, a major factor that is considered is whether or not the company did abusive, deceptive, underhanded stuff to achieve its monopopy status.
But UK law appears to be different:
https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c5b1e681-5fb5-4161-bebf-823034fab751
You could be doing ‘abuse of dominance’ whether or not you achieved that dominance by underhanded means.
So… while I am not a lawyer, I would be genuinely surprised if Valve was found in serious violation of existing US monopoly laws, but I would be less surprised if they were found to be in violation of existing UK monopoly laws.
Just the first lines of the linked article says what I said, having a monopoly isn’t illegal on itself. Only abusing the dominance is.
Which paragraph or lines do you specifically speaking of? Its a long text, so quoting or pointing the part you refer to would be good.