Unintended consequences

Posted Jun 2, 2025 17:20 UTC (Mon) by farnz (subscriber, #17727)
In reply to: Unintended consequences by Cyberax
Parent article: Cory Doctorow on how we lost the internet

Even computer games seem fairly healthy to me; yes, Sony, EA, Microsoft and Valve (Steam) control a lot of the market, but I'm seeing plenty of indie devs putting stuff out on itch.io, on their own websites (with their own payment mechanisms) etc. It's not gone away - it's just that (for now) Valve is being a good corporate citizen, so everybody's using them.

If Steam, YouTube, TikTok et al go away, or start charging insane amounts to host with them, or put in restrictions that are too painful to comply with, people will move.

After all, in the 1960s, there absolutely were corporate-controlled alternatives on offer; there was even an official Star Trek magazine. It's just that the enthusiasts wanted to get their stuff out, didn't want to comply with the corporate restrictions, and could afford to find an alternative. And that last bit is crucial to what enthusiasts will do when the corporate platforms lock down - they will find alternatives, and as long as affordable (hobby price grade) alternatives exist, they'll move.

Unintended consequences

Posted Jun 2, 2025 18:57 UTC (Mon) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link] (1 responses)

Sorry, I keep being unclear. I mean magazines and sites that are _about_ games and gaming. Not the games themselves.

The sites still exist, but they have only a small percentage of the overall gaming population and are clearly in decline. While YouTube channels are flourishing (e.g. "Linus Tech Tips").

Unintended consequences

Posted Jun 3, 2025 9:24 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

From my perspective, that's just the normal shifts in the marketplace, and if YouTube becomes unviable as a place for content creators to put up content (e.g. demands $1,000/month just to keep your content available, plus subscriptions from viewers, too), the content will move elsewhere. It happens to be focusing in on YouTube right now because that's a platform that will pay you to provide content, whereas you'd have to pay to host it ad-free on Vimeo or similar.

I don't however, see that this means that the content will remain on YouTube forever; for now, YouTube offers a great deal for hosting content (it pays you a considerable amount), so that's where the creators of interesting content are congregating, but as YouTube puts limits on creators, they'll sort out things like Nebula, or even just paying for private video hosting from platforms like Vimeo. Thus, I'm not concerned about the risk of everything congregating on YouTube; people can, and do, move away from platforms where the alternative is better value to them.