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Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

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Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#251

Post by tasubotadas »

syzar wrote: post #100
tasubotadas wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because of limits like these India economy has lost 4 decades of growth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj

Wouldn’t that point more to an issue with the implementation of the limit rather than the existence of the limit? Are all implementations equally bad?

Ah... a classical argument of the "communism was never truly implemented" :).

Perhaps. Perhaps initiatives likes these are bound to fail. Not sure how many lives have to be destroyed until people get "statistically significant" results.

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#252

Post by optimalsolver »

rocketbop wrote: post #165
sschueller wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What movie was that where there was only one large company that did everything? Kind of scary that we are almost at that point now.

Alien; the Company.

Yeah, that's Weyland-Yutani.

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#253

Post by 8note »

AlexandrB wrote: post #154
last_responder wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>5, Amazon runs the platform that creates the games - EA "The Games" - No. Some games yes. The people I game with pretty much despise EA and look at them as the company that buys up smaller studios and destroys the culture.

Agreed. I think EA has really popular sports games, however I can't recall the last EA game I played. It might be Titanfall 2? There's also BioWare - but their last few releases have been disastrous. Edit: Oh, more recently I loved the Command & Conquer remaster - that maybe counts as an EA game? It was published by them, but I don't think Peteoglyph is owned by EA.

Petroglyph is the old Westwood who left it after the acquisition.

They also have what's basically a renegade sequel

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#254

Post by bobkazamakis »

nisegami wrote: post #242
padobson wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Carmack disagrees with your rationale: "As long as people are buying it, it means they’re enjoying it" [0] [0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2011/07/id-softwares-john-car...

You could use the same argument to advocate for recreational drugs. Both they and lootboxes hijack the reward loop in our brains. For actual, buy-it-once games, I see his point, but it doesn't apply to the slot machines disguised as games nowadays.

>You could use the same argument to advocate for recreational drugs

...and it would still be accurate.

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#255

Post by syzar »

tasubotadas wrote: post #251
syzar wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t that point more to an issue with the implementation of the limit rather than the existence of the limit? Are all implementations equally bad?

Ah... a classical argument of the "communism was never truly implemented" :). Perhaps. Perhaps initiatives likes these are bound to fail. Not sure how many lives have to be destroyed until people get "statistically significant" results.

If it’s not the implementation that is to blame then one should use an argument that consists of more than one example provided by the highly corrupt governing structures common in India.

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#256

Post by DerekL »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #214

EA managing to shift its annual sports titles to a single game with updates on a subscription model would at least be more honest than asking people to buy a whole new game each year at least.

But don't most sports games do this (sell a full-priced game every year instead of providing roster updates as DLC)? It's not just EA.

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#257

Post by InsomniacL »

nojito wrote: post #226
InsomniacL wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anti-competitive practices are business practices that prevent or reduce competition in a market.

Only if you undertake them to protect a monopoly.

not at all...

It is illegal for businesses to act together in ways that can limit competition, lead to higher prices, or hinder other businesses from entering the market.

That's from the FTC.

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#258

Post by paulryanrogers »

KoftaBob wrote: post #229
paulryanrogers wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company towns were vertically integrated. I wouldn't call them a bastion of free markets

They were technically horizontally integrated too, since the entire reason they were able to exist is situations where jobs like mining were created in isolated areas with no other places to live. Workers had no other options but to live in that company town and spend their money in company town stores. All vertical integration means is that a company has direct control over most/all of the supply chain they need to…

I'm not so sure that vertical integration is much more innocent than horizonal. Once a single company dominates an industry it has negative effects on the competitiveness of that and adjacent markets.

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#259

Post by robertlagrant »

ehnto wrote: post #240
robertlagrant wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Need"?

Does a company need to be beneficial to an organized society, or does a company need to grow at all costs in order to accumulate wealth? I'd argue the first, but America doesn't really have a clear stance. Certainly no consensus. I think this detail confuses the conversation a lot, because when we talk about growth, we could be talking about hard metrics like GDP or stock price, or we could be talking about soft metr…

It doesn't need to do either. This is a false dichotomy. A company needs to be legal, and be useful enough to its customers that it is sustainable. That is what a company needs. There is no "useful to society" as there is no monolithic "society".

Re: Amazon is not going to make a bid for Electronic Arts – sources

#260

Post by ehnto »

robertlagrant wrote: post #259
ehnto wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a company need to be beneficial to an organized society, or does a company need to grow at all costs in order to accumulate wealth? I'd argue the first, but America doesn't really have a clear stance. Certainly no consensus. I think this detail confuses the conversation a lot, because when we talk about growth, we could be talking about hard metrics like GDP or stock price, or we could be talking about soft metr…

It doesn't need to do either. This is a false dichotomy. A company needs to be legal, and be useful enough to its customers that it is sustainable. That is what a company needs. There is no "useful to society" as there is no monolithic "society".

When we're talking about laws we're specifically discussing the interaction between companies and "our society" or our communities. Broad strokes like "society" just make it easier to talk about.

A company as big as Amazon exists across thousands of communities, and in contexts that don't even include communities. It can afford to harm some contexts while profiting on others, because it is a monolith. That's why when we talk about business law we need to consider more than just the simple economics, because companies can have greater impacts than that.

Anti-competitive laws are just that, they're not about increasing simple metrics, they're about managing the harder to measure externalities of bigger companies like the ability for a market to be competitive, promote innovation, and to make sure customers have enough choice to choose with their wallet.

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