If you describe someone as “beyond reason”, that means they’re not capable of reason, so calling something “beyond reasonable” can also mean it’s not reasonable.

You need a certain critical mass to pull off a power move like that. Apple had that critical mass with the iPhone, which is how they have been able to extract so much revenue from app creators. MS isn’t even close to that now, but they might be after this merger.

My point is that given the opportunity, they would lock everyone into only buying games through their walled garden, because it’s more profitable for them. Consolidation gets them closer to that goal.

Firstly, I see you’re new to human nature. There are all kinds of reasons people would subscribe to such a service, from forgetting to unsubscribe, to thinking you’re getting a bargain, to fear of missing out on a giveaway. It’s the same with people who buy tons of games during the Steam summer sale and never play 90%…

Or it suggests that our justice system, like the rest of our society, is owned by corporations. When there are no penalties for judges when they fail to disclose bribes, this is the expected outcome.

“let’s say I wanted to play Redfall, Starfield, Exoprimal, Lies of P, Amnesia: The Bunker and Bramble on PC day one”

Grade one econ, like any other entry level course, is so oversimplified that it’s wrong.

I live in a cold weather area, and in my experience it’s more like 300 miles becomes 200. However, I didn’t have the option to get heated seats, which bumps the winter range up a bit. I will admit that one day the car calculated my range at 120 miles, but that day had a slush storm with 50MPH headwinds, my tires were…

No, breaking up Sony == more even market

“What does consolidation have to do with the availability of physical products?”

The consolidated company decides they don’t want to support physical products because they think anti-consumer subscription models are more profitable.

It’s the same thing that happened with streaming. Now there are shows you literally…

Go fuck yourself with your racism signaling. There’s nothing wrong with casting actors to play a character they don’t look like, especially when those characters are overwhelmingly the same.

Neither of us is a law wizard, but the wizards at the FTC think it does violate antitrust laws, so I’m going with that.

It’s also bad for the world, if you care about that.

Counter-arguments to what? You haven’t made any intelligent arguments yet, just “please explain how X is X” and “how can X be bad when we’ve been doing the bad thing for decades”.

“Please explain how IP exclusivity is an antitrust issue”
By definition. Please understand what words mean before you use them.

“when it’s been a standard practice across the industry for decades”
Completely irrelevant. “We’ve always done it this way, therefore it isn’t wrong” is a stupid argument.

“The merger doesn’t hurt consumers in any ways”
Wrong
“that aren’t already happening regularly”
Weasel words to get around your previous wrongness.

That wasn’t my argument, just a statement of fact.

“company A has an 80% revenue market share”

Vertical mergers are also bad. Stop licking the boots of your corporate masters and you’ll see that.

The fact that 40 other countries also lick corporate boot is not an argument.

I think this is more of an OJ trial kind of bad: the outcome should be obvious to everyone, but they still screwed it up somehow.

It’s because Homelander represents a real world political movement that is in the early stages of a genocide.