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Sacred Symbols+, Episode 313 | Destructive Pricing With Matt Stoller (Patreon)

Published:
2023-07-17 21:36:21
Edited:
2023-07-22 11:44:14
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Please welcome Matt Stoller to Sacred Symbols+. Stoller is director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly thinktank. Already renowned in political circles -- Politico describes him as "a unique blend of historian, analyst, organizer, and carnival barker for... progressive antitrust revivalism" -- he's recently come to the attention of the games industry due to his unabashedly outspoken opposition to Microsoft's acquisition of Activision, a purchase potentially larger than every single act of M&A in the console and PC space ever, combined. Such a move therefore inherently earns deep scrutiny from this podcast, as it should. Unleashing a torrent of consolidation that will undoubtedly make the gaming economy worse isn't a joke, and the pressure coming from the least successful first party isn't inconsequential. Quite the contrary: Gaming's parallel industries -- movies and TV -- are currently crumbling under the apparently endless benefits of streaming and subscriptions, and right now, they're all losing. Will we?

Matt's Substack

(Please note: This is an early publishing of what would have been Wednesday's episode of +. We're doing this because we figured you'd want to hear this one ASAP.)

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Comments

LastStandMedia

We're going to show our guests respect. Any comments aimed at attacking him -- and not the content of the podcast, which you couldn't have possibly listened to yet as of the time of me posting this -- will be deleted. This community will not turn into the Twitter threads you apparently decry, but mimic here. Sorry. -Colin

LastStandMedia
>>113137559

We will not allow for the abuse of individuals on our platform, especially our guests who take the time to talk to me. As someone who gets regular abuse from communities that I take the time to speak to with absolutely no pushback from the hosts, I refuse to do the same to someone else. It's not a debate, so I'm not asking for further feedback. Thank you.

Benito

Really excited to listen to this later. I've found this whole Activision Blizzard thing super interesting. Good guest get!

Eric

Yooo this is dope! Now I have a new stelly and sacred + for work tomorrow. Thanks, Colin! ✌

Drewbuntu

Love the convo, Colin. Great get Matt's idea that Hollywood is bad now because of monopolies and not because of religious Group Think seems pretty off. I don't think it invalidates his arguments or philosophy but it seems like an awful comparison to me

A Hind D

YES!!! Can’t believe it; just finished work and diving in now.

Bryon Edington

I’d never heard of him before this but everything he said sounded pretty reasonable. Interesting episode thanks guys.

Andy T

What a terrific conversation. There’s always another side and we’ve only heard one over the last year and a half. He (and you Colin) make some excellent points.

Anonymous

One of the best episodes in a long time. I’ve been listening since day one and this is gold.

David Hotright
>>113137559

Perhaps the "you" could be "some". Much love Colin. Hopefully you don't feel that your entire audience emulates Twitter?

Jake Z

A few points: - I don't understand how the purchase of ABK creates barriers to entry. ABK isn't a platform holder. And even if it were, devs still would have plenty of places to sell their games. - I don't know the specific case that Stoller mentions, but it seems obvious cancer screening is different in importance from video games. Video games are entertainment, highly substitutable goods, cancer screening maybe not so much. - The consumer welfare standard may be imperfect, but inexpert judges arbitrarily determining whether a market is sufficiently competitive doesn't sound better. It seems ripe for corruption.

Sealegs
>>113159797

If anything, this deal makes the barrier for steaming ABK games very easy for new entrants in that "market". That was one of the global concessions agreed to in the EU approval...streaming platforms can get free licenses to stream ABK content—just one of the positive effects of this deal and an example of the regulatory system working.

Brandon Garvin

I don’t get how people are simping for a judge. They’re a public servant, and regardless of your personal stance on whether MS should’ve acquired ABK or not, she is open to public scrutiny, no matter how harsh. People that are elected, or otherwise appointed, to serve the will of the people, are not immune from criticism.

Jayce Tamulevich

Wow, Stoller’s insight adds so much to this whole conversation at large. I worry people’s minds are already made up, but I think it would do everyone well to hear him out with an open mind.

Fenixrisingxl21
>>113168291

Of course not, but if someone says “this judge was hostile to the FTC,” I’d expect clarification or examples as to why they think that way. It’s not simping for a judge (in my opinion) to ask the guest to back up their claims.

Anonymous

Best episode so far. More like this please

Alex Roberts

Even though I want the acquisition to go through I’m always interested to hear educated, opposing viewpoints. I liked this discussion and hope we continue to get this nice variety of guests in the future. Life would be boring if we all agreed on everything.

Garry

Thanks Colin as someone from the uk this was a great discussion in how monopoly law came the way they are in the US.. love this type of content..

Shadi Haddad

This episode was incredible.

Card Captor Corey

I have been against this merger from the start. I was one of those people who cheered for the Fox Disney Merger and the Star Wars Acquisition but in hind sight I would much rather have all those things remain apart from each other. Large mergers like this have been deleterious to consumers at large and have harmed their industry. This one will be no different in the long run. I still cannot understand how a company that has had mass layoffs is allowed to do a 67 billion dollar acquisition. It's immoral and wrong. I understand the legal arguments but that does not mean they are moral.

mattyboy316

Awesome episode Colin! I have been following your argument against what Microsoft has been doing from the start and I agree to everything you have been concerned about as I have been very concerned about the state of gaming over these hollow moves that Microsoft has been doing showing their low interest in the quality of our games as a whole. I just don't know how people can cheer for this.

Anthony Palerino

One of the best SS+ episodes! Love having educated folks that don’t necessarily have a games background. This is one of the few shows that has the ability to invite right and left leaning perspectives and it’s truly valuable.

Rich Price

Great episode, one of the best in ages. Interesting points about how the people making these decisions know nothing about video games. Also kind of worrying when it comes to more ‘important’ issues.

Anonymous

Colin you have a bias and Xbox is not that bad lol

Gabriel SG

Great episode Colin! Genuinely the most insightful piece of content on this whole situation I have listened to.

Anonymous

As someone who disagrees with much of what Matt says, I thought it was great episode

Sealegs
>>113185447

You realize Xbox already makes a bunch of high quality games. In the last couple years: Forza Horizon 5 …10 from IGN Pentiment … 10 from IGN Flight Sim… 10 from IGN They have tons of 8’s & 9’s too. Forza might be the most consistently high quality franchise ever made. All very highly reviewed.

Sealegs
>>113185447

I think Colin is largely ignorant of the games on Xbox, I don’t see how he can speak to the quality or creativity, when he only plays PS.

Wayne Moss

Really enjoyed this episode 👌🏻

John Warner

Gotta love Colin for this one! This guest is a Microsoft hater on another LEVEL. Lol.

John Warner

Microsoft has absolutely nothing going for it.

Anonymous
>>113194098

No you're just a childish fanboy. Going to suck not being able to play Starfield which looks better than any playstation game just cause you want to hate Xbox 😂

AllTooEasy_

I am looking forward to discussion about Game Pass Core in future episodes. Seems like Microsoft bought up the biggest players in third party and immediately jack up the prices of the service everyone is blindly championing in the name of “value”. I digress.

Hozi

This is another one of those episodes that's too important to keep behind a pay wall, could I please request that it be made public to spread the knowledge. Thank you and the team

Noah Trujillo

Extremely interesting discussion. I’ve been more or less indifferent to this deal, but the precedent it sets is certainly something to be wary of. As always too, don’t make liking brands your personality or identity. Alot of that going on in the comments whenever this topic is discussed on a show.

James Schubert

My favourite episode of + in recent months. Great work and a great guest!

DeucesBruh

God I would love to debate Stoller on this. His basic argument revolves around the unfalsifiable position of a loss of goods that were never created, all while every metric we have shows the economy of the last 40 years is a straight vertical line in productivity and choice. One of his opening lines tried to say that we somehow have less consumer choice in snack food today than in 1970, categorically false.

RoughSlpr
>>113228866

Maybe I misheard but I believe he was suggesting that we have less smaller participants in the snack food industry than we did before then. That it’s harder to break into the industry without going through the channels of the already established arbiters of the industry.

Jeff

This conversation drives me crazy. I appreciate the debate, but the problem is - you can't look at this topic from the perspective of video games, because that's not the business model. I get it that these exclusively affect video games, but MS has implemented a SaaS/Streaming model to video games. it's the thing that MS has done better than any company and brought them back from the brink of irrelevancy after Ballmer left and Satya took over. For 18 years, my day job has been selling Enterprise SaaS to the world's largest companies - What MS is doing directly reflects what I do every day, how they measure success, how they craft services, and how they account/budget for these changes. Game Pass is successful and sustainable, because if it wasn't, it'd be the first thing to go in this modern era of consistent top-line revenue above all else. When you stop looking at Game Pass as a video game product compared to traditional video game models and start looking at it as one of numerous SaaS products in Microsoft's portfolio, it fits in perfectly.

Zach

I'm going to have to take issue with him using streamers for a comparable example. I believe the single most important issue facing the film industry is an endless competition for entertainment. Movies used to be the only form of recorded moving visual entertainment. Then came TV. Then came videogames. Then came the internet. There are so many things that movies have to compete against today that they simply didn't have to 30 years ago. I fail to see how Hollywood having some struggles has to do with monopolistic practices and more a case of the consumers of entertainment having vastly more options then they ever have. We live in a time where if you want to film a movie and have a lot of people see it you don't need to interact with ANYONE in Hollywood. I'm constantly hearing filmmakers say it is so easy to make your movie today then it used to be. Film it and throw it up on Youtube, Amazon Prime Video, or Vimeo. In my mind this is nothing more then new consupmtion patterns replacing old ones. Yes, Netflix used to be cheaper, but the price increase isn't, because they are now the only streamer in town. That was too incentivize people to get off cable and to stream entertainment from the internet. For people to adopt a new tech over one they've been used to they need a push to make the jump. The thought "Well if I end up not liking Netflix it was only 5 bucks to try" happened a lot. Now streaming is the norm and the streamers are starting to make their own content. They need to fund those productions somehow.

Anonymous

Drinking game. Drink everytime he says hostile

Anonymous

I hope that Hoeg or another antitrust scholar has an opportunity to respond to Stoller's assertions here. Stoller is correct that antitrust law changed fundamentally in the 70s and 80s, but this wasn't because of nefarious actors. Rather, these changes occurred because our understanding of economics and global markets changed in the decades since the Clayton Act was passed. The "consumer welfare" standard and the understanding of economic efficiency (which is more than just price) that we use in antitrust law today reflect these economic realities. I appreciate the desire to have an opposing philosophical point on the direction of antitrust law, but we shouldn't confuse what Stoller WANTS the law to be with what the law IS. It's a bad faith argument to call the judge hostile when she is following the law that has been well developed for decades. If he's going to cite Brown Shoe, he needs to walk through the Brown Shoe factors to show why this merger should not happen. There is merit to say that vertical integration may be unwieldy in the long term, but we can't say a priori whether a Microsoft/ABK merger would harm consumers. That's the whole point of modern antitrust law, that we do not know how to pick winners and losers in our modern economy. And it is good that people like Stoller are around to force us to remind people why the FTC is overstepping its boundaries.

Jordan Falduto

Absolutely loved this discussion!

Kenneth Koepnick

Love the episode. Nice change in the traditional conversation around the desk. The nice thing about the merger is… if Microsoft follows tradition… they’ll probably suck everything good out of COD & open up the market for new competitors.

Anonymous

- Regardless of ms did in the 90s, these thing should be considered on case by case bases - Sony used their monopoly on Blu-ray to sell their PS2

Alex Landry

Very important episode for listeners not tuned into the broader economic consequences of the deal. Probably will be the last thing I listen to on the deal though outside of standard sacred symbols. Good thing Microsoft puts everything on PC so I can just play it there.

USAlien

Excellent, educational podcast. Thank you.

David P

This was really enjoyable, it was good to hear a logical (or more legal focused) argument against the m&a for once. I still find myself for it because of various reasons, but oh boy am I glad that, as a mainly Xbox player, I am not sucked into the subscription trap. As much (or little lol) as is possible with digital, I'd rather own my games

Owen

I think the fact that comments were deleted because of criticism of the guest is pretty strange when this community has said some pretty nasty things about others, and nothing was done about it. I’m not sure why this is different.

Greg Hommel

This case deserves litigators and a judge that understand the gaming industry. That might just be too big an ask.

Kyle

Canada to a T. Almost Zero competition across any sector in the economy. Telecom, aerospace, rail, energy. The list goes on, where every sector has anywhere from 2 to maybe 5 major players. And the consumer ALWAYS loses.

Alan

I really liked this episode. Great to have Matt's view on this topic.