Technology

Regardless of what you folks think about Valve, does anyone believe that a marketplace should have this kind of leverage over their suppliers?

On principle, no, and Valve should not be above criticism.

I'm cautiously in favour of uniform retail pricing, such that no sales platform could either gouge customers or undercut to win more people over, such that the competition is determined by the available selection of products and other amenities, but my gut says that kind of price fixation would end up a minefield of complications, exceptions and loopholes. Few things are ever as easy as a layperson may think, and I sure am one.

Either way, one retailer dictating the prices for all others definitely seems unfair.

For instance, should Amazon be permitted to force manufacturers to set the price of a product outside of their marketplace?

Aside from the obligatory "fuck Amazon", that would open the door to a particularly vicious level of fuckery. They would set their own price, sustained by cheap, fucked-up working conditions and the capital to afford selling at a loss, which they already do and which is bad enough, but to also dictate that price to other vendors that definitely can't afford to operate at such a loss? If they're currently on the road to monopoly, that would turn it into a bullet train: fast, on rails and with no stop to get off at.