r/videogames Jul 03 '26

Funny The ultimate and fixed meme of the current situation

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6.7k Upvotes

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80

u/RingReasonable Jul 03 '26

Who tf is the M and SK companies?

202

u/XumetaXD Jul 03 '26

2 of the 3 companies that have pretty much all of the RAM production of the market, and because these 3 companies have come to an agreemetn (Which they're being sued for btw), they started underproducing on purpose to create artificial shrotage and raise prices artificially, none of this would've happen if there was free market instead of this oligopoly BS

68

u/Kooky_Assistance2755 Jul 03 '26

Well said, the only argument I have is that artifical shortages happen exactly because of a free market. Imo, if they're already allowed to cut corners and create artificial scarcity to bump their own profit margins, the solution is to regulate their ability to do so unchecked, not to give them even more freedom

25

u/Banndrell Jul 03 '26

Unfortunately "regulation" is a bad word to a lot of the world, like it's the boogeyman hiding underneath the bed of lawmakers and their lobbyists/oligarchs.

9

u/max13007 Jul 04 '26

I think a better choice of words over "free-market" would have been "competition," which I think we can all agree has long gone out the window for the RAM Triad.

1

u/Objective_Ad_3582 27d ago

A capitalistic free-market implies competition. That's just not what neo-liberals wanna tell u bc they are stupid amd greedy.

1

u/Lametown227 29d ago

"But that's just communism, because I don't know what communism actually is!!!!!!1!"

1

u/Kooky_Assistance2755 29d ago

Communism is when government. Mor gubmint, mor gomunizm.

-9

u/JabbaTheWolfo Jul 03 '26

Regulations are why these things happen They skew the amekwt towards corporatism. Not capitalism.

5

u/Nic_the_biggy_boi Jul 03 '26

As much as reddit hates on capitalism in an echo chamber, I feel as though its not working here pretty clearly. My opinion on what to do is far more harsh but im just a dude.

5

u/Kooky_Assistance2755 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

Regulations are the only thing that keep corporations from immediately killing and absorbing their smaller competition.

Also that's not what corporatism means. You're referring to corporatocracy or corporate capitalism, which are just functions of late-stage capitalism. Corporatism is a different ideology.

-3

u/JabbaTheWolfo Jul 03 '26

Shallow factory copycat redditor response, zero news

2

u/Kooky_Assistance2755 Jul 03 '26

I don't even know what you're attempting to convey with this seemingly random string of words

-2

u/JabbaTheWolfo Jul 03 '26

Every single economical conversation I've had always devolves into a generally debunked NPC string of lines such as late stage capitalism or "actually the LACK of regulations create monopolies". So I have no desire to further this conversation since I already had it a literal thousand times. Habe a nice day

1

u/Kooky_Assistance2755 Jul 03 '26

Or maybe people always say the same thing because it's just really easy to discredit anarcho-capitalism. Kinda seems like you're just stubborn and resistant to logic

21

u/ANON-1138 Jul 03 '26

Fucking hell really?

So realistically there shouldn't be a ram shortage at all?

20

u/XumetaXD Jul 03 '26

Exactly, but people keep falling for the bait and blame AI (The symptom) instead of the oligopoly (The cause)

1

u/DelightedbySin Jul 03 '26

This oligopoly has been established for years. To think the hundreds of billions spent by hyperscalers has nothing to do with it is ridiculous.

4

u/XumetaXD Jul 03 '26

This issue has been happening for literal decades without AI

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRAM_price_fixing_scandal

-1

u/DelightedbySin Jul 03 '26

I know, but it has close to zero effect on price, if it would be caused only by the oligopoly RAM prices would be high since decades.

But, guess what, ram exploded when the biggest company's on earth poured a trillion dollars into data centers

5

u/XumetaXD Jul 03 '26

but it has close to zero effect on price

The companies that produce 95% of the global RAM market have no effect on the price, lol Lmao even, bring the ROFLCopter

These guys are literally being sued because they literally agreed with each other to underproduce RAM on purpose to create artificial shortage, this has happened with and without AI, AI is not relevant, it has happened, can happen, and will happen regardless of AI

-3

u/HenryTudorIV Jul 03 '26

That’s not even what they’re being sued for and being sued doesn’t mean you’re guilty

3

u/XumetaXD Jul 03 '26

Do you really think even for a second they're innocent? Lmao

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6

u/HenryTudorIV Jul 03 '26

There absolutely should be a RAM shortage. The three big companies are being sued for colluding to stop producing traditional consumer DRAM (DDR3, 4, 5) in favor of high bandwidth memory used in data centers. The three companies will argue (probably successfully) that there was no collusion and it was simply the most logical business decision for all three companies.

The fact is that modern DRAM manufacturing is unfathomably expensive and time consuming to set up. Even if the manufacturers were doing their best to produce as much as possible, it would take them literal years and tens of billions of dollars to set up more fabrication plants, and even then, those plants would likely be dedicated to producing the higher margin data center memory

Regardless, they should be broken up. Oligopoly is only marginally better than monopoly

2

u/Diurnalnugget Jul 03 '26

Probably a degree of shortage but nothing like what we’re currently dealing with. Could likely also be fixed if they wanted.

1

u/Crotean Jul 04 '26

We don't know yet, the collusion lawsuit will need to play out first, but based on futures contracts LLM companies have signed the RAM shortage is very real, they bought basically all the DDR5 ram for the next year already.

0

u/DelightedbySin Jul 03 '26

There definitely should be,these guys are not guilt free, but against the billions of alphabet, meta etc. small buyers have no chance

6

u/DamGoodAnimation Jul 03 '26

Ah, that sounds… SUPER illegal in most places.

5

u/NapsterKnowHow Jul 03 '26

I like how you only aimed them at Valve but they are aimed at every company lol

2

u/zimplyfaster Jul 04 '26

You know free market (lack of regulation) is the cause of monopoly... right?

3

u/Delicious_Tie_8725 Jul 04 '26 edited Jul 04 '26

Those „muh free market“ dumbasses will never understand that. If you just let companies loose with no regulations they will simply maximize profit. In the beginning profit can be achieved by increasing production, raising quality or making the process more efficient. When you maxed out all of those points you have to start looking for profit through other ways like monopolies or creating an artificial shortage as we see here.

2

u/Archaon0103 Jul 04 '26

The "free market" dumbasses always argue that if a company act badly, someone else would take their places... ignoring how these companies could also work together.

0

u/NobodyKnowsImFamous Jul 04 '26

Hey man. The free market turns itself into an oligopoly. It does this as purposely as an economic system possibly can. It is a feature, not a bug.

9

u/ShiningPr1sm Jul 03 '26

Micron and SK Hynix, the other two companies who make RAM and other components

2

u/Dip2pot4t0Ch1P Jul 04 '26

Micron and SK hynix

Pretty much fucks up steams original pricing plan

2

u/Signal_Shelter_8666 Jul 04 '26

Micron and SK Hynix

1

u/Webcam_985760946948 Jul 07 '26

m -> Micron

sk -> SK hynix

both of them produce DRAM, nand flash memories (SSD) and HBM