lol, replace Valve with Apple and Steam with App Store and everyone would have a very different tone on here despite the fact that they both charge 30%.
That’d be false equivalence. Valve doesn’t own the platform in which they distribute games. Valve doesn’t own Windows, macOS, or Linux, and to my knowledge they don’t enforce any platform-specific restrictions like Apple does. Not sure why you’d swap the two with regards to this case.
Do you need to own a platform to have a de facto grip on game distribution? I like Steam as much as the next guy, but it’s totally douchey the way nerds fall all over themselves to shit on Apple, but not Valve for charging the same thing. But, I guess not “owning” a platform makes you immune from criticism. Glad to know where the arbitrary line has been drawn. Given that “owning” the platform is the problem, then I’m hoping to see an equal amount of rage at Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft for their online stores that charge 30% to distribute games.
Do you need to own a platform to have a de facto grip on game distribution?
It helps immensely to own the platform you’re also distributing software for if you’re planning to enforce platform-specific restrictions, such as restricting which storefronts can even operate on your platform. Yknow, like Apple does did. But that aside, Valve does not have a de facto grip on game distribution because multiple platforms exist where Steam doesn’t even distribute games (Microsoft Store, PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, etc.), and the only gaming platform that Steam does occupy has multiple competitors (Epic, Uplay, EA Play, GoG, itch.io, etc.).
I like Steam as much as the next guy, but it’s totally douchey the way nerds fall all over themselves to shit on Apple, but not Valve for charging the same thing
There’s reasons to shit on both of them, but Valve taking an initial 30% cut of games sold on their own platform makes sense. They offer way more services than the competition, and frankly developers don’t have to use Steam. They can use any of the other aforementioned platforms to distribute their games, or just roll their own platform if they’re daring and patient.
But, I guess not “owning” a platform makes you immune from criticism.
No idea how you came to this conclusion. Both companies have legit criticisms made against them that have pretty much nothing to do with the case discussed in the article. Apple does flat out anti-consumer, and sometimes anti-developer shit all the time, Valve’s work culture isn’t near as diverse as it should be in the 21st century, and they don’t seem to do any sort of audits of new games they distribute, they also don’t seem to care about abandoned titles people have already paid for, etc.
Given that “owning” the platform is the problem, then I’m hoping to see an equal amount of rage at Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft for their online stores that charge 30% to distribute games.
That’s… not the problem though. Did you read the article? This is in relation to a class action lawsuit made by some disgruntled developers being put off by Valve’s 30% cut on a platform where they have the option to use some other service lol. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo are the only official distributors of digital games on their respective platforms.
makes you immune from criticism
I definitely criticize valve, 8 YEARS of one of my favorite games being filled with bots isn’t just forgotten. I think their 500 employee model isnt fitting for a company their size. I think it’s insane that you need to get verification that you own a game before you can play it (use Internet and block valves servers, your games won’t work.)
I won’t criticize them in this situation compared to Apple as on IOS you can’t just download from itch.io or GOG like you can from PC. You’re stuck paying a 30% cut not because it’s helpful to use the platform like Steam, but because ITS THE ONLY OPTION.
I’m hoping to see an equal amount of rage at Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft for their online stores that charge 30% to distribute games.
I haven’t bought a game on there in AGES, I’m mad at them too.
Yeah, it’s also ignoring that the issue with Apple’s “30% cut” isn’t that they take 30% of game sales. It’s that they’re forcing you to use their payment processing service to put an app on the store, and then they take a 30% cut out of that, even though third-party payment processing providers take much smaller cuts than that.
Physical stores also took a 30% sales cut, because there’s value in getting people to see your product. It’s literally been the standard storefront cut for decades. Microsoft and Sony take the same cuts for their console sales/transactions.
Valve does a lot more for companies than just put eyes on their games, too. They’re pushing for Linux-compatibility with Proton, they provide you with networking libraries and infrastructure for multiplayer servers if you use SteamWorks, Steam will optionally update your game’s SDL libraries so you have up-to-date controller bindings, etc. It’s not like they’re sitting there twiddling their thumbs and taking 30% of your money for nothing.
I’d argue Microsoft and Sony do comparable work for devs on their platforms too.
The whole argument against the 30% cut is so fucking dumb.
one of those cares about its customers, another doesnt. But which is which?
Delusional to thing one cares. We live in a capitalist civilization. No one gives a flying fuck about us.
If Valve went public Newell could exit with a golden parachute equitable to the GDP of Germany.
He kept it private and kept >50%. He is responsible for the mostly decent business practices Steam has simply because he has the final say on all policy.
That’s not saying he can’t fall from grace, but the guy seems to care considerably more than the operators of every other digital storefront aside from maybe GOG.
This will always be funny to me. In no other aspect of my life do I even know the charge of distributors or shops is, and I dont give a fuck. I still don’t know why I as a consumer should give a fuck because that aint my problem.
I go where the best service and the best options for me are. In terms of digital games stores, Steam is easily that platform. In terms of phone platforms, for me it is easily not apple, I coule not care how much people charge to sell in their stores.
I do care about dumb monopolistic limitations though, things like apple forcing browsers to use webkit. That would be like steam forcing all games to use the source engine. Apple not allowing people to install their own store fronts, Google making that more difficult, Steam not allowing you to install Epic… oh wait.
Steam is a DRM system. It’s amazing to hear people profess their horniness for a DRM system.
It’s not just a drm system
It does a lot of things. Apparently developers mention that it even makes adding things like multiplayer support really easy
Also, cloud saves and such too
On Linux, they also emulate Windows for game compatibility
Steam can charge because they do what they do well and hide the fact they actually do a lot more. It’s easier to get an old school game running if it’s steam than a normal exe generally
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_games_on_Steam
I will just leave this
The rent seeking on platforms like Steam, the Apple App Store, and Google Play is absolutely gross considering how little value they actually provide. I’ll be very glad to see them forced to reduce it to somewhere similar to a card transaction fee.
Eh, there’s more involved with a full storefront and content delivery compared to just a card transaction. But it’s definitely not 30% worth of additional value.
But it’s definitely not 30% worth of additional value.
They’re actually claiming to be adding almost 50% (43%, to be precise) in value, since that’s how much more you have to add to end up at 30% of the final value. (By analogy, imagine they took a 50% cut. That would be claiming to double the value. Something that used to be worth $10 is now going to cost $20 if the original wants to maintain the same cut.)
Here we go again. Armchair economists bleating “why everything cost money, corporate bad” with no actual expertise to back it up. Steam is not a parasitic middle man, it is a collection of services that would have to be provisioned and operated by the developer otherwise.
- A massive infrastructure to store and deliver the game and its updates, worldwide, and at an acceptable bandwidth that Valve operates
- A storefront that enables monetizing the game
- The audience and discoverability that would not exist otherwise
- The Steam API, achievements, cloud saves
- The client itself, content management, validation, and Linux compatibility tools
- Network and operational security
- (edit) Also keep in mind that Steam and its services are operated by experts. A game developer would have to hire the experts or get training.
That’s where the cut goes.
You forget to mention the cut that goes into the ceo billion dollar worth fleet of mega yachts
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
Success is not illegal. In Valve and Gaben’s case, it’s deserved, and probably as clean as you’ll ever see.
I firmly believe that Steam has allowed fair competition to exist. Epic had the greatest chance to become viable competition, but they fumbled the store’s launch, poached Metro Exodus and fucked over the people who preordered, did not have the foresight to implement some kind of preloading for Borderlands 3, and pissed people off when they refused to allow non-exclusive indie games to exist on the store while they made an exception for Cyberpunk 2077. In that time, the only thing that Valve did that might have hurt EGS is refuse to host store pages and ads for games that weren’t going to launch on their platform. Shortly after that, Valve released the Steam Deck (the most pro-consumer handheld I’ve seen to date), SteamOS (free), Proton (free), DXVK (free), Gamescope (free), and have contributed (for free) to upstream projects like Wine. Of all the billionaires, Gaben is the only one I can think of that I’m okay with being a billionaire.
Steam employs like 100 people, they could take 5% and still make generational wealth year on year
Valve has about 100 employees, Steam is operated by about 40, but I would love to have a source on the “generational wealth” part. Most of the income is likely spent on operational costs, like the aforementioned massive CDN infrastructure. If you’ve never worked in corporate-level networking, it might elude you how ridiculously fucking expensive stuff gets, especially at a worldwide scale.
That’s all nice, but you’re dreaming if you think any of that adds up to 30% of the value of a video game.
I don’t think that’s exactly how it works… It isn’t just the value of the game, it’s the exposure and distribution that it gets just for being on Steam. I imagine that’s well worth the 30% to most, which is why most devs seem OK with it.
It does seem slightly high to this non-expert, but I don’t really know enough to say for sure that it’s anti-competitive or anything.
Yeah, I think the big difference between Steam and Google Play and the App Store is that Steam does not own Windows and has actual competition.
I think asking for a cut just because you own the OS is despicable, but Steam is actually providing a service.
Steam does own SteamOS but they also bundle a third party software repo (flathub).
People should really read the Steamworks documentation to get an idea of the absurd amount of services Steam offers https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/home
The Community > Discussions page for a game is one of Steam’s most underrated features. The amount of times I’ve wanted to know something super specific about a game prior to buying and found exactly the info I was looking for in the Discussions page. Oftentimes with developer comments on said feature clearly labeled. So clutch.
We can always go back to the old ways of having a download from the company website and downloading directly from them. What? Nobody wants to pay for bandwidth? Nobody wants to have to pay for secure management of credentials and billing? :O
Those days didn’t even exist (or if they did, they were very short). I feel like Steam came out just before the broadband boom (when they released HL2, it was still on five CDs). And by the time other devs started switching, most of them just went to Steam.
However, re: the broadband thing, they could distribute with bittorrent, kind of like how linux distros do it.
Uh, all games had patches and mappacks downloaded directly from the game’s distributor. It was extremely slow, hence the invention of CDNs like filehippo, hwfiles, 2cows etc and some gaming companies (at the time you could rent your own server and host the games. Incredible, huh? You could also have LAN parties and play with your clan against other clans all using LAN, no internet required) were also doing mirroring of those files (in Italy it was gamearena and ngi, for example). Steam wasn’t even a thing.
Nobody wants to pay for bandwidth? Nobody wants to have to pay for secure management of credentials and billing? :O
They absolutely would if it didn’t mean getting deprioritized on Steam. Those things aren’t that difficult or expensive these days. I could have secure management of credentials and billing up in a weekend if I needed it (correctly), and I’m a single developer.
Steam is better than Microsoft, Apple, Google and Tencent. Using monopoly power to maintain the 30% standard is still a problem.
For bandwidth, it’d absolutely make sense if a game that’s 10GiB+ because uncompressed audio and pre-rendered cutscenes (and likely huge day-1 updates) had to pay more of a cut to its platform than a 200MiB (or less) game. Particularly if the smaller game doesn’t even have multi-player.
I am one to always call out rent seeking where I see it… But I don’t really see how Steam fits in there. Some of us are old enough to remember when HL2 came out, and things began transitioning from physical media to Steam. No dev was forced to do anything, and for years most people still bought physical games for everything other than Valve games.
The reason other devs started switching over, and it became dominant, is because it’s just a damn good service (and also because broadband just started getting more affordable).
Comment sections under these articles are always filled with two kinds of people:
-
Ones who won’t miss the water until the well runs dry.
-
Ones who understand what it means to have a well.
I am now confused, not sure if because I can’t recognize the well or I am too thirsty.
I’d love to see valve just blacklist devs who are on this lawsuit :D Go back to epic ig you care about your cut and not your customers.
Watch out for valve pr team shilling online
The only actually decent big company I can think of with a decent product and a track record of investing in open source and consumer benefiting solutions is being defended online. Shock.
The only actually decent big company I can think of with a decent product
A company that promotes gambling to underage kids with a proprietary third party launcher.
What are you doing on dbzer0 btw?
A company that increases mental health of all users through entertainment, pushes the boundary of corporate responsibility and basically solves depression through their carefully crafted launcher.
See, I can also make up bullshit by extrapolating to the extreme.
What are you doing on dbzer0 btw?
Are you gatekeeping piracy to a dude simply because they don’t think Valve is the devil? Bruh, you need to go outside.
Private companies, for better or worse, are beholden only to the boss. No shareholder value to worry about.
That’s the only reason steam hasn’t been turning the thumbscrews on developers for stage 3 enshittification profit seeking.
And why I’m clenching it for the day Gaben leaves. It will probably be disastrous.
