- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- games@sh.itjust.works
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We researched ourselves and found out that we are the best
I’d trust a group of employees doing this out of curiosity over, say, HR doing it.
Absolutely! I would do it too if I had access to the numbers.
I imagine each employee crunched their own numbers using their own salaries and compared notes.
If I recall correctly from a People Make Games video (great YT channel btw) all Valve employees have access to how much money Steam makes, so they can apparently just login and look at them anytime they feel like it. The profits of Valve might be shown in a similar way to employees.
thats the worst nightmare of most bosses
What’s the efficiency in taking 30% of almost all game sales on a platform? I know we all love valve, but the efficiency here is having a store that everyone has to use if they want to make sales at all.
Valve’s 30% is high, sure. But you’re not seeing the total cost of selling a game.
And yes, I’ve done this before.
Besides the user count, besides all other factors. Digital sales are kinda hard.
You need to offer the actual game. If you’re selling an indie game that’s a few hundred megs, well you get to go sign up for a service to deliver it. Could be as simple as a google drive link, but because this is business use you get to pay business prices.
Are they charging a flat rate per month, per gig? Per download? Some combinations?
Now there’s updates and patches that need to be delivered. Same deal as before, but also now you need to handle the actual patching. Do you ship one big patch that checks for previous patches? Small individual patches that your users have to figure out what one they need?
Does your game have multiplayer? Well damn have fun with that.
What about support and refunds and GDPR stuff? Gotta factor all of that in too.
Now we get to do payment processing. You get to pay a company to accept payments on your behalf because you are NOT doing that yourself you WILL get stuck on inane and silly laws.
That’s part of it. Paying steam 3 bucks on my 10 dollar game to handle ALL of that? Yeah that’s fair. Could it be cheaper? Sure. a lot of things could. I don’t spend months on a game and then cheap out on the most important part: sales.
My time is valuable and worth 30%
Not to mention Valve’s effort with Proton, allowing non-Windows gamers enjoy what they pay for on multiple platforms with great ease; their efforts have been massive for gaming on Linux, and without it, I wouldn’t have paid for a lot of games, earning their developers a whole lot of absolutely nothing.
Also the community hub, the workshop, the review system, the cloud saving, the functional wishlist, the gifting system, the shopping cart, the anti-cheat (you’re better of with it than without it), the discovery queue, the sales dedicated to specific types of games that actually help people discover games and drive the revenue up for the developers, the (I think) complete transaction history, the refunds system, the friends and the chat and profiles - and probably many more things that I’m either not aware of or couldn’t list off the tip of my tongue, combined with internal works that, again, do help the devs in the end.
Steam is much more than a place where one pays for a game to then simply download and play it. It’s much greater and more functional than that. None of the developers have to put their games on Steam - nobody forces Epic Games Store or GOG to be this subpar in comparison. Same way nobody forces gamers to use Steam. People use Steam because they love it - or because there’s no good-enough alternative, but that’s hardly Valve’s fault.
Steam charging 30% is not just worth it, but also surprising, given what putting your game on Steam gets you as the developer, and what it gets us, the players.
Not to mention Valve’s effort with Proton
And their VR efforts. VR seems to have lost popularity lately, but I was really glad that someone out there was competing with Palmer Luckey, especially once he sold out to Facebook.
And… holy shit, I just found out he’s Matt Gaetz’ brother in law. That explains a lot.
Nobody is arguing that valve shouldn’t be compensated for the value they provide. Many of us do, however, argue they are taking too much. Their revenue per employee being so much higher than anyone else in the market supports that argument.
Uh huh, and I’m sure you’re privy to the exact financial breakdowns?
If someone could actually provide a better service than steam at a better price point, they would. The epic games store is shit, uplay is shit, origin is shit.
RTFA, it is right there ffs
I agree with you, but its not an argument in Valve’s favor, that is unless you support monopolies. “They should take whatever they can, because no one else is competition.” Yeah, great. Capitalism at work. I agree that’s what they should do if we’re talking pure capitalist ideology, maximize profit at any cost. Is it the right thing to do though. They obviously (from the topic of this thread) make more than enough to pay every employee extremely well and then have a ton left over. They don’t need to charge 30% to get by.
Let’s not describe this as “paying valve three bucks” because that’s not accurate and is misleading.
It’s paying valve 30% of your revenue.
They didn’t frame it as “paying valve three bucks”. They said “paying valve 3 bucks on my 10 dollar game”. The phrase “paying pennies on the dollar” comes to mind as a common idiom for saying you’re paying a small fraction of the total, and neither literally means nor implies paying actual pennies.
Usually it does refer to paying less than 20% or so, yes. Not literal pennies, though.
What if it’s a ten cent game and you’re paying steam three cents each sale?
It is misleading. It is 30% of the entire revenue of the game. And it is objective whether Valve deserves 30% of that revenue. It’s also true that games aren’t locked to the Steam platform and can absolutely make money outside of Valve’s influence. History has shown though that it is less profitable then being inside the Steam ecosystem.
Except that Steam allow their keys to be sold on other platforms and don’t take a cut on those. So it is 30% on the key sold on steam, but 0% on the other storefront.
So there is no reason to not go on steam because it doesn’t restrict you to steam.
You still need Steam on your computer to install it which means if your computer no longer supports Steam you are out of luck.
If your computer doesn’t support Steam, there’s really no reason to install Steam, because better chance than not your computer doesn’t support almost any game you’d want to play on Steam.
There are still plenty of stubborn people that cling to Windows 7, Steam dropped support a few months back when they upgraded the… Electron version, I believe? Had something to do with chrome/chromium removing win 7 support.
Steam is 20 years old so we have now reached a point where people have retro gaming machines where parts of their libraries come from Steam.
If your computer is incapable of even running Ubuntu. Then I don’t think it’s worth using.
It is not a great trend, but you need a launcher anyway today be it Steam, Origin or any other launchers.
Only GOG offers DRM free games but it is not the norm.
Some games on steam are DRM free, meaning that you can run the game without opening Steam.
I’d rather have physical copies of my games, but it doesn’t exist anymore unless you pirate it.
With that said, Steam is the most convenient and feature complete and that is why it is so widespread. Epic games with their money printer Fortnite could not reproduce a fraction of Steam dev tools and functionality.
You’re better off never learning how little of what you pay your food actually goes to the producer, then…
Shockingly I’m also mad about that. I suppose you support that situation?
Man, Epic must be patting themselves on the back for all the money they paid getting people to believe 30% was outrageous, because it’s paying massive dividends.
It may shock you to know that before Steam, your options were to fuck off or offer your product in a store where you would only get 30% of the profit, with the rest going to the publisher, the retailer, licensing, etc. These days it’s closer to 50% for physical copies, and Apple/Nintendo/Sony/etc all standardized with Steam on you getting 70% for digital.
Don’t like it? Pull a Valve and make your own alternative that’s better. If you build it, they will come… which is why nobody uses EGS.
EGS has become free games store.
EGS is like walking around a grocery store offering free samples and leaving without buying anything.
Sort of. Except all the shelves have weird lips on them to keep you from grabbing the product easily, you kinda have to wrangle each item. Also it’s layout and design is archaic and super hard to navigate. And on every aisle there’s these little 3 inch steps that you have to go up and down and constantly trip on, or your cart gets stuck on them and you have to lift it up or drop it down. And then if you do manage to buy things, their support is terrible; at the other store if you need help cooking they have a 24 hour recipe hotline to help you out, but this one promises the same, but you actually wind up on hold for hours half the times you call.
So they got tons of free samples, but all their products are kinda a nightmare.
Don’t forget that each of their checkout lanes say “1 item or fewer”Apparently they have a cart now
They actually have a cart now. Took them many years but they finally managed.
I don’t believe if you build it they will come anymore. People are fucking lazy and will put up with whatever the fuck is happening with Twitter for convenience.
They posted on lemmy
they say on the platform that exploded because Reddit decided to Spez.
I’m here, but none of my friends are here or on mastodon.
30% is more or less the standard. Not just in the games industry, but everywhere.
It’s actually not the standard, the standard was iirc 70% for in-store at the time. These days I think it’s closer to 50%, assuming no 3rd party losses/licensing.
Nintendo/Sony/Apple/etc are all 30% too, by the way.
and Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft charge the consumer extra for features like online play and cloud saves.
Personally, I think the standard should be reduced but Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft should start.
The status quo is rarely a good reason for anything
Epic is 12%. Yeah, Epic store sucks and all that. Whatever. There’s two marketplaces that aren’t first party. One takes 30% and one takes 12%. How is there a standard? You can’t look to other markets or other distribution methods to compare it to, because they’re all different with their own things.
Edit: GOG is 30% for indie developers (there’s a little more to it than that, but basically that). It sounds like with other publishers/developers they negotiate contracts on a case-by-case basis and don’t say what they get.
Steam does more to promote and support games than many other platforms out there. Epic does not have workshop and forum, Google Play does not promote games as good as Steam.
Google Play
does not promote games as good as Steamhas ads.
The efficiency is doing it so effectively that on an open platform competitors can create there own store, pay for AAA games to appear on their store, take the smallest of pay cuts, pass it on to the consumer, and still have customers prefer to pay more to be in the Steam ecosystem. I’m against monopolies but Valve’s is absolutely efficient.
That’s not how monopolistic marketplaces like Steam (and Amazon) operate, though. They have “Platform Most Favored Nation” (PMFN) clauses in their terms that mean products sold on the platform can’t be sold cheaper elsewhere…
Which means the whole “pass it on to the consumer” can’t happen, unless a product risks being de-listed from Steam. It literally removes the ability to compete on price.
You can find games sold cheaper than in Steam in many places. You can even buy games outside of Steam and they see 0 revenue from it.
Find me a game that has been de listed from Steam because it was sold cheaper elsewhere. You can’t, so don’t bother.
Find me a game that has been de listed from Steam because it was sold cheaper elsewhere. You can’t, so don’t bother.
I’m not going to dig through the web for an example of enforcement (which are not likely to be published anyway), when the only relevant matter is whether the PMFN clause exists. You can count every instance of a direct-from-publisher listing not being ~≤30% cheaper than the Steam listing as evidence that all you need is the threat of enforcement.
There is no reason in a market without this PMFN clause that a publisher wouldn’t sell the game at equal or higher margin off-Steam.
You can find games sold cheaper than in Steam in many places. You can even buy games outside of Steam and they see 0 revenue from it.
I would genuinely love if you could point me to an example where the non-discounted price of a game is lower outside of Steam than it is on Steam — I’d love to buy my games cheaper lol.
they see 0 revenue from it
This part confuses me. Are you trying to clarify to me that Steam isn’t taking a 30% cut of what gets sold on, say, Epic Games Store?
To add an example:
Take Cities: Skylines II. It’s listed at $50 on Steam, $50 direct from Paradox. If Steam is taking 30% cut, Paradox sees $35 from each sale. Why is Paradox not listing the game at $40? They would earn an extra $5 per sale, and draw more sales.
They have every economic reason to undercut Steam, but they aren’t. Like seriously, if not the PMFN, then what’s the explanation?
I guess I’m confused. Are you contesting that the PFMN clause has an effect or not? Whether that effect is anticompetitive?
I would genuinely love if you could point me to an example where the non-discounted price of a game is lower outside of Steam than it is on Steam — I’d love to buy my games cheaper lol.
Fanatical and humble bundle (the good old days) are good examples. I don’t know what you say “non-discounted”, cheaper is cheaper no matter what.
This part confuses me. Are you trying to clarify to me that Steam isn’t taking a 30% cut of what gets sold on, say, Epic Games Store?
Steam doesn’t get a cut from keys sold in perfectly legal thirth party stores like fanatical, humble or gmg. Epic does not sell steam keys so obviously no.
Fanatical and humble bundle (the good old days) are good examples.
Incidentally Wolfire Games—the studio that founded Humble (but no longer operates it)—is currently in class-action litigation against Valve for this very issue.
I don’t know what you say “non-discounted”, cheaper is cheaper no matter what.
The Steam Distribution Agreement AFAIK allows temporary sales on other platforms to undercut Steam, but requires the “resting” price matches that on Steam. By specifying “non-discounted” I meant to indicate that although sales do exist on other platforms, the normal price of an item always matches on Steam. A quick few spot checks show the non-sale price of games on Humble, Steam, and Fanatical are equal.
“Cheaper is cheaper” kind of overlooks the core issue. Ultimately a publisher on Epic Games Store—which has a fee of 12% instead of Steam’s 30%—can have a lower price for a game as part of a promotion, but can’t just sell every game 18% cheaper always without violating Steam’s terms and being risk being de-listed.
Steam doesn’t get a cut from keys sold in perfectly legal thirth party stores like fanatical, humble or gmg. Epic does not sell steam keys so obviously no.
Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I misunderstood. For Steam Keys it’s pretty clear that Valve should be able to control the price since they provide the services after that key is purchased.
But the PMFN applies to all copies, even those distributed outside of Steam (e.g. the direct-from-publisher option I mentioned). Last time I was in a thread on this, another user found the following in the complaint (page 55) from the Wolfire v. Valve case mentioned above:
- TomG also explained to another game publisher that the publisher should “[t]hink critically about how your decisions might affect Steam customers, and Valve. If the offer you’re making fundamentally disadvantages someone who bought your game on Steam, it’s probably not a great thing for us or our customers (even if you don’t find a specific rule describing precisely that scenario).” In that same thread, TomG responded to a question by stating: “we usually choose not to sell games if they’re being sold on our store at a price notably higher than other stores. That is, we’d want to get that lower base price as well, or not sell the game at all."
- In response to one inquiry from a game publisher, in another example, Valve explained: “We basically see any selling of the game on PC, Steam key or not, as a part of the same shared PC market- so even if you weren’t using Steam keys, we’d just choose to stop selling a game if it was always running discounts of 75% off on one store but 50% off on ours. . . .”
“Cheaper is cheaper” kind of overlooks the core issue
You said this:
I’d love to buy my games cheaper lol.
I don’t know why you need them to be cheaper before the discount, but okay, I don’t care.
Did you know that almost every other marketplace out there (except that fucked up one) has the same 30% revenue split?
The whole debacle over it is artificial. It won’t change much if it looked better to people who complain now. It won’t remove Valve’s ability to provide the best service.
There is a difference though in that you do not have to publish on Steam for your game to be available on Windows or Linux or MacOS, but you do need to use the App Store to publish on iOS, so the 30% is mandatory there.
You can host your own site, you can publish on another app store, it just makes marketing harder.
There are other game marketplaces out there, but they’re bad.
This isn’t like the Apple App store where it’s the only option on the platform. In fact, they’ve competed with Microsoft’s store on some things. It’s not even like Amazon where they strong-arm people selling things on the platform. Amazon does things like forbid anybody who sells on Amazon from selling the item at a lower price anywhere, including on their own site. I don’t think Steam has any requirements like that. Steam’s store has a huge market share because people like using Steam. AFAIK, Steam doesn’t even do exclusivity deals, which suck for the consumer but are pretty standard for games, except with their own (Valve) games, and those are rare.
Not only does Steam have a user-friendly library and a user-friendly store, if you launch a game you bought on steam but that is published by a company with a shitty launcher / store / library (EA, Ubisoft, Rockstar), Steam goes a long way to neuter the shittiness of that launcher / store / library.
Maybe a 30% cut is too big. I don’t know. It would be great if someone tried to compete with Steam while keeping the consumer-friendly approach Steam has. Maybe competition would reduce that 30% to something lower. But, most of the other game stores I know of have much less consumer-friendly approaches. The only one that’s at all similar that I know of is GOG, and I do occasionally use them, especially for old games.
except with their own (Valve) games, and those are rare.
Personally I don’t have any issue with 1st parties keeping their stuff 1st party.
It’s just that I won’t participate if I deem it useless (see Ubisoft launcher) :)EG can keep Fortnite etc. exclusive on EGS that is their damn right.
I agree. It’s a bit annoying for me personally but I don’t really mind unless they have a shit launcher.
Also developers can generate a unlimited number of Steam keys for their games that they can sell on other platforms and steam doesn’t take any money for. So you can make MyCoolGame throw it on Steam then sell copies of your game on MyCoolGame.com give your customers Steam keys and keep the whole price while still benefiting from Valve’s infrastructure to support downloads, friend lists, updates ect.
That and the steam community and forums are pretty cool too. Alot of tech support for game problems, community mods, discussions, etc.
Not to mention Valve has a history of offering interest-free loans to developers to help them get their games out- and there’s not even a requirement that you have the game on steam after.
Not to mention you can generate steam keys to sell on other game stores, in which case steam gives themselves a 0% cut, despite you still using and benefiting from all their services.
I believe that valve does require that you don’t sell the game for less on other platforms. It’s one of the complaints in the lawsuit currently against them by wolfire.
Ah, too bad.
Plenty of games that make good sales numbers that aren’t on steam. Obviously it makes sense to go where the users are though
Some notable examples that aren’t overly old include Overwatch 1, Minecraft, LoL, and Tarkov.
Which is exactly what Apple does with their iTunes store.
Not exactly, apple forces their users to use their stores, whereas Valve just offers a better experience than the other stores out there.
There is nothing stopping you from using other stores to buy your games on, unlike the appstore.
That has no impact on both of them taking a 30% cut.
In the case of Steam that’s because no other corpo run by parasites can create anything close to it. You’re completely free to get any other launcher or store that takes a smaller cut.
And now is where your misguided comparison completely falls apart: Apple users have no other choice than the AppStore. Even if someone wanted to create a better store, they just can’t.
Apple ties their hardware to iTunes with no competition. Steam offer a platform which is better than every other piece of COMPETING software on a variety of hardware.
Yes, it’s all massive profiting, driving the cost of everything up, or putting less money into the hands of the people who make the thing you like.
When I really love a game, it bothers me that valve, or apple, or Google, or Sony, take 1/3rd of the money. They don’t deserve it.
What if you could buy direct from the publisher or developer, but you could only download the game once? Let’s say you could still install it any number of times on any device so long as you had the source file in this scenario. Would you still be willing to pay $60 for a major title?
Would your willingness to buy a game change if you couldn’t get a refund in the above scenario, regardless of time played?
… like a disk or cart? Yes that’s fine. I do that.
What percentage of the sales price do you suppose goes towards the outside companies that print the disks and make the packaging?
Sure, that’s fine for a release that has a physical edition, but many do not.
Also, when buying physical copies I’m guessing that the dev gets an even smaller cut, but it probably depends on the retail location to a large degree.
Fortunately thanks to steam allowing free key generation you can buy directly from the publisher and still get all the features of steam except refunds maybe.
That’s the same as buying from Steam. The publisher pays Steam and then gives the key to the customer. They get the same cut either way.
Steam doesn’t take a cut on keys.
That’s great if true. I’m seeing a lot of different information when searching for that though. Older sources say valve doesn’t get a cut, but newer sources are saying that deva can only issue 5000 free keys. Do you have a more recent source with a definitive answer?
I used to feel a bit sad about the 30% but then I learned you get stream keys for your games for free, which makes it seem a lot more reasonable.
You have to ask steam for the keys and they can deny them. I’m sure they only refuse to give the keys if they find out you are reselling them or giving out way too many, but I still don’t like that they get to decide what “way too many” is here
Because they still have to foot the bill for the infrastructure that you use your free keys on.
they explicitly do give out keys for resale. Steam Keys are a free service we provide to developers as a convenient tool to help you sell your game on other stores and at retail
Not like it’s only for certain ranges 30%.
It’s not a flat everywhere fee.I get that you have an axe to grind but:
What’s the efficiency in …
It’s the total income divided by the number of employees. You’re trying to make this something it’s not.
Revenue per head is no doubt a sexy metric, especially for private companies. If it was a public company then investors would call for the company to try and grow its overall profits by spending more on growth related initiatives… Perhaps by releasing half-life 3 for example, lol.
The great thing about keeping your company private is that you can get it just where you like and keep it there no matter what outside parties want. I could totally see Gaben is perfectly satisfied making bank at this level while also having a chill lifestyle.
If the company were public the shareholders would say “great, now give the employees less and give us the difference”
Why is money per employer a better metric than customer satisfaction?
Should an owner be more proud of their yatch size or of being a role model for customers not other millionaires? What’s their passion really, money or what they do for a living?
We clearly know where valve wants to be. I’m just surprised it’s a company that stands out.
Fuck shareholders.
It’s not a better metric. It’s a metric among others.
They said it’s a sexy metric, as in big numbers are cool. They never said it’s a particularly useful or “better” metric.
The article is talking about net income per head, not revenue.
When your employees are so efficient they start using their spare time to audit each other’s efficiency on an industry-wide metric.
I have heard that its not too hard to start your own project when working at valve.
Maybe it will turn into their next game, or a new steam feature or it will get canned.
Is that still accurate? Their employees handbook was legendary a decade ago, but since then there have been rumours that this isn’t the case any longer, and that there were significant problems behind the scenes.
I think you can still work on whatever you want as long as GabeN wants it too.
I think that goes for most company structures
I mean with that money printing machine and good reputation among users it’s no doubt be cozy for devs to start stuff without having someone breath down their neck for costing too much money or too high of a risk.
I mean they have a finance team for sure, so I guess this is their job… However Steam does a really good job to stay in its borders of where they can provide a good service and do not milk the cow until half live 09 where they just repeat the story of half live 1-3 in a poor way
“So we’re getting pay rises, right?” Annakin.gif “Right?”
You should dive down the rabbit hole. Valve does not have a workplace like anything you’ve seen before, and the pay is just as fucked.
How much did they compensate that bald man who they installed a valve in the back of his head for the loading screen photo?
That guy had it easy compared to the guy that had his eyeball replaced with a valve, and after everything he sacrificed they just stopped using his picture.
My favourite factoid about that is that the minister of finance in Greece who was in charge during the Greek Debt Crisis was Yanis Varoufakis, the former economist-in-residence at Valve.
Woah woah woah, really?
I stumbled across a bunch of economic videos featuring him in the past. Yanis and Steam in the same sentence was never something I was expecting to see lol
Yeah, I’m really curious about what he did there and how it influenced both him and Steam.
Afaik he still praises their anarchist corporate management structure. Haven’t really looked into it, but if true kind of an L from a guy i really like otherwise
Can you expand more on why it’s an L? I have a lot of time for Varoufakis, I don’t agree with him on everything but I find him a very reasonable person.
Because he doesn’t call out their traditional centralized ownership structure, which is more important and will always “win” when it conflicts with the anarchist parts. The owners still have final say over the workers.
Why don’t you like that? It seems to work for Valve.
Like… In a good way?
I’ve added a video link to my original comment. should clarify a bit.
Some people aren’t in situations where they can watch videos unfortunately (I am scrolling at work)
Back in 2021, indie developer Wolfire filed an antitrust lawsuit against Valve that accused the gaming giant of anti-competitive business practices—including a long-standing habit of taking unfair cuts from game developers on its store. Valve’s 30% fees have come under criticism before—and they are notably high when compared to some other online platforms.
Ouch. I didn’t realize they took such a big cut. On the other hand, authors trying to publish to Amazon’s kindle get hit with commissions from 30%-65% before any other fees, so Steam seems downright reasonable for that particular comparison.
From where I’m sitting, though, I’ve plenty of complicated feelings. Steam might be the best option out there, but monopolies aren’t great for anybody—at the same time, business is business.
Steam’s absurd efficiency could be a product of merciless penny-pinching from indie devs, but it’s just as likely we’re watching a well-oiled machine continue to belch out cash in an expected fashion.
Is it really a monopoly with everyone from EA to GoG delivering games? I guess it is dominant enough to count. I have a hard time complaining when employees are getting good pay and I’ve continued to get good service from them. It might get scarey if/when Gabe steps down, but this all feels pretty fair for now.
I’ve been thinking about the 30% cut and I think to some extent Valve earn it. They’re not just hosting the download for your game and managing updates and payments. They’re also running your forum, running your multiplayer (if you take advantage of the Steam Datagram Relay), making mods easy to manage and share, making controller support easy to implement and making it easy to port to Linux and MacOS.
Apple and Google also take a 30% cut (+$100 USD/year and semi-recent Mac for Apple). In comparison I think Valve to a lot more to earn your 30% (even if I still think its a bit high considering how much money they make)
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The unusual though possibly wrong thing that differentiates steam is they don’t appear to engage in all that much anti competitive behavior. Possibly some, but not really that much. Ultimately if it’s better for the consumer but worse for ‘the economy’ who’s really losing out? By what metric?
For now, at least. But the secret to valves success here doesn’t appear to be very closed source. A fairly flat internal structure, moderately functional store and community reputation building, mostly keeping promises and having which reputation that when they don’t they can weather the storm. Nothing there seems unachievable unless your design philosophy is so cut throat and monetized that you just build a bad product.
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If your proposal is some sort of grant program to make that infrastructure easier to come by then that could be neat. Nothing about steams actual technology is unique though.
A federated indie store could also be neat, though like other federated systems with money involved especially you’ll need to be extra careful about how it’s all set up to make sure the result is any good.
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The point is, steam competitors don’t do badly because they lack the man hours of steams Dev team. They do badly because of terrible company vision and incentives. Open sourcing a tech doesn’t solve a problem that doesn’t exist. I don’t even think open sourcing steam really does… Anything, for developers. Philosophically cool, practically useless, everything that steam is exists in piecewise form already. Turning steam into a federated service is not meaningfully faster because you make steam open source.
Gog is the closest and does fine. The technology is about on par with steam, the philosophy of the service better, and they are doing fine. Not overwhelming steam no, but fine.
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Monopoly’s themselves are not necessarily bad. Its when they use the monopoly to spread into other areas where it becomes the problem.
Just because monopolies can have a fanbase, doesn’t mean they don’t negatively impact society.
The cult behind Steam doesn’t understand the problem that will arrive once Gabe retires. The amount of power they gave this single entity will come to.bite them in the ass.
It’s not like there are any better options.
GOG perhaps, but that doesn’t strive to deliver the conveniency, and ignores Linux players.
Epic? Lol.
Any other private company launcher? Well, just no.
Everyone will be gone one day, Gabe, Linus Torvalds… but that doesn’t mean other people don’t share their values and the original idea will be gone too.
Steam isn’t a monopoly; they have competition. As far as I’m aware, they also don’t have a mechanism to lock people out of the market, so there’s probably no danger of them becoming a monopoly. I have no idea why people are going around saying they’re a monopoly when they demonstrably aren’t.
And that for being a non-public company.
Non public should be more efficient from the labor cost savings of not having to file all the sec documents quarterly and legal costs of following public company regulations.
Not to mention that an obsession with increasing share price is massively distracting and self-defeating.
Public companies focus on short term profit to keep share holders happy. Private companies can actually focus on long term profit, especially if it’s at the expense of some short term profit.
Or they can choose not to focus on profit at all. Probably most people with an ownership stake in Valve are fabulously rich now. Maybe they just want to focus on interesting R&D now.
Theoretically there’s a benefit to a publicly traded company that since a lot of your financials are visible to everyone and people get to “vote” by buying and selling shares, there’s a sense in which you can get feedback on how well you’re running the company that you don’t get when it’s private. But, as Reddit’s “wall street bets” and “superstonk” subreddits show, a lot of investors are morons.
This isn’t totally true. Private companies can still have shareholders that demand info. Their aren’t the same level of regulations, but it’s not nothing.
It’s because Valve is a private corporation, Gabe Newell has managed it well, they don’t hire idiots, and they pay their employees well.
It’s because they have a near monopoly and take a huge cut of developer’s revenue
Is 30% on average “huge” considering the platform and total number of averages monthly users? I know that number does move around a bit as well.
I guess considering the ease of use for users and the fact that other platforms exist, they might be considered a monopoly only because nothing else of quality has shown up. It’s not like they’re buying out competitors and paying politicians to create laws and expectations to give them a competitive advantage. They’re literally just better than the other shit. Except arguably GoG which is solid in its own right, though not in the same ways as Steam.
Being a monopoly or near monopoly doesn’t mean that they’re automatically underhanded
Last time I checked, Epic Games has plenty of money to compete. Monopoly implies competition is actively being stopped. Valve hasn’t done much to stop competition other than making a good product that people use.
Epic Games also takes 5% of all games that use the Unreal engine, unless you use the Epic store.
No it doesn’t. Anticompetittive behaviour is a seperate issue. One often imployed by monopolists, but seperate nonetheless.
take a huge cut of developer’s revenue
They don’t. No other platform will provide all of the benefits Steam provides for only 30% OR LESS of every sale.
30% is a huge cut. Epic takes 12%
When valve was establishing steam, 30% was justified. They had to invest in the product. They took a risk. They don’t have to now and they are profiteering.
Epic has admitted they’re taking a loss at 12%. Also, Epic’s store is shit, complete barebones, barely works as a way to buy games.
And valve have admitted they’re making more profit than anyone else in the space. I’m not saying they shouldn’t be allowed a profit, I’m saying there’s an argument that they (and Apple via the Apple store) are taking too much from the work of others
And that argument is idiotic, as proven by the fact that even bribing people to their shitty Epig Store, Epic can’t compete with the value Steam provides.
Differently from Apple, Steam hasn’t put any barriers in place to stop competitors nor have they forced exclusivity on publishers for their platform.
Irrelevant. Being good and popular doesn’t make them not a monopoly
I think it is more because of heavy encouraging of being proactive.
Please invest some into the Linux client. The dropdown click-through problem exists for years already, the source of the problem is known and would be easy to fix on your side.
Or develop an API coupled with your DRM, so the community could develop some good interfaces already.
An open steam DRM API would be the end of Windows as an OS for gaming
Lol. No.
Have you tried Windows?
I would rather give up on steam than switch to windows thank you very much
Praise GabeN.
Tried to? Revenue per head and profit per head are very easy metrics. Not sure I would count that as efficient though.
Totally meta comment, but why is everyone here saying “per head” instead of “per capita”?
Probably because “headcount” is a common HR term for the number of employees, and when people are talking “per capita” it might be more about the number of users or customers. The meaning is the same though.
Business speak vs country speak.
A whacking great cut of somebody else’s money will do that.
If people dont like the cut they can use another shop front or make their own. PC gaming isnt locked down to any specific store front
That’s not the reality for game devs
Steam let’s devs sell games anywhere and provide steam keys. There are many alternate stores you can buy games and get a steam key. I’m guessing that is one reason they have a big cut.
But also, I remember indie devs having to give up 60℅ of revenue to go on the larger indie game publishing sites.
Once again, they profit by accepting Steams cut, proving that Steam earns and deserves it. There Itch.io, GoG, Epic, or they can go Minecrafts route and sell their game on their own site. Steam does nothing to hamper competition. Steams cut is entirely optional, a dev doesnt HAVE to put their game up on Steams marketplace. Steam is earning that cut by being a marketplace that brings devs more sales
No, they don’t have to use the largest and most popular storefront at all. Good economic e sense right there. People didn’t have to use Internet Explorer, but that was deemed a monopoly. The existence of alternatives doesn’t make them automatically economically viable
Yes, and their cut for letting you use the largest storefront out there that THEY BUILT AND GOT THERE, is 30%. If you are earning more money paying that 30% and being on their storefront than you would by rejecting that cut and listing somewhere else, than that is full proof that Steam is earning that cut.
Also, internet explorer came bundled with Windows and THATS why it was deemed a monopoly. You have to specifically choose to download Steam, it gets no starter advantage over the competition.
Steam is the most popular storefront because its the BEST storefront, there is no ulterior motivation putting it at the top, its just that all of its competition barring Itch and GoG are garbage. Steam is still better than the non garbage competition though and why it can get away with its incredibly minor option for built in DRM and its 30% cut. They use their cut to make an amazing storefront, and the developers who choose to pay that cut benefit from the customers that having the worlds best PC marketplace brings.
That stream is good doesn’t make it not a monopoly
What makes it not a monopoly is that it isnt. It has competitors, it does nothing to block competition. It is not responsible for its competition not being as good as it is.
Brainless take. “I want all of the benefits of a huge storefront with free advertisement and countless features that attract customers, but I don’t wanna pay for it!”
Brainless take. Valve is making money hand over fist. Most game devs are not making money. Valve aren’t creating any of the games, valve aren’t taking any of the risk
Do you think the payment processing, storage, content distribution, content delivery, social & communal aspects are free? Think for a second before writing your nonargument.
You’re arguing against obtuseness. I think it’s a close cousin of willful ignorance.
Strawman.
It is not.
Point me to one service that provides as many benefits as Steam without taking a larger total cut than 30%. I’ll wait.
Actually earned profit too
What does that mean? They take a cut of every game sold, they didn’t make that product. They make the platform the games other people made are sold on.
It’s a good platform nonetheless, but IDK how much of it is actually “earned” as opposed to just a big cut taken from someone.
It’s well known that server infrastructure and software development is free
I never said those things were free. I did say the platform is good, but their income is from the games sold on the platform that other people made.
I don’t know what metric would properly capture money/time spent on infrastructure and servers, but I don’t think it’s “money per head” if that money is from games sold and doesn’t strictly relate to how good their platform performs.
If games company’s could make more money by not releasing on Steam, they would. The fact that they accept the 30% cut means that Steam is in fact leading to more sales for those developers and thus earns its cut. No one HAS to sell their product on Steam, PC’s are a completely open marketplace
Profit/employees isn’t a measure of efficiency, completed projects/employees is and I’m willing to bet that a company without any real organization like Valve doesn’t complete as many projects/employees as companies like Apple or Microsoft.
Valve is basically a file hosting service. I will never understand the computer illiterate gamers who worship that website. Omg it lets me download my games many times! Amazing. Go sell something on the Steam Marketplace. Fucking idiot.
It’s not just files. It’s forums, chats, performance metrics, and game integration for gaming with your friends with a centralized account instead of 30 different friend group listing across 50 games.
Nobody but children uses those “features.” Honestly wtf are you even talking about? Steam messenger, that broken piece of shit?
Yeah most file hosts put hundreds of millions into making sure all your files can be used on platforms they weren’t designed for /s
I love when people are proud of having no fucking clue what they’re talking about
The incredibly generic feature you just described isn’t worth a 30% markup on all games. But I can see you’re here to provide evidence for the computer illiteracy of gamers, who are apparently so impressed with file sharing that they will defend fucking Steam.
I don’t see why you consider that bad. Yes, it lets me download them many times. And automatically updates. And provides multiplayer. And friends and chat. And a bunch of other features too. This is what they call a “value add”.
Why do I consider it bad that some middlemen have parked themselves between gamers and developers to leech out all the profits while providing nothing in return?
Even ten times your imaginary ”value add” wouldn’t justify a 30% markup.
I mean I both agree but also I think “it’s just x” comments in tech always ignore the complexity of scale, availability, and integrity.
I wonder how many of them realize that in a couple of clicks someone can decide they don’t have access to their games anymore…
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Fair point, however everyone (just about) has either an android or apple phone. Not everyone plays computer games.
Yes, and since Valve drives up the cost of video games while contributing nothing, they’re certainly doing their part to stymie the industry.
So as a developer I could release my software on Steam directly (no publisher and associated costs) and have access to how many potential customers? Of course I could also release on my own website and host everything myself, or I could use the Epic Store, perhaps GOG.
How do you think Steam store restricts the industry? I can buy steam keys on alternative sites, is that possible in Epic or GOG?
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Steam Keys are a free service we provide to developers as a convenient tool to help you sell your game on other stores and at retail, or provide for free for beta testers or press/influencers.
As a customer the steam store experience, mod workshop, Steam deck and OS, Steam VR app (I use with my Quest 2) all work really well for me. Reviews seem pretty uncensored (at least I’ve not read about Valve doing anything underhand)
I’m very happy to say that the Steam android app could be better!
As a final point, I would like to see a viable alternative to Steam as competition is generally good for consumers!
Steam did deal a big blow to self publishing and piracy as it provided a platform to sell games, manage patches, multiplayer, DLC, gaming community moderation, controller support etc. It really reduced a lot of burden on developers.
From your very first sentence you make my point. Steam is nothing but access to the customers who use it. That’s it. A digital distributor with a clunky website. It’s useful because it’s popular, NOT because it actually does anything special. If everyone stopped using Steam tomorrow, literally nothing of value would be lost. The same can’t be said for any innovative company on this planet.
Like Apple’s vr headset? Or did you forget the first 2 Valve VR (HTC hardware) sets and associated software?
What about the Steam Deck, of course hand held consoles are nothing new, but what makes it special is the combination of the rather excellent trackpads and controller mapping that debuted in the Steam controller and with an OS (that uses wine) to bypass Windows and all it’s bloat - It must be quite popular as we’re now seeing a number of imitators!
Imho Steam is, by far, the gold standard for digital distributors.
None of that is worth a 30% premium on games, which stymies creative development and industry growth.
Face it, Steam is a distribution center whose popularity entitles it to extract enormous rents that pose a significant burden on the industry. Greater decentralization will lead to growth. Always has.
I had a Steam controller for a long time. Worst piece of gaming hardware I’ve ever owned — but that’s not the point. Even if it were the best controller it wouldn’t justify a 30% tax on games.
Epic, GoG, Microsoft store, if Steam is so awful, then why don’t people use the competition?
There’s really no penalty to me as a consumer if I choose to buy on any platform, they all work on Windows, and to a lesser extent Steam OS. I’m not locked on hardware, there no subscription, the biggest challenge is keeping all 4 app stores updated to the latest version which costs me a little time and storage space…
Actually, dlc is a good example of being trapped in one ecosystem, but beyond that I can buy games from any publisher on any store without penalty.
Compare that to Apple and their restrictive app store, or other innovators that stop supporting hardware upgrades or disable servers removing key features (Unisoft…) Steam even goes further and provides users access to games that have been withdrawn from sale, compare that with Nintendo.
Nothing? That’s silly.
Unless you count… file hosting? Name anything else that could POSSIBLY justify a 30% markup on all games. Go ahead.
