Fairly happy to find a business that wants to make money long term. Pretty rare these days. I would say thats a good thing, wouldnt you?
How do they do it? Looks like expanding into the open hardware space, the open source space, have good customer service and avoid ads except to promote games.
And the alternative is what? GOG?
In the end they are just a store front, so it isnt even like they are the only place to buy a product, yet somehow they are the only ones that seem to even give a shit about me playing games on Linux.
And then there are the employees. As far as we know (please if you work at valve say something) they are the highest compensated people in the it/game industry.
Yes, that’s why I simply reminded folks that they are a business and not your friend. So many people jumping to Valve’s defense over a perceived slight makes me feel the reminder is necessary.
Valve is legendary for being a good employer. I remember hearing about an employee who tried to tender a resignation when he was diagnosed with something chronic and debilitating. Can’t remember what. Anyway, point is, he decided he couldnt do his job, tried to resign, Newell refused to accept it and told him “your job at Valve is to get better. Come back when you’re better.” So the employee kept his pay, his benefits, all of it. And this was right around the release of HL2, so Valve was not yet the monopoly market maker it is today. Gabe Newell is a billionaire. He may or may not be a good person. But he is a forward thinker and a good boss.
Yeah there was some leaked payroll data around 2021, so its old info, but with bonuses, profit sharing and base salary the average compensation is something like 1.4 million per employee.
Way back when Gabe said he didnt want employees he wanted partners and they would share the success. I don’t know what its like today though.
That’s…that’s how a business should operate. Not chasing quarterly reviews and stock prices, but being in business as long as feasibly possible. Making products and/or services that meet the need of the market and continual improvement of them.
Instead most businesses, especially dealing with video games, are ran by short term thinking psychopaths who only care how a quarter looks and not the long term sustainability of the entire company. They saw a massive influx during the Covid lockdowns and didn’t realize that was temporary growth for a particular difficult time so keep chasing those kinds of profits with layoffs, studio closures.
Regardless, we should reward socially beneficial behavior. Billionaires are humans, and as such trainable through a correct reward structure. Harm reduction is important.
They are always donating outside the counry too, like great and all but youd think theyd help the country and ppl that made them rich instead of cutting down on employees and maximizing profits
I think Gabe acts more like the European rich. They are still pieces of shit, but they learned a long time ago to STFU about their money after a long history involving guillotines and the like that the U.S. hasn’t experienced to the same extent just yet.
Quite a lot of people thought Elon was a decent guy once upon a time.
I just think Gabe is a bit smarter in what he says and does publicly. Most extremely wealthy people seem to be higher in measures of narcissistic traits, self-entitlement, and egocentrism.
So we should hate him on the off chance he might one day be a douchebag?
Why take away a motivation to be a decent person by punishing them for it? I would say give them every opportunity to be decent human beings, dont pre-crime their ass because you have a prejudice against people in their social class.
Elon had a full time PR team that was pushing that image since he wanted to be known and popular, then he started posting stuff himself and we all saw the mask fall off. I don’t think Gabe has the same thing since he seems to try and stay out of the spotlight as much as possible.
Elon also had staff who described their actual job as essentially jangling keys in front of Elon, because he has a tendency to just randomly have an insane idea and decide everyone is doing that now.
So, they had to distract him from making too many stupid decisions, fucking up workflows and procesesses. He’s just an idiot, who’s probably mildly aspy/autistic, and that got PR transformed into ‘quirky genius’. But look into what happened at PayPal, or Tesla, anything. He’s incompetent at anything other than corporate ratfuckery, he’s never coded or designed anything novel or useful.
This uh… was from Tesla, a decade ago. Now of course, its all sycophants.
Compare that to Valve’s odd, flat-ish hierarchy, ‘just work on something cool and be useful’ work culture.
Gabe has been known to occasionally bring the hammer down, but the vast amount of Valve’s style, intentionally created and maintained by Gabe is… hands off. Hire the actual best, they’ll direct themselves, kind of thing.
Ain’t perfect, but… probably a lot less of an insane tyrannical bastard than Elon.
Gabe has a very good PR team. Don’t you remember all the “Gabe plays video games too” articles? Staying out of the spotlight isn’t the same as being a good person.
If he was a good person, he would be using his wealth to help society instead of owning more than a billion worth of boats. If he was a good person tbh, he’d close the spigot a bit so more profit would go to devs but he takes his fat cut like all the other store owners.
You see articles like these pop up every few months. The theme is usually along the lines of “he’s not just any billionaire. He is filthy rich but he is also just like you”. It’s transparent pandering imo.
I like Gabe to be clear but come on. Even if he just isn’t as shit as the others, the guy clearly knows to separate his public and private profiles. This guy knew that him simply hammering three times on something was going to be dissected by 1 million nerds and used to confirm a game that never came.
Let’s not forget that Valve essentially made a significant portion of their money selling gambling to kids. He’s “better than others” sure, that’s because the others are so subsumed by their narcissism, they’re doing Nazi salutes on podiums while gutting welfare and spouting stale memes. It’s not exactly a high bar to stumble over.
3/4 into my comment. My point is, there’s always going to be people here that downvote the guy. It’s like complaining about the weather. The “all billionaires are bad” types aren’t really interested in the one exception, if he can even be qualified as that. That’s all. Who cares, compliment him anyway and they can shit on billionaires. They aren’t even necessarily mutually exclusive imo.
Just gets annoying that people are ready to jump down your throat constantly because they are an extremist and they’re mad you’re not. Like I get why they say all billionaires are bad. Fine, but the world isn’t black and white. Some bad things are less bad. People need to understand this. Instead of getting enraged and accusing you of defending someone for saying “they’re not as bad as others” they could chill the fuck out about it at minimum. I’ve definitely blocked dozens of people for that kind of extremist behavior.
Sure I don’t disagree (and it’s a big problem for Lemmy) but it cuts both ways right? That’s the same as going “but I like cheeseburgers” in a vegan comm. Even if Gabe personally is good (I and a majority of people have no idea really) he still exist in a system where a select few are hoovering up disproportionate amounts of the wealth. That’s all, it doesn’t mean Gabe personally has to answer to capitalism. Just that unfortunately he exists in it and due to his position people aren’t gonna like him for it and I get that.
That said plenty of people claim to hate him for that but just hate him in general and would do so even if he wasn’t as wealthy, as an aside. I don’t think I saw many subs specifically for Linux hate on reddit when I was there but they exist here lol. Perks of the platform I guess.
That’s the same as going “but I like cheeseburgers” in a vegan comm.
No not really. Often what I’m talking about is someone asking why everyone hates Gabe then any explanation short of “he’s billionaire scum” is offensive to the types of users who make this place less pleasant. Nothing about Lemmy is inherently supposed to be raging zealots. Leftists can and should be civil and measured in the way they apply their ideas to society. Even if one personally thinks some ultra socialist world is the only acceptable one, it doesn’t help anyone to go around acting like everyone has to think just the same that regard.
The worst thing he seems to do so far is collecting the fastest and largest version of every type of vehicle. Obviously, there are always downsides, but could be tremendously worse.
All billionaires are the enemy. Valve is privately-owned, which means their evil is more long-term. You know the shit Sony’s getting flack for right now? Valve’s been doing it for over 20 years.
Valve pioneering into digital distribution in 2002 because they saw an opportunity to distribute in ways publishers hadn’t considered is not the same thing as Sony choosing to end physical media distribution in 2026 to kill off used games sales and control pricing.
It was made before HL2, and they supported physical console games (where pretty much all secondary sales were happening) for many years after (and including) HL2.
No, Valve is privately owned. That means the company does whatever the owners want it to do. Unlike public companies which can be sued by their own shareholders of they don’t pursue profits hard enough.
That’s not to say we should blindly idolize a billionaire, but he and in turn Valve can in fact do things that are friendly to consumers.
can be sued by their own shareholders if they don’t pursue profits hard enough
You can be sued by anyone for anything, but many actions are unlikely to be successful, including that one. In practice, company executives have extremely broad latitude to pursue profits in a way they see fit. If the make the argument in front of court that using Linux, having pretty good customer service, a UI that doesn’t suck donkey balls, and not monetising gambling addicts TOO much is the best path to long term profit, the court isn’t going to say, “you know what I know better than you”.
The shareholders can sue in situations where execs embezzle money, or deliberately fuck the company and leave evidence that they’ve done so, things like that. Not just because they think that the company should do something else.
What absolutely can and does happen is that the shareholders fire the CEO. But a public company doesn’t have to be structured so that that can happen.
Shame they aren’t doing those things. Steam doesn’t need 30% of the profits just for hosting the downloadable file.
Fact is we need some hard regulations for all digital stores, especially when it comes to gaming but we will never get them because a large number of consumers are dead set on defending one of those stores.
You can’t clamp down on Microsoft for stealing from their customers (both devs and gamers) while steam, who’s making even more profits, gets a free pass.
While having only one store front is convenient, but less competitive, it is not a fault of Valve. People defend Steam because it hasn’t screwed them over. Valve built good features that people like into their product, useful features for developers.
Epic Games failed because they set up a dysfunctional store, games were the same price for customers and they went aggressive with anti-consumer practices like free games and exclusives to attempt to secure a base. They offered nothing extra for the developers or customers except uncertainty, so why would anyone want to build a game library there? You can’t convince someone to inconvenience themselves for a worse product, just because “Steam takes 30%!!! We only take 12%!!”. Epic Store was so fucking shit, I would bet even if them savings were passed onto the customer, most would still pay more to stay on Steam.
Origin failed, UPlay failed, they all tried to profit as much as possible for themselves instead of building a good competitive product. The only other successful ones really (outside of key resellers) are GOG and itch.io, which have their own niche spaces.
Steam is a functional monopoly, but… I’d argue it didn’t get there by being underhanded, ratfucking competitors secretly or brazenly.
It just is better. It offers far more things, to both consumers and developers/sellers.
Think from an indie dev perspective. If your game is actually good? Finds a niche? You don’t need marketing, basically. You don’t need to budget that, Steam will do it for you. AAA gaming is basically like fucking movies at this point, sometjing like 1/3 the budget goes toward building the hype train, not the product.
Attempts to outdo or directly compete with Steam have just actually been comically incompetent, from at least my own business analyst perspective.
Yeah, it has contract terms it enforces on sellers, but imo, they’re far less restrictive than say, platform/marketfront exclusivity, as had long been the norm in the video game industry.
Room for improvement? Absolutely. Functionally gambling on in game items, children doing this, is a legitimate problem. Afaik the court case with NY is still ongoing, will be interested to see how that pans out.
The other stores aren’t the bar though. Epic being shit doesn’t make Steam a saint. I also don’t think giving free games is anti consumer. Exclusives yes but not the free games.
Steam is under multiple lawsuits, including one because they threaten devs with delisting if they put their game up for cheaper on other stores (this is separate from their steam key rule).
I think they have a massive ad campaign not only to make themselves look good but also to make the competition look bad tbh. I see a lot of seo work being done for instance. I’m guessing the budget is massive.
Steam also popularized DRM and not owning your games. It’s a money printing machine tbh. They have like 300 employees lol.
If that’s a nit, and not a main point, then why is that first line even there? Why mention profits again in the last line if the point is just “We should regulate them more!” When did directly disagreeing with a statement become a “nit” to launch a completely different main point?
And what do you mean “pretend it isn’t their main product”? I’m literally telling you that Steam does more than you’re saying it does, which is the whole basis of your disagreement with the OP above. I am sticking to the product in question. The only way to think I’m avoiding talking about Steam is if you really don’t know what Steam does beyond offering a place to download games, and aren’t aware of any of its features.
Whatever they are doing isn’t worth close to what they are charging if gaben can spend 1 000 000 000 dollars on boats.
But yes, they mostly host downloadable content that they then charge 30% commission fee for whenever someone buys it. That’s the lion share of their business. What are you even getting at?
I mention profits because it is about profits. The profit they are stealing from devs by colluding with other stores and offering a simple service at a massive cost. The profits they make that led to gaben being a billionaire. The disgusting profits clearly show we need regulations. Billionaires shouldn’t exist even if they have a marketing team telling you this one is different.
Defend Bezos and Musk next please. It’s the same arguments. Amazon isn’t only a drop shipping company either, you know.
What I am getting at is that you are using another billionaire’s disingenuous talking points uncritically while thinking you’re being anti-billionaire. You heard something that sounded good but didn’t verify or research any of it.
This whole idea of “Steam takes 30%, that’s terrible!” is from Tim Sweeney’s anti-Steam PR campaign. The 30% cut was always the standard retail cut, and has been part of every retail store until EGS made a big thing about their lower amount and their disingenuous PR campaign that suggested that only Steam was taking an exorbitant cut. The fact is that all stores took that same standard retail cut. Steam makes a bajillion dollars more than everyone else just from the sheer volume of sales they do. The idea that they make all this money because they take a bigger retail cut is a lie.
And, in case this hasn’t been made clear enough to you yet: you don’t seem to know what Steam is if you think it’s only a service to download games and doesn’t offer anything else to users. It has a huge amount of features for users, games, and communities beyond just that, far more than another other retailer or store is offering. It is completely disingenuous to pretend like Steam does none of these to force the argument that they are just taking money and offering the most basic of a singular service. So if you want to argue that Steam specifically doesn’t deserve the 30% cut that every retailer takes, then you’ll need to demonstrate how Steam offers less than every other retailer. If this requires ignoring all the features and advancements Valve and Steam have done, then that really shows the quality of that statement, doesn’t it?
Taking a step back to assess situations fairly and accurately isn’t a defense of anything. There’s so much to criticize Valve and Steam for if you took the time to be informed, most notably with the lootboxes and gambling aspects (which is also where much of its profits come from). So if you’re really as anti-billionaire as you claim to be, are you going to go and examine these assumptions you held and figure out why you got misled so deeply by another billionaire, and make sure it doesn’t happen again?
It’s the standard because of the collusion not because of the cost. All game stores make bajillions of dollars, not only steam. The only difference is how the profit is shared (stock holders vs a few individuals). Please don’t start talking about the “standard retail cut” as well, as if physical products can be treated the same as digital ones. Steam isn’t running close to it’s cost, even if you pile on everything they do.
I know what steam is, but it’s not enough to make me lick a billionaires boot. Steam being slightly better than other stores does not justify their collusion, soft monopoly and anti consumer businesses (like threatening to delist games if the dev puts it for cheaper somewhere else). Please name the feature you think is worth giving a billion dollars to one guy? Is it having a friends list?
You are nitpicking one thing and ignoring the rest.
The other game stores aren’t the bar, it’s all rotten. And it will stay rotten if everyone keeps thinking the best looking rotting fruit deserves to be defended. Even if you lick Gabens sweaty feet, he still won’t let you own your games.
We need regulations not pathetic billionaire worship.
So yes, steam is better than Xbox but it isn’t good enough. Polished feces are still feces. Quality and price of games is directly affected by these vampiric mega corps taking 1/3 of the profits to buy boats. Grow up and stop being part of the problem.
I will settle for a company who’s demonstrated long term strategy is mostly in line with my interests. It’s not perfect, but I’ll take “morale because it’s profitable” over “enshitifcation for a quick profit”
friendly reminder that valve is not your friend. they operate the way they do because that’s their business strategy to make the most money long term.
I like steam I send them a christmas card every year with my life updates.
Fairly happy to find a business that wants to make money long term. Pretty rare these days. I would say thats a good thing, wouldnt you?
How do they do it? Looks like expanding into the open hardware space, the open source space, have good customer service and avoid ads except to promote games.
And the alternative is what? GOG?
In the end they are just a store front, so it isnt even like they are the only place to buy a product, yet somehow they are the only ones that seem to even give a shit about me playing games on Linux.
And then there are the employees. As far as we know (please if you work at valve say something) they are the highest compensated people in the it/game industry.
Yes, that’s why I simply reminded folks that they are a business and not your friend. So many people jumping to Valve’s defense over a perceived slight makes me feel the reminder is necessary.
Valve is legendary for being a good employer. I remember hearing about an employee who tried to tender a resignation when he was diagnosed with something chronic and debilitating. Can’t remember what. Anyway, point is, he decided he couldnt do his job, tried to resign, Newell refused to accept it and told him “your job at Valve is to get better. Come back when you’re better.” So the employee kept his pay, his benefits, all of it. And this was right around the release of HL2, so Valve was not yet the monopoly market maker it is today. Gabe Newell is a billionaire. He may or may not be a good person. But he is a forward thinker and a good boss.
Yeah there was some leaked payroll data around 2021, so its old info, but with bonuses, profit sharing and base salary the average compensation is something like 1.4 million per employee.
Way back when Gabe said he didnt want employees he wanted partners and they would share the success. I don’t know what its like today though.
That’s…that’s how a business should operate. Not chasing quarterly reviews and stock prices, but being in business as long as feasibly possible. Making products and/or services that meet the need of the market and continual improvement of them.
Instead most businesses, especially dealing with video games, are ran by short term thinking psychopaths who only care how a quarter looks and not the long term sustainability of the entire company. They saw a massive influx during the Covid lockdowns and didn’t realize that was temporary growth for a particular difficult time so keep chasing those kinds of profits with layoffs, studio closures.
Yeah, og only more companies thought that way. Most seem to only care about making money in the short term.
No corporation or billionaire is your friend. No matter how nice they appear just because the rest are genocidal sociopaths.
Not all of them are necessarily evil either, but regardless of their intentions, they’re almost always a net loss for society.
Regardless, we should reward socially beneficial behavior. Billionaires are humans, and as such trainable through a correct reward structure. Harm reduction is important.
They deserve negative reinforcement though. “Rewarding billionaires” for anything feels very wrong, regardless of the ends.
Do you want to punish billionaires for their wealth hoarding sociopathy or to make things better? Both is ideal, but one matters more than the other.
Ppl used to worship billionaires, musk, gates, etc. were very popular until recently, musk killed his reputation overtime by not shutting up lol
They are always donating outside the counry too, like great and all but youd think theyd help the country and ppl that made them rich instead of cutting down on employees and maximizing profits
Pavlov has upvoted your comment
But remember the CIA is TOTALLY your friend!
~unless you are a third world country. Terms and conditions may apply~
You are not my friend, doesn’t mean you are my enemy either.
I think Gabe acts more like the European rich. They are still pieces of shit, but they learned a long time ago to STFU about their money after a long history involving guillotines and the like that the U.S. hasn’t experienced to the same extent just yet.
He’s also not an enemy though. For an extremely wealthy person he’s a decent guy imo. Then again, I don’t know everything about him
Quite a lot of people thought Elon was a decent guy once upon a time.
I just think Gabe is a bit smarter in what he says and does publicly. Most extremely wealthy people seem to be higher in measures of narcissistic traits, self-entitlement, and egocentrism.
So we should hate him on the off chance he might one day be a douchebag?
Why take away a motivation to be a decent person by punishing them for it? I would say give them every opportunity to be decent human beings, dont pre-crime their ass because you have a prejudice against people in their social class.
Elon had a full time PR team that was pushing that image since he wanted to be known and popular, then he started posting stuff himself and we all saw the mask fall off. I don’t think Gabe has the same thing since he seems to try and stay out of the spotlight as much as possible.
Elon also had staff who described their actual job as essentially jangling keys in front of Elon, because he has a tendency to just randomly have an insane idea and decide everyone is doing that now.
So, they had to distract him from making too many stupid decisions, fucking up workflows and procesesses. He’s just an idiot, who’s probably mildly aspy/autistic, and that got PR transformed into ‘quirky genius’. But look into what happened at PayPal, or Tesla, anything. He’s incompetent at anything other than corporate ratfuckery, he’s never coded or designed anything novel or useful.
This uh… was from Tesla, a decade ago. Now of course, its all sycophants.
Compare that to Valve’s odd, flat-ish hierarchy, ‘just work on something cool and be useful’ work culture.
Gabe has been known to occasionally bring the hammer down, but the vast amount of Valve’s style, intentionally created and maintained by Gabe is… hands off. Hire the actual best, they’ll direct themselves, kind of thing.
Ain’t perfect, but… probably a lot less of an insane tyrannical bastard than Elon.
Gabe has a very good PR team. Don’t you remember all the “Gabe plays video games too” articles? Staying out of the spotlight isn’t the same as being a good person.
If he was a good person, he would be using his wealth to help society instead of owning more than a billion worth of boats. If he was a good person tbh, he’d close the spigot a bit so more profit would go to devs but he takes his fat cut like all the other store owners.
I don’t. Literally the first I’m hearing of it.
You see articles like these pop up every few months. The theme is usually along the lines of “he’s not just any billionaire. He is filthy rich but he is also just like you”. It’s transparent pandering imo.
Fair points. Let’s hope he doesn’t lose his marbles
I never thought Elon was a decent guy, but that’s anecdotal.
Literally what capitalism rewards the most as they’re the most willing to exploit.
Oh man you’re about to get attacked for this one. I’ve been piled on massively for simply suggesting he was better than others.
I like Gabe to be clear but come on. Even if he just isn’t as shit as the others, the guy clearly knows to separate his public and private profiles. This guy knew that him simply hammering three times on something was going to be dissected by 1 million nerds and used to confirm a game that never came.
Let’s not forget that Valve essentially made a significant portion of their money selling gambling to kids. He’s “better than others” sure, that’s because the others are so subsumed by their narcissism, they’re doing Nazi salutes on podiums while gutting welfare and spouting stale memes. It’s not exactly a high bar to stumble over.
Was more than enough.
3/4 into my comment. My point is, there’s always going to be people here that downvote the guy. It’s like complaining about the weather. The “all billionaires are bad” types aren’t really interested in the one exception, if he can even be qualified as that. That’s all. Who cares, compliment him anyway and they can shit on billionaires. They aren’t even necessarily mutually exclusive imo.
Just gets annoying that people are ready to jump down your throat constantly because they are an extremist and they’re mad you’re not. Like I get why they say all billionaires are bad. Fine, but the world isn’t black and white. Some bad things are less bad. People need to understand this. Instead of getting enraged and accusing you of defending someone for saying “they’re not as bad as others” they could chill the fuck out about it at minimum. I’ve definitely blocked dozens of people for that kind of extremist behavior.
Sure I don’t disagree (and it’s a big problem for Lemmy) but it cuts both ways right? That’s the same as going “but I like cheeseburgers” in a vegan comm. Even if Gabe personally is good (I and a majority of people have no idea really) he still exist in a system where a select few are hoovering up disproportionate amounts of the wealth. That’s all, it doesn’t mean Gabe personally has to answer to capitalism. Just that unfortunately he exists in it and due to his position people aren’t gonna like him for it and I get that.
That said plenty of people claim to hate him for that but just hate him in general and would do so even if he wasn’t as wealthy, as an aside. I don’t think I saw many subs specifically for Linux hate on reddit when I was there but they exist here lol. Perks of the platform I guess.
No not really. Often what I’m talking about is someone asking why everyone hates Gabe then any explanation short of “he’s billionaire scum” is offensive to the types of users who make this place less pleasant. Nothing about Lemmy is inherently supposed to be raging zealots. Leftists can and should be civil and measured in the way they apply their ideas to society. Even if one personally thinks some ultra socialist world is the only acceptable one, it doesn’t help anyone to go around acting like everyone has to think just the same that regard.
And on top of that, Steam is just better than its competitors. As a normal consumer who enjoys decent deals, Steam is pretty great.
Eh, decent guys don’t need that many boats
The worst thing he seems to do so far is collecting the fastest and largest version of every type of vehicle. Obviously, there are always downsides, but could be tremendously worse.
All billionaires are the enemy. Valve is privately-owned, which means their evil is more long-term. You know the shit Sony’s getting flack for right now? Valve’s been doing it for over 20 years.
Valve pioneering into digital distribution in 2002 because they saw an opportunity to distribute in ways publishers hadn’t considered is not the same thing as Sony choosing to end physical media distribution in 2026 to kill off used games sales and control pricing.
Steam was created specifically to kill any secondary sales of HL2.
It was made before HL2, and they supported physical console games (where pretty much all secondary sales were happening) for many years after (and including) HL2.
His wealth is stolen. He is the enemy.
No, Valve is privately owned. That means the company does whatever the owners want it to do. Unlike public companies which can be sued by their own shareholders of they don’t pursue profits hard enough.
That’s not to say we should blindly idolize a billionaire, but he and in turn Valve can in fact do things that are friendly to consumers.
You can be sued by anyone for anything, but many actions are unlikely to be successful, including that one. In practice, company executives have extremely broad latitude to pursue profits in a way they see fit. If the make the argument in front of court that using Linux, having pretty good customer service, a UI that doesn’t suck donkey balls, and not monetising gambling addicts TOO much is the best path to long term profit, the court isn’t going to say, “you know what I know better than you”.
The shareholders can sue in situations where execs embezzle money, or deliberately fuck the company and leave evidence that they’ve done so, things like that. Not just because they think that the company should do something else.
What absolutely can and does happen is that the shareholders fire the CEO. But a public company doesn’t have to be structured so that that can happen.
Shame they aren’t doing those things. Steam doesn’t need 30% of the profits just for hosting the downloadable file.
Fact is we need some hard regulations for all digital stores, especially when it comes to gaming but we will never get them because a large number of consumers are dead set on defending one of those stores.
You can’t clamp down on Microsoft for stealing from their customers (both devs and gamers) while steam, who’s making even more profits, gets a free pass.
While having only one store front is convenient, but less competitive, it is not a fault of Valve. People defend Steam because it hasn’t screwed them over. Valve built good features that people like into their product, useful features for developers.
Epic Games failed because they set up a dysfunctional store, games were the same price for customers and they went aggressive with anti-consumer practices like free games and exclusives to attempt to secure a base. They offered nothing extra for the developers or customers except uncertainty, so why would anyone want to build a game library there? You can’t convince someone to inconvenience themselves for a worse product, just because “Steam takes 30%!!! We only take 12%!!”. Epic Store was so fucking shit, I would bet even if them savings were passed onto the customer, most would still pay more to stay on Steam.
Origin failed, UPlay failed, they all tried to profit as much as possible for themselves instead of building a good competitive product. The only other successful ones really (outside of key resellers) are GOG and itch.io, which have their own niche spaces.
Yep.
Steam is a functional monopoly, but… I’d argue it didn’t get there by being underhanded, ratfucking competitors secretly or brazenly.
It just is better. It offers far more things, to both consumers and developers/sellers.
Think from an indie dev perspective. If your game is actually good? Finds a niche? You don’t need marketing, basically. You don’t need to budget that, Steam will do it for you. AAA gaming is basically like fucking movies at this point, sometjing like 1/3 the budget goes toward building the hype train, not the product.
Attempts to outdo or directly compete with Steam have just actually been comically incompetent, from at least my own business analyst perspective.
Yeah, it has contract terms it enforces on sellers, but imo, they’re far less restrictive than say, platform/marketfront exclusivity, as had long been the norm in the video game industry.
Room for improvement? Absolutely. Functionally gambling on in game items, children doing this, is a legitimate problem. Afaik the court case with NY is still ongoing, will be interested to see how that pans out.
The other stores aren’t the bar though. Epic being shit doesn’t make Steam a saint. I also don’t think giving free games is anti consumer. Exclusives yes but not the free games.
Steam is under multiple lawsuits, including one because they threaten devs with delisting if they put their game up for cheaper on other stores (this is separate from their steam key rule).
I think they have a massive ad campaign not only to make themselves look good but also to make the competition look bad tbh. I see a lot of seo work being done for instance. I’m guessing the budget is massive.
Steam also popularized DRM and not owning your games. It’s a money printing machine tbh. They have like 300 employees lol.
Is it defending a store to point out that your description of it only hosting downloadable files and nothing else is very incorrect?
Yes because it’s nitpicking and ignores the point. Are we going to pretend it isn’t their main product, and that by far?
If that’s a nit, and not a main point, then why is that first line even there? Why mention profits again in the last line if the point is just “We should regulate them more!” When did directly disagreeing with a statement become a “nit” to launch a completely different main point?
And what do you mean “pretend it isn’t their main product”? I’m literally telling you that Steam does more than you’re saying it does, which is the whole basis of your disagreement with the OP above. I am sticking to the product in question. The only way to think I’m avoiding talking about Steam is if you really don’t know what Steam does beyond offering a place to download games, and aren’t aware of any of its features.
Whatever they are doing isn’t worth close to what they are charging if gaben can spend 1 000 000 000 dollars on boats.
But yes, they mostly host downloadable content that they then charge 30% commission fee for whenever someone buys it. That’s the lion share of their business. What are you even getting at?
I mention profits because it is about profits. The profit they are stealing from devs by colluding with other stores and offering a simple service at a massive cost. The profits they make that led to gaben being a billionaire. The disgusting profits clearly show we need regulations. Billionaires shouldn’t exist even if they have a marketing team telling you this one is different.
Defend Bezos and Musk next please. It’s the same arguments. Amazon isn’t only a drop shipping company either, you know.
What I am getting at is that you are using another billionaire’s disingenuous talking points uncritically while thinking you’re being anti-billionaire. You heard something that sounded good but didn’t verify or research any of it.
This whole idea of “Steam takes 30%, that’s terrible!” is from Tim Sweeney’s anti-Steam PR campaign. The 30% cut was always the standard retail cut, and has been part of every retail store until EGS made a big thing about their lower amount and their disingenuous PR campaign that suggested that only Steam was taking an exorbitant cut. The fact is that all stores took that same standard retail cut. Steam makes a bajillion dollars more than everyone else just from the sheer volume of sales they do. The idea that they make all this money because they take a bigger retail cut is a lie.
And, in case this hasn’t been made clear enough to you yet: you don’t seem to know what Steam is if you think it’s only a service to download games and doesn’t offer anything else to users. It has a huge amount of features for users, games, and communities beyond just that, far more than another other retailer or store is offering. It is completely disingenuous to pretend like Steam does none of these to force the argument that they are just taking money and offering the most basic of a singular service. So if you want to argue that Steam specifically doesn’t deserve the 30% cut that every retailer takes, then you’ll need to demonstrate how Steam offers less than every other retailer. If this requires ignoring all the features and advancements Valve and Steam have done, then that really shows the quality of that statement, doesn’t it?
Taking a step back to assess situations fairly and accurately isn’t a defense of anything. There’s so much to criticize Valve and Steam for if you took the time to be informed, most notably with the lootboxes and gambling aspects (which is also where much of its profits come from). So if you’re really as anti-billionaire as you claim to be, are you going to go and examine these assumptions you held and figure out why you got misled so deeply by another billionaire, and make sure it doesn’t happen again?
You aren’t actually reading what I’m writing lol.
It’s the standard because of the collusion not because of the cost. All game stores make bajillions of dollars, not only steam. The only difference is how the profit is shared (stock holders vs a few individuals). Please don’t start talking about the “standard retail cut” as well, as if physical products can be treated the same as digital ones. Steam isn’t running close to it’s cost, even if you pile on everything they do.
I know what steam is, but it’s not enough to make me lick a billionaires boot. Steam being slightly better than other stores does not justify their collusion, soft monopoly and anti consumer businesses (like threatening to delist games if the dev puts it for cheaper somewhere else). Please name the feature you think is worth giving a billion dollars to one guy? Is it having a friends list?
You are nitpicking one thing and ignoring the rest.
The other game stores aren’t the bar, it’s all rotten. And it will stay rotten if everyone keeps thinking the best looking rotting fruit deserves to be defended. Even if you lick Gabens sweaty feet, he still won’t let you own your games.
We need regulations not pathetic billionaire worship.
So yes, steam is better than Xbox but it isn’t good enough. Polished feces are still feces. Quality and price of games is directly affected by these vampiric mega corps taking 1/3 of the profits to buy boats. Grow up and stop being part of the problem.
I will settle for a company who’s demonstrated long term strategy is mostly in line with my interests. It’s not perfect, but I’ll take “morale because it’s profitable” over “enshitifcation for a quick profit”
that’s why i said friendly reminder and not “boycott valve”
Fair, fair.
Corporations are not your friends. They may do something you like but will shit on you if it benefits them.
I never thought he was my friend. The CEO being my friend is not a requirement for running a company I don’t mind buying from.
Do you refuse to buy toilet paper because no TP company CEO is your friend either?
when did i say never buy anything from valve?
Yeah you’re right 😔 why can’t they be motivated by morals and social high standings like people
Fuck capitalism