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Jesus fucking Christ in blue skirt, y’all have your nose full of Gabe’s juice gagging him so much.
I truly enjoy all of you morons cicle jerking “eat the rich” but bending over Valve and paying for the lube.
“But think of how much he did for Linux gnagnagna”. Fuck that shit. Wake the fuck up. Torvalds does not own a 500 millions yacht.
Lemmy is truly going full retard and speedrunning Reddit clusterfuck as fast as possible.
While the actual monopolies actively making the world a significantly worse place keep getting away.
What maintains Steam’s dominant market position is user lock in, not any policy they enforce or any monopoly laws they violate. The only thing that would break user lock in would be allowing migration of licenses for games between platforms, and making friend/multiplayer/mod-management systems interoperable across platforms.
Valve has made no effort to implement these kinds of systems. BUT NETHER HAS ANYONE ELSE. (Well except gog and DRM free games, but that’s only part of the issue.)
The fact that one privately owned company has such huge control of the industry is a huge risk, undeniably. But breaking up valve wouldn’t solve the problem, it would just let someone else take their place.
I see 2 main points against steam in this comment section.
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Steam is doing price fixing for games: False, this accusation came from Epic Games CEO, but the actual steam policy only blocks the selling of steam keys for a lower price, not the game itself.
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Steam is a monopoly and monopolies are bad: I agree that monopolies are bad, but in my opinion only if they take action to harm the user and the market. From my knowledge steam is pretty known as being pro customer and haven’t taken any monopolistic actions to block other stores from growing.
The reason why the games are not usually cheaper on other platforms is because publishers practice standard prices, so the game publishers take the extra profits from a lower store cut.
I am not trying to be a fanboy, I am just trying to look objectively at the facts, if someone can prove me wrong, I am willing to change my mind.
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move to linux really paying off then
Remember when steam introduced the 2h refund policy out of their own volition rather than being forced by multiple governments? Yeah me neither.
These comments…
Some day, Steam is going to enshittify, eat game devs for breakfast, and all these Steam fans will wonder how anyone could have possibly seen this coming.
Kind of like a certain online bookstore named after a river.
Not that I don’t enjoy Steam. But I trust them as much as any corporation: not at all.
Hearing those arguments for how many years now? Right …
The day Gabe is bo longer there things may get ugly, may.
But, Valve is not publicly traded, or has to cater to shareholders in any way. That is the reason they are still who they are.
They run a good service platform and aren’t as greedy as they could be, but they’re still not safe.
Use them, but no fangirling. They’re a business.
I’d be completely in agreement of what you are saying if it wasn’t for the fact that there are so many people acting like Steam is the worst platform in existence every time they get brought up. People are awfully quick to suck Tim Sweeney off for only charging 12% and fill up the comments with whatever the opposite of “fangirling” is.
Just ignore those people and keep the shilling to a min, that’s all I’m saying. No they’re not the worst thing ever, they’re actually pretty good in a lot of ways, but they are a business and they do have a bit of a monopoly going on.
They get a free game and they turn into $2 hookers over it man. It’s insane.
Yeah, that’s going too far, but I understand the reaction to fanning over Valve.
There are a bazillion historical examples of why one should use, not trust, big businesses. They are entities to make transaction with, not people, and they will tighten the screws even if it takes decades.
This is doubly true in the software business.
And if the Valve superfans look at the world in 2026 and somehow don’t see that, I honestly don’t know what to tell them. They’re in such a completely different world than me I don’t know where to start.
Gabe still owns Valve not shareholders. It’s after he dies that gets me worried simply because he’s way older than me. I buy GOG these days but mainly because Valve is American and I don’t trust their government to not interfere long term with what Valve can and cannot do or host. The DRM is less of a pain point because I’m a skilled pirate and data hoarder.
So… what? Hate them in advance, so that if they ever turn evil we’d be prepared?
Be prepared.
Don’t hate, but don’t trust Valve. Treat your Steam library like you don’t own it, and it could be enshittified at any time, because you don’t, and it could.
In practice, prioritize DRM-free stores when convenient. Or better yet, 1st party game dev stores. Archive any games or saves you actually want to go back to, just in case. Game like your Steam client install could require a subscription at a moment’s notice.
Exactly. And unlike many other companies there isn’t even any indication they would want to enshittify anyways. Why would they destroy the foundation of their platform? They have actual paying customers paying the bills, not some force-feed ad slop machine.
Well this is just naive. Steam will die, too.
Kinda presumptuous to call it naive when I never said Steam couldn’t ever die, nor do I believe so. I’m saying that unlike other platforms that enshittify, paying customers hold the final say for Steam. Paying customers are why companies come to Steam, paying customers will not spend money on Steam if they even get close to enshittifying. There is no multi billion dollar ad industry in between that pays the bills, that dictates the enshittification because it demands advertisements be shoved down people’s throats.
What do you think will happen when Gabe dies?
Other people will take his place. And you can be sure there are some greedy fucks pining for his role.
Companies do not have to indicate when they are going to enshitify. It can and has happened over night.
You are right, when Gabe dies, that will be a huge point of uncertainty where people’s trust into Steam will need to be re-established to keep going as it currently is. But that’s a point aside.
Companies do not have to indicate when they are going to enshitify. It can and has happened over night.
It can happen, but it’s not the norm by far. Reputation is still to some companies their key indicator of profitability, and Steam is certainly one of those. By that logic you should at any time be expecting loot boxes instead of products in your supermarket tomorrow, but that’s kind of ridiculous because everyone would hop to a competitor immediately, assuming no foul play. As I mentioned, paying customers hold a firm grasp of the value of Steam. If the people stop coming to Steam, the companies do too, and Steam dies.
They already take 30% on each game. It’s huge, considering they didn’t spent a dime on these games. That means they will take most of the profit margin on a game, if any, while a studio has to pay for dozens or hundreds of employees, tons of hardware, workspaces, etc.
Do You have any idea what the hosting infrastructure, steam works, and traffic costs?
Also, valve is giving massive contributions to open source from those 30%
Do You have any idea what the hosting infrastructure, steam works, and traffic costs?
Yeah, not 30% of all PC games. It’s how they turn out absurd profit.
Never said that. But what is better for the dev? Using those services or run their own?
And I am fine with Valve making absurd profits, after all, they have put at least 500.000.000 USD into open source (Around 100-200 external oss devs on payroll for projects like Mesa, SDL,…).
Will I leave steam and call valve out if they get toxic? Yes! Are they evil or the enemy right now? To the contrary.
What would be better for the dev is a 9% platform cut and just a slightly smaller megayacht for Gabe.
Using those services or run their own?
If they could have still images and text on the Steam store and a link to their external site for everything else, it’d by far be running their own.
It’s the exposure that Steam has an effective monopoly on.
Not everything has to be black and white. I appreciate Steam, but 30% is absurd. They’re absolutely raising the price of games and taking money away from developers.
GOG takes 30%, most publishers take 30 to 50%, apple app store takes 30%, as does Google.
Is this to high? Maybe, I don’t publish games. But at least it is not absurd in means of industry standards :(
GOG’s fee is flexible, as are publisher contracts, which have no relevance to the discussion, as it’s in addition to store fees and involves major investments. Google is changing its fee to 20%. Epic’s is currently 0%. Microsoft Store’s is 12%, itch’s is adjustable. In the PC market, Valve is pretty much the main outlier at this point.
With Amazon and eBay fees for physical products being nearly that high it just doesn’t feel that absurd to me.
Games haven’t risen in price, ever. Gamers should be paying $100+ for most games now. That’s the truth. The amount of man hours, time, etc etc to make a game? Fuck that no wonder why games suck now! I’m a full time 3D artist and I would absolutely never put a game out unless it was a passion project because gamers don’t want to pay what these things are worth anymore!
Why do you think there’s so much bullshit nickle and diming in this industry? Because they can’t raise the fucking price! So they found the worst way to do it through login incentives, monthly seasons, and garbage dlc that should have been in the game to begin with.
The amount of man hours, time, etc etc to make a game? Fuck that
And 30% of the purchase price doesn’t go to those people. It goes to Gabe’s yacht.
It’s the exposure that Steam has an effective monopoly on.
See OP image. It’s an effective monopoly because the competition have dumped billions into squandering decades of consumer goodwill.
That absurd profit is really from that digital trinket store/gambling bs.
30% for a digital storefront? Cheap for what they provide. Y’all really need to understand how bad it is out here. Go look at what Amazon takes from authors. eBay takes 30% from me sometimes! That’s a real physical product i have to ship!
30% to valve for what they offer? Yes, absolutely a good fucking deal. They will market my game and make it look as best it can on their storefront. That is absolutely worth the cost.
So, Apple and other companies that charge 30% to host apps: BAD
Steam changes 30% to host games: GOOD
I’m not saying this is your argument, necessarily, but it’s funny to hear that “30% is good actually!” in the tech space because the last few years it’s been “Apple and others who charge 30% are taking too much! All they do is host and manage the traffic for apps!”
And I’m not trying to say Apple is good or anything. It’s just funny.
So you’re not really saying anything at all then. Got it
Then you need to read better.
They are calling out the hypocrisy of those criticizing Apple but worshiping Valve using the same argument for both.
Exactly.
No one needs to worship Steam. Gabe will never let you on one of his 50 yachts.
Valve is one of the most profitable company in the world.
I mean, just look at this thread and see how much free propaganda they get from gamers. That’s a lot of free labour just to defend a billionaire that profits from gambling for kids.
What exactly is this the answer to?
Yes, they make a shit load of money. But assuming you want to distribute a game directly, how much of would that cost you, and let’s ignore the whole visibility shit for a second.
Honestly not that much. The biggest thing Valve brings to the table is advertising and access to customers.
Hosting doesn’t cost that much. If you were that desperate for bandwidth (no one is), torrents exist as an option. Blizzard used to have torrents built into their downloader.
The infrastructure is a nice afterthought.
My day job is designing complex IT platforms.
And the cost goes massive down with size.
So. If your game sells badly, you will most likely spend more. Oney in hosting and distribution then you would make profit.
For example, assume your game has around 50gb. You sell 100 copies of it. You can easily calculate 1-2$ per download.
Add your own personal on top of it, someone has to run that stuff, and licensing and more for statistics tooling and more.
Platforms like valve allow indie devs and small studios to avoid all those costs upfront.
“Not that much” depends on the view
You can litteraly watch 45gb movie instantly over torrent these days.
Because p2p … How exactly does this apply to content distribution? Torrents are not always a reliable option…
There’s tons of options to host and share files, torrents are just one.
Steam, like spotify and other platforms is just convenient, and in this era of me, myself and I, it’s only thing most people care about.
Anyway, I’m done with the steam fanboys and their cognitive dissonance. Just remember you are directly creating the enshitifcation of gaming, because at the rate studios are firing people, you will soon enjoy only AI stuff, the only way to make profit from games.
Everyone in here is just choosing a different flavor of billionaire to get behind, though.
Epic is not a co-op, lol.
They help market the game as well on their storefront, and im sure all the analytics around the steam pages for the game.
They could just let you rot in obscurity.
They provide forums and a place for mods to work as well.
They provide chat/friends
There definitely is some amount of expenditure by valve. I don’t know if its 30% worth. For multiplayer games they provide a server/client DDOS protection and traffic optomization service though it is opt in by the developer through an api. The other option for this tends to be a “contact sales” priced product from cloudflare. There is also some of proton’s development, some linux graphics driver work, and workshop support though I suspect hosting and content moderation expenditure there is fairly minimal.
They spend money on each game uploaded to their store. How could you seriously think they aren’t spending any money?
You’re more making an argument that games are too cheap now.
You don’t think valve has employees and hardware to maintain?
Brick and mortar stores take 50% of revenue usually. The profit margin for the manufacturer applies after that
You comparing a store with a digital storefront? Anyway enjoy the library you don’t own, at best it will die with you because you can’t even transfer it, that’s if steam doesn’t change their buisness model for whatever reason.
Those studios are paying Valve how much for tailored marketing throughout the game’s lifespan?
30% of all their revenue throughout their entire lifespan.
Precisely.
30% is the industry standard though, and Valve’s contributions of distribution and discovery infrastructure, its audience, and expanding hardware initiatives are not nothing. If you’re not pricing a game to give yourself a healthy margin within the 70% or your development model doesn’t make that viable, that’s really on you.
Industry standard doesn’t mean reasonable. It’s renter class bullshit, profiting off of other’s labor. Pretending creating a distribution and discovery platform is seriously deserving of 30% of the value of the hard work of game devs is not reasonable. If it was reasonable, gabe wouldn’t be a billionaire.
I never called it reasonable. I just don’t think it’s especially egregious. Honestly, I would price the value of Valve’s contribution (which is definitely not zero) at maybe 15% to 20%, but that’s just a gut feeling.
I mean, Spotify’s model is the industry standard, and it still suck big time and doesn’t give a shit about artists.
Anyway if I’ve learn anything over the past 10 years, it’s that it would probably be easier to convince a room full of maga to vote for Hillary Clinton than the average gamer to admit that steam sucks. So keep kissing this billionaire’s ass because he really does care about you, and remember Ubisoft and Epic (12% cut) bad.
I’m not saying the standard doesn’t suck, just taking issue with the implication that anyone using it is uniquely bad to do so.
But yeah, you’re right that getting me to admit Steam (overall) sucks would be nigh impossible. I genuinely don’t believe it does, so there’s nothing to admit. Maybe you could convince me to lie about it though? Lol.
I do admit there’s a few places it sucks, the gambling stuff being the biggest, but their positives eclipse those for me. I also acknowledge I’m in a privileged position being able to enjoy Valve’s efforts in VR, Linux compatibility, etc. directly and that I might have different opinions if I was on the outside looking in. I imagine that’s not quite the admission you want though.
I’m not gonna say Steam sucks. It’s a nice organizational tool that enforces some standards.
I’d rather have a drm free game that’s 20% cheaper though. The devs can pocket the other 10%.
The “30% is the industry standard” claim is not even true anymore. Epic currently takes 0% to expand its catalog, though from what I remember, it estimated that it needs to take 7% or so to be profitable. Microsoft takes 12%. Itch allows to adjust. GOG’s fee varies from deal to deal. Ubisoft (and EA) no longer sell third-party games, so they’re out of scope here.
The only way I’ve seen people try to counter this is by referring to the mobile and console store fees, but going by the Epic v. Google trial where the jury was asked to define the market and defined it as Android, there’s just no way that argument would hold water. Still, console manufacturers produce at a loss, so they need to make up for that. In the mobile market, Google is already changing its fee to be 20% or less.
Edit: lawsuit->trial
Yea we are talking about platforms that sell vs platforms that are desperate to sell.
Do you buy games from fucking Microsoft of all companies?!
It’s a joke to think that Microsoft is doing this for any other reason besides they have to to trick idiots into investing into their platform (again after giving it up the first fucking time!)
Gog and itch are fine but itch is definitely a particular gamer market. Gog is easier to use for pirated games.
Challenging biased views, half truths, or having your own opinions isn’t kissing some billionaire’s ass. I don’t want billionaire’s to exist. Gabe shouldn’t need to be a billionaire. But all of this is absofuckinglutely irrelevant to whether or not Steam is a good platform, unless Gabe was wielding Steam in a way that would promote a billionaire class, which he isn’t.
Oh, I didn’t know you were a personal friend of Gabe, my bad.
Anyway I don’t care about people like you, you are the problem. I care about people looking for solutions to have a healthy and fair industry.
I use to make a decent living out of music and sound design, 15-20 years ago. Then spotify came along and nobody lives from selling music anymore. Now I teach and if I was honest with my students, I’d tell them they are wasting time. Even here in Montreal, with hundreds of studios, there’s basically no more job in audio because the only way to make profit out of game is with AI and sound banks. So yeah, enjoy the enshitification of games, you’re directly promoting it.
You really need to take a good look in the mirror, because you are reading things that aren’t there and embarrassing yourself and the industry you claim to care about.
Lol. blablabla steam is good blablabla good billionaire blabla
If we could collect only 10% of the energy gamers spent on kissing gabe’s ass, we could solve the energy crisis forever.
Think of me in a few years, when you complain about studios releasing only AI stuff. And if you have kids, I hope they don’t become gambling addicts because I do care about that.
It really puts into perspective the importance of supporting free software. Even after Valve goes to shit, their contributions to the ecosystem will live on.
It’s why the average sheep can never see the value in free software; it keeps them dependent on corporations.
Amazon was always publicly traded, so it was always going to get worse. Steam is privately owned by Gabe, and is therefore more resistant to enshittification. Unless Gabe sells or dies, Steam’s pretty safe.
I got bad news for you. Gabe is human and barring a miracle in medical science; he will die. He’s 63, the tables on Age Cohort death aren’t kind after 60. (They’re brutal after 70) Only 1/3rd of men reach 80.
This is something we need to be thinking about now. It could easily take 5-10 years to get competitors working.
Amazon was toxic from day one, anticompetitive, borderline illegal, definitely corrupt as hell. It is what Epic Games Store would have been if it had been long before steam lol. The amount of shit that they bankrupted into the ground with cheap Chinese copies off the backs of VC funds while making tons of loss and then removing their storefronts…
But as soon as GabeN dies, steam will become shit probably as the vultures close in.
Amazon enshittified with their one-click-shopping patent, though. They were never good.
That’s a fucking patent?!
Yup. The US Patent office isn’t very good at it’s job.
That online bookstore literally started this rule of not being allowed to sell your products cheaper offsite and they will be god damned if gamers think they can fix that through Steam.
They pay the fucking president off.
They are literally the problem yall are complaining about in this thread! Fix that and you fix steam!
People constantly dooming steam are punching themselves in the face instead of pushing for anything better. If they wanted a more competitive market do two things. Buy games on other storefronts. They exist. There have been digital storefronts since before Steam. Second is direct your complaining to competitors to improve their services. Like go complain on every EGS press release for Linux support and a gamepad friendly interface. Something equivalent to Steam input and remote play that isn’t using third party software like Sunshine/Moonlight. Something like steam curators and other social features. User reviews. The complainers of Steam are pretty much campaigning for Steam to be worse so others can compete without having to improve as much
alright, lets compare game platforms(this may contain Opinions).
- Steam, probably the only good platform on here(also some stupendous features like a clock/alarm,note taking,browser,etc), but people should remember they are a monopoly(not the worse monopoly i have seen, look at something like Google or Microsoft), and they are still AAA company(Gabe Newell is a billionaire and the 106 richest man according to Forbes).
- GOG(why is it not being shown in the meme), Dont like their stance on being Pro-AI(if the LLMS was only used on One banner or smth or it had a fair reasoning, i would have been content with LLM usage.) and subpar features(maybe?),no DRM guarantee is nice.
but i like their program where they make older games Legally playable(IIRC Steam used to do the same?). - Ubisoft store,EA Store,Epic Games Store,Microsoft Store(due to Xbox logo),itch.io. they all have subpar features, and am pretty sure itch.io has more of a focus on UGC content.
- Console(Playstation,Nintendo,Xbox): I personally dont like the Video Game choice, and paying for a sub to play online.
i know there is stuff like DLSite aswell,but i never used them(the only Video Game franchise i know that sells there is Touhou Project)
One of the most accurate descriptions of this entire beef.
Steam does nothing and just keeps winning.
it doesn’t just do nothing, it sticks to its core idea : we can’t do as much as the community can when it comes to making games, how do we maximise the community’s possible output?
People love to shit on valve working on lootboxes, but I was there to see how it developed. It was there as part of a way of getting money back to the people making stuff, which is why a shitload of the TF2 hats came from the community and steam workshop. The system came from a left wing greek economist, before , you know, he BECAME Minister of Finance for greece (for half a year)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis
This is why they have steam OS, steam greenlight, SFM, etc etc.
Valve doesn’t make games anymore, because they know hobbyists can make shitloads of more games than them, they need a platform to shove them into.
Also, the other goal is to improve and extend the PC gaming space, which is why they are working on SteamOS, the deck, and all the other shit they are working on. Because of the work they put into making steam work to make game distrobution better than piracy (LITERALLY said by Gabe), PC releases became synonymous with “Steam”, which is why whenever you have a game announcement, you get “New game : Available on (XboxLogo : PS5Logo : SteamLogo)”
Valve is doing stuff. Just not, you know, making HL3 or nothing.
In a service business, if you do things right, people think you’re doing nothing.
God?
glad i’m not the only one who caught that
It’s probably my favorite depiction of god in any media. Obviously if you think about it the whole premise falls apart and he’s a huge dick but in the context of the episode it’s pretty cool beans
haha yeah, he/it was kind of a dick
Bender: You know, I was God once.
God: Yes, I saw. You were doing well until everyone died.
That assumes God exists to serve us.
This also applies to IT support.
“everything works fine, why do we pay you people?”
“everything is broken, why do we pay you people!”
TIL a greek minister of finance is responsible for TF2 hats. Fucking wild.
I might be misremembering the timeline but I think he was brought on board after the market was created because Valve started to see the same economic patterns (and issues) Varoufakis had talked about. He was brought in to make sure the skin economy would have a solid foundation. So he isn’t really responsible for TF2 hats. CS skins however he could be considered responsible.
I knew I know the name from somewhere, so I checked on my Kobo. He also wrote Technofeudalism
Oh, right. Well, I’m editing his Wikipedia page in that case.
I’m baffled that I didn’t already know that lootboxes were created by the husband of the woman that the Pulp hit Common People was most likely written about.
I… what?
There’s a song “common people” performed by a band called “pulp” you philistine, the song is about a real person
I’m familiar, I don’t see how a song about a rich girl wanting to bang “common people” has something to do with a leftwing economist.
Varoufakis’ wife is Danae Stratou, and as the wikipage points out, it’s speculated she is the focus of the song Common People. Crazy world we live in.
I was kidding with philistine bit. I think it’s the girl in the song is just ridiculously out of touch, and the relevancy is probably “birds of a feather” or something
The William Shatner song?
it doesn’t just do nothing,
Valve is a for profit company, one of their main goals is to make money and they work daily to do that. There are people at Valve who work 8h a day on how to boost profits.
People love to shit on valve working on lootboxes, but I was there to see how it developed. It was there as part of a way of getting money back to the people making stuff, which is why a shitload of the TF2 hats came from the community and steam workshop. The system came from a left wing greek economist, before , you know, he BECAME Minister of Finance for greece (for half a year)
I think you are confusing lootboxes with the items market which was there mainly to compensate the free to play model. If you were there i hope you remember too no DRMs and no third party software launchers to run games.
This is why they have steam OS
They have steam OS because microsoft become one of their competitors
“They have steam OS because microsoft become one of their competitors” Lmfao riiigght like Microsoft just got into the video game selling business, jfc.
Valve makes steamOS because windows fucking sucks and there needs to be an alternative OS for running game without a bunch of garbage like Windows or a completely locked down OS like Macs that they could use on their hardware.
running game without a bunch of garbage
Steam is part of the garbage, you don’t really need a third party launcher to run a software.
Microsoft just got into the video game selling business
In the past years microsoft made big and aggressive acquisitions in the videogames industry like bethesda and blizzard. The new xbox portable which is a direct competitor to the steam deck doesn’t have cd anymore, the only way to get games is through microsoft store.
Other way around? Steam was Microsoft’s competitor back in the day. Steam killed them once already.
We don’t have Steam Greenlight anymore, but otherwise 100% agree.
Deadlock would like a word with you.
oh, what was the release date for deadlock?
Yes, valve do make some games, for special occasions. They just aren’t making genre defining single player games like some of us want them to… except for HL:A , but who has the money to get that VR setup and spare room to put it in?
To be fair to them, valve have released or kept updating several games recently, CS2 , DOTA2, HL:A, Artifact, and as you mentioned, Deadlock.
It’s just that the stereotypical person that liked Half Life 1, the game, aren’t being targeted as much by valve, and it’s because they want to save that kind of work for pushing new things they develop, which for now, is more hardware or games as a service oriented.
Steam:
Valve is winning because they don’t enshittify
Valve is winning because the average gamer doesn’t care much about owning his videogames.
Steam is a great example of how a privately held company can out compete publicly traded and venture capital funded corps.
It can take greater risks and can fund initiatives that won’t pay out within the current quarter. The steam deck is a great example of that. A device that no other corporation thought that we wanted and that required like a decade of working with open source linux projects to make happen, that isn’t something that EA would have been able to manage.
Seriously, we need more companies doing nothing and taking 30% fee, becoming super rich corporations making more money than any other company per employee, while devs wonder if they’ll break even
“doing nothing”
Global distribution of exabytes of data, handling the entire e-commerce side and offering great toolings with steamworks while requiring onyl 100 dollars upfront is now considered “nothing”. Yeah, we should definitely go back to a time when steam wasn’t a thing and indie devs were required to have a publisher to even get their games into stores, and those publishers often took 80% of the entire profits. I’m sure indies had a much better time back then when they didn’t have to pay steam!
You missed my point. I’ll repeat it.
30% cut was fine when infrastructure was just not there yet, but 64GB HDD no longer costs 100€ and internet is not metered in megabytes. Like I said, they’re making more money per employee than other corporations. If you genuinely think Valve and Gabe’s fleet of Yachts is not monopolistic squeezing/pricing, then keep on defending corpos.
If they’d have an ounce of fear against competition, they would be lowering that cut to Epic’s levels (which is also not a shining beacon, but you get my point, they clearly enjoy their status and everyone is paying for it)
30% cut was fine when infrastructure was just not there yet, but 64GB HDD no longer costs 100€ and internet is not metered in megabytes.
Steam isn’t just storing stuff and letting people download it. They’re an entire distribution network. There’s not just the tech (which is already expensive in itself), but also the entire legal stuff. Invoicing, legal compliance, fraud prevention, chargeback processing, the customer support (which actually got fairly helpful in the last 2 years) etc.
If you genuinely think Valve and Gabe’s fleet of Yachts is not monopolistic squeezing/pricing
It’s not. Valve has not adjusted their pricing once, at least not upwards. They have reduced the pricing for extremely high-grossing games, but other than that, the price has stuck at 30%. How is that squeezing? Wouldn’t that make them INCREASE the percentage point instead of leaving it where it is?
Also, it’s funny that you talk about “monopolistic”, because epic has probably engaged in more monopolistic behavior with the EGS than steam ever has. And if we compare the features of the EGS (which didn’t even have a shopping cart for the first year of it’s existence) with the feature set of steam, I can absolutely see that a 30% cut is fine.
Now, could they lower it? Probably. But 30% is still worth it for any indie dev and significantly less than any other entity with the size and reach of steam would take for all their services.
Also, it’s funny that you talk about “monopolistic”, because epic has probably engaged in more monopolistic behavior with the EGS than steam ever has
This is stupid. Valve telling developers “you can’t sell your game cheaper on other platforms than on steam” is taking the cake away alone. Textbook anti-trust lawsuit (which might be already happening?)
You somehow keep ignoring the fact that valve makes more money than any other corporation per employee. They are clearly over-charging and you cannot argue against this. Stop defending megacorporations. Or just close your eyes and go gamble on valve games
This is stupid. Valve telling developers “you can’t sell your game cheaper on other platforms than on steam” is taking the cake away alone.
First of all, that’s not entirely true - valve is demanding price parity, meaning long-term undercutting steam is not allowed (something absolutely normal in almost any larger e-commerce scenario btw), but they have no problem if you have sales or value-added offers on other platforms. Now, you can think about price parity what you think, I’m not the biggest fan of it either, but it’s a very common practice, not exclusive to steam and has nothing to do with anti-trust.
You somehow keep ignoring the fact that valve makes more money than any other corporation per employee. They are clearly over-charging and you cannot argue against this
I ignored it because it’s a retarded metric. Yeah, guess what, if you automate a lot, you’re going to need less employees. I have no clue how that has any relevance in if a product is worth it or not. I’m pretty sure the v-servers I’m renting from hetzner involve nobody, it’s all automated, from purchase to setup - should I get it for free now? Would it be fine to have a 30% cut if valve employed like 1000 more people or what is the logic here?
Stop defending megacorporations.
I’m not defending megacorporations, I just don’t agree with you at all. Fundamentally, you are saying “making money bad” which is just a naive and highly uneducated argument to have.
Fundamentally, you are saying “making money bad” which is just a naive and highly uneducated argument to have.
Yup, you missed my point, but I really don’t think I’m capable of better explaining how what is valve doing is possible only because they essentially have PC monopoly.
You mean like those paid mods they were trying to introduce together with Bethesda?
Valve does not always win. Users are just more tolerant towards Valve than any other platform because of the cheap games they can buy during a sale. Nothing more.
They introduced a feature, the community didn’t like it, and they canceled it a few days later because of that feedback. What exactly is the problem? Making a mistake and rectifying it within days is not a bad thing at all.
Users are just more tolerant towards Valve than any other platform because of the cheap games they can buy during a sale
If that was the case, people would be extremely tolerant towards the epic game store which regularly throws out games for free, but they aren’t.
It’s funny that they tried to get indie devs paid for their contributions to these games (and therefore incentivizing more great mods) and gamers were like FUCK THAT SHIT! Typical, honestly. So now there’s no legal way to charge for mods and you get to do it only for fun asking people for coffee tips.
Imo this was Bethesda more than valve, anyways, and while it would make both of them too much money doing that it would have gotten regular people paid, too. Which they deserve, by the way.
Mandatory preface to prevent angry fanboys stinking up the replies: I like Steam. I use Steam. And just to be sure, democrats and republicans are not the same.
Some folks in this thread are using American case law to argue that Steam is not a monopoly, or that Steam is a good (??@#!?!?) monopoly. They look at other cases, like Microsoft, and point out how far Microsoft had to go before it was considered a monopoly by American judges, and then point out that Steam is not as bad. There are two problems with that line of reasoning.
The first is that monopoly law has been absolutely gutted by Reagan, and worsened by every administration (dem and rep alike) up until Biden. In the Biden admin, Lina Khan has made some very small steps to tighten up monopoly laws a bit, but obviously Trump happened (although Harris was pretty much the same as the dems before Biden, so not much hope there either). The bar for being a monopoly is unreasonably high, and American monopoly law is an absolute joke.
Secondly, this line of thinking conflates legality with morality, or being good (enough) for society. I hope I don’t need to convince you that this idea is false. Slavery was legal.
The argument here is not that Steam is, in the current flawed legal American sense, a monopoly, but that it is a monopoly in the sense that it has cornered enough of the gaming market that it could do very serious harm.
Note that “they’re not currently doing harm” is not a great counterargument here. When my neighbor buys a bazooka, I won’t be satisfied by “don’t worry I’m not currently using it”.
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Being a simp for a multi billion dollar company is never a good thing. It’s not good for you as a consumer and, frankly, is just incredibly cringe.
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No, it’s not, the main point of the lawsuit is that Steam does not let game Devs sell their game for cheaper on any other platform.
So if you don’t like that Steam takes a massive 30% cut of your sales so that Gabe can buy his 27th mega-yatch, and you decide to also put your game on another platform that takes a fairer, smaller cut, then chose to pass on those savings to the consumer, then valve will kick you off the platform and you’ll lose access to by far the biggest market in PC gaming.
Fuck valve and fuck you brain dead fanboys simping for a billionaire and making everything worse for the rest of us because your entire worldview comes from memes.
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I looked at the lawsuit details. Steam basically did what everyone else does. Apple, google, EA, everyone.
They charge 30% of the sale. They require that the steam price be the same as an external price.
It’s the most nothing of nothings.
To compare, what MS did when they got smacked with their monopoly lawsuit is bundle IE with the OS and they both made it hard to switch the default and they’d constantly try to switch you back to IE.
*steam price the same as external price only if the external sale is for steam keys. And you have some time to offer an equivalent sale on steam.
This is the point everyone tends to gloss over, especially with the case brought against Valve from the Overgrowth dev where it’s pretty relevant to their case. Glad to see someone has actually read the friggin’ Steam TOS.
The problem is that, allegedly, there are threatening emails from Valve to developers who tried to sell for lower prices on other platforms (NOT Steam keys). If this is true, then there is actual ammunition against Valve.
I’ll point out, when I went to sell my book on Apple Books, they had this in their TOS as well - I wasn’t allowed to sell the same digital book for less somewhere else. It is not a new or unique agreement.
The entirety of third party selling on Amazon is under this agreement. This is why i don’t think Steam will lose. Not because they shouldn’t, but because the money and power behind this are not valve at all.
Whataboutism. It shouldn’t be allowed in any TOS.
Anticompetitive behavior is tolerated much more from companies that aren’t the market leader, and Apple Books is far from the market leader.
Amazon started it. They are the market when it comes to books.
They are who you have to go after. And they pay off the president.
That doesn’t sound as bad
But sweeny mad no one lieks epic store
Any of those places charging 30% on a product they’re only publishing electronically is using walled gardens and monopolistic practices to do so.
I’d rather they go after Steam last, but Steam belongs in that group with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. It’s extraordinarily difficult to sell your PC game without Steam. A few large studios can do it, but not many others.
Still notas egregious as Apple, and now Android with their restrictions on side loading.
What do you propose Steam changes instead of 30%?
When I think of monopolies, I think more of telecomms, of Wal-Mart and their selling at a lose to kill off competition, Microsoft purposely hindering the ability for competing software, and other examples. Unless I’m missing something, Steam didn’t do that, they were just first in the game and built a better product than the others did. Offering a better service that attracted customers. Now do I think it’s too large and would welcome competition, absolutely. But monopolies typically aren’t though just having larger market share with a better product.
If Steam did something like oh, pay developers/publishers to be exclusive to their platform, then yeah you’d have a good argument there.
No matter how good or bad steam was and is for gaming industry, they made gaming on Linux not only viable but great, and hence made completely ditching windows an achievable thing with little effort.
I’m grateful for that, even though I boycotted them from day 1 (until left4dead came out) for destroying physical and used games.
