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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Games
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What is there so hard to understand?
They became billionaires without treating their customers like a product.
Enshitification hasn't reached Valve yet.
They are making important progress in Linux compatibility for free.
Customer support consistently break their own rules to keep customers happy, at the expense of profit.
Their platform offers a lot of great services to customers for free.
Lmfao "for free". Did you read the article? Did you not see the part where Valve takes 30% of every single game in existience's revenue? The part where Valve makes more money per game then the studios actually developing them?
Yes, steam was great and rose to its monopoly through its greatness, but they have been flat out abusing that monopoly by not lowering prices when they can. The occasional free return is a trinket they throw back at you after overcharging you by at least 15% on every single other game you've ever purchased.
30% is average for distribution fees across all media industries.
In the games industry: Microsoft (Xbox): 30% Sony (PlayStation): 30% GOG: 30% (used to be 40%) Steam: 30% Epic: 12% (the outlier) Google (Android): 25-40% Apple (iPhone): 30%
Music and film industry distribution deals range from 10% to as much as 60% depending on your contract. Yes it could be as low as 10% for people who just aren't that popular. But it's also not at the upper end of the spectrum for media distribution.
On PC, Microsoft takes a 0% cut of apps distributed through it's store and 12% of games, so EGS isn't really the outlier there, but regardless 30% being average in an existing anti-competitive industry doesn't really prove anything about whether or not it's a fair cost. That can easily be oligopoly collusion / price signalling which happens all the time.
Console makers like Microsoft and Sony are also funding building the hardware and maintaining the platforms since they lose money on up front hardware sales. I'm not saying I agree that this should be a legal business model, but they have more of an argument for charging 30%.
And regardless of all of that, when I'm talking about a fair price, I'm talking about a fair price in an economic sense, as in, does Valve provide more back to the economy then money they take out of it, or are they rent seeking? Given that Valve made more revenue per employee than literally any other tech company (pushing $1million/employee/year), all during a period where their employees literally were allowed to work on whatever personal projects they wanted (virtually none of which went anywhere or made Valve any money). In that context, I can't see their fees as anything other than rent seeking. Yes make a profit, yes pay your employees well, keep a nice cushion, and invest in R&D, but Valve has been able to afford to do all of that and just burn / hoard cash at a ridiculous rate, all money that would be going to the actual game designers and developers if we had competitive markets.
Well here's another fun fact about steam for you then, you can sell your game on steam and retain the full profit of the sale by selling steam keys on other platforms like itch.io or humble bundle. The only stipulation to this method of sale is that you have to sell it at the same price the game is listed on steam at. Steam does not take a cut of steam key sales and encourages developers to distribute steam keys. They are free to request from steam and you can request however many you would like. No other platform does this.
Your failure to provide a reliable source for your claims is not my problem.
If you cannot provide a reliable source of your claims, your claim will be dismissed.
The services are free for the customers though.
30% is and isn't a lot when you consider everything it entitles you to do as a developer, including high-speed download servers, community tools, advertising, SteamWorks platform etc.
The work valve is doing in development of Proton isn't an occasional trinket, it's an ongoing and important project which is helping to defeat the real monopoly, Microsoft.
Also, I'm a patient gamer, Steam sales are frequent enough that I have always paid the best price.
Epic charges you 5% of revenue after a million dollars to use the entirety of Unreal engine. 30% for a store with an add on market is not reasonable.
And how's that going for them? Have they stopped running at a loss yet?
Come back to me when Tim Sweeny has a viable business strategy.
Excellently, Unreal Engine makes a huge amount of money for them.
You're probably thinking of the Epic Games Store, not Unreal Engine, and it would be grossly profitable at 12% commission if it had the established infrastructure and sales numbers that Steam does, it's only not profitable because they are still developing and building infrastructure and they basically just sell Fortnite and Rocket League.
I was only talking about Epic Game Store, not Unreal.
But on that matter, Valve charges much less for their engine, and is often free for indie devs.
EGS would be grossly profitable if they had a good service, but they don't because their platform is shit.
"They basically just sell Fortnite and Rocket League"
So, has anything changed in the past 3 years or are they just doing the exact same thing, hoping something would change?
If you're talking about the Source Engine, they're really, really not comparable. The Source Engine hasn't even been updated since 2013.
How would you convince gamers to use your store instead of Steam? There are reasons that anti-monopoly laws don't care how you got your monopoly, once you have one it's problematic because it makes nearly impossible for competition to form against you.
The engine is all besides the point, though there are games like Apex Legends which use the Source Engine and are just great.
How would I convince gamers to use my platform instead of Steam?
For starters, act in good faith. For all the issues you raise with Steam, at least they aren't fighting anyone for exclusivity rights.
Transferring Rocket League and Payday2 to Epic fucked the community so hard they have split the player pool.
They could offer some basic community tools, and features which every other store has had for years.
Your reading comprehension skills are garbage if this is your take. Also steam has DEEP discounts on their store 4x a year for 2 weeks at a time lol. Literally two months out of the year.
Gotta love it....