I’ll never understand why some people look at the fact that steam is popular because of their policies, and can’t help but make a comment like this equating that popularity to cock worship.
Like, we get it bro. You’re thinking about cocks and you’re mad about a half decent game store. What compelled you to combine those thoughts on a public forum?
The weird thing is that this isn’t even the first comment I’ve seen like this. Dudes that are mad about steam want everyone else to know about steam’s massive, throbbing cock for some reason. This guy alone has posted 3 of these.
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 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.
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.
Excellently, Unreal Engine makes a huge amount of money for them.
Have they stopped running at a loss yet?
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.
But on that matter, Valve charges much less for their engine, and is often free for indie devs.
If you’re talking about the Source Engine, they’re really, really not comparable. The Source Engine hasn’t even been updated since 2013.
EGS would be grossly profitable if they had a good service, but they don’t because their platform is shit. What are they supposed to do?
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.
Exactly. I’ve been Linux-only since 2009 or so, and had never used Steam before switching. I remember buying Minecraft and Factorio directly from their websites, and I remember when Humble Bundle didn’t have such a connection w/ Steam.
I’d be down with it if they support my platform. If they don’t, I’ll stick with Steam.
Perhaps, but on the other side of that coin: Because valve doesn’t have legal obligations to make money snd increase shareholder value, they put a lot of money elsewhere. The products they create are awesome (literally the best launcher on PC, Tim Sweeney is probably upset because his is ass) and invest heavily in things better for gamers:
digital returns were huge when they first rolled out
(IMO) spearheading game streaming with steam in home streaming & the steam link
creating awesome games and not milking them for perpetual profit (other than maybe in game items but i don’t want to have this discussion)
investing heavily in alternative ways to play (steam machines, aforementioned steam link, VR/index, steam controller, steam deck)
legitimately spending money to make it possible to game on Linux, reducing gamers reliance on Microsoft/Windows
Valve also allowed most of their employees to work on whatever they wanted for a decade, an initiative that produced almost nothing, and during that time they still made close to a million dollars per year per employee.
I’m not saying I’m unhappy with Valve being private or with Valve making enough money to give itself a nice cushion, but the scale of the money they’re making is absurd when independent game devs often still struggle to make money.
No it doesn’t. It leads to Valve wasting money enriching themselves to the tune of millions of dollars per employee per year while independent game developers making normal salaries continue to have to lay people off and be underfunded.
“… employing Linux developers and finally making actual cracks in the true monopoly of Windows.”
FTFY.
while independent game developers making normal salaries continue to have to lay people off and be underfunded.
Funny, it’s not the indies with the huge layoffs but the megacorps that have enough money to buy fucking Activision-Blizard-King and then shed crocodile tears about the hard economy.
“… employing Linux developers and finally making actual cracks in the true monopoly of Windows.”
Again, Valve has made close to a million dollars per employee per year. No they have not spent anywhere remotely close to that on Linux developers. You’re equating a trinket they tossed you in the last couple of years with the giant horde they robbed from developers.
Funny, it’s not the indies with the huge layoffs
It is, independent studios lay people off and have to close up shop all the time, on top of just not making that much money to begin with, they just don’t make headline news the way that big companies do.
It wasn’t their money to spend. Devs lost their jobs because Valve kept taking more than they needed.
Again, 1 Million dollars. Per Year. Per Employee. That means per every single Linux dev they employed, they still made a million dollars per employee.
That’s indefensible and it’s really weird to see lemmy get their dicks hard about excess greedy capitalism just cause this time it’s behind a service that they like. Facebook gave back a huge amount of open source projects but that doesn’t make up for the harm they’ve caused, even just the harm caused by them sucking up an inordinate amount of societal resources, and Facebook “only” makes ~$750k per employee per year.
Sure it is. That’s how a free market works. You are free to engage directly with indie developers on itch.io etc. It’s not your call to make what others do with their money. You don’t see me fuming with rage just because you spend your money on different games market places.
The Epic launcher could actually be so much better if they bothered to put any effort into it. Obviously they’re going to have fewer games and stuff but they could still make a decent launcher that isn’t so annoying to use and actually has additional features.
Part of the problem they have is that it’s actually difficult for game developers to put their games on both platforms so i’ve got to pick one and obviously i’m going to pick Steam.
If you actually think that reduced fees mean lower cost for consumer, you’re out of touch with reality.
and developers
They are free to go somewhere else like the EGS utopia where developers are definitively get paid directly an equal cut of each sale and no publisher intermediary like EA and Activision is just taking all the revenue and the developers get paid their usual salary anyhow.
You know what, I appreciate the call-out. I don’t trust our economy, and shouldn’t reference it in defense of one (in my experience) honorably led company.
You’re right. Giving 30% for really fucking good platform services is way worse than having to find a publisher that takes in 70 to 90% of revenue and pushes devs to release unfinished games.
Yeah seriously. As a dev, that 30% cut gets you a lot of stuff with absolutely no additional charges. Trying to roll your own distribution for your downloads could exceed that 30% by itself after you:
Host the files somewhere that can be downloaded anywhere close to as fast as steam’s servers
Handle payment processing fees
Develop and maintain a site with high reliability
And that’s only downloads. With steam you also get:
p2p networking tools
game server hosting
steam community integration
analytics
cloud saves
voip
And like 50 other things. It’s ridiculously good value unless you’re developing some super low rent single player indie title. Even then, just having it available on steam will get you way more sales to make up for it.
Sure, epic charges 10% but you basically only get distribution and some super half baked community features.
EGS would be profitable if they had the sales numbers that Steam does. Theyre not profitable because they’re basically just a fortnite and rocket league store.
Oh Sweeney having a tantrum, when hasn’t that happened monthly since like 10 years ago? Sweeney if you want more money than what you’re already making, then fucking make better products man. Fucking asshole trying to win the game by crying to daddy government and having fits. It would be one thing if he was a small guy being treated unfairly, but this dude is in the elite as well, his company is a big name in the game, but he cries as if he was small potatoes being treated unfairly by big corpos. Fuck off, corpo trash trying to pass as a small boy. If there’s a thing more annoying than a corporation being an asshole is an asshole corporation trying to pass as a victim.
You know what I find more annoying then that? Defending a monopoly that’s rent seeking to the tune of a million dollars of revenue per employee per year, and that’s with most of the employees literally being paid to work on nothing.
Everything you said specifically excludes Valve and Steam from being a monopoly. The definition of monopoly includes the anticompetitive behaviors. They don’t give a fuck about competition. They don’t buy up everyone who could be a threat. They don’t push for exclusivity contracts on big upcoming games. They exist and work to continue to do so. That is how business is supposed to be.
As petulant and annoying as tim Sweeney can be, I do think he’s right that valve’s fees are pretty exorbitant at their level of success. They could take a much smaller cut and still be making bank.
No, valves fees are completely reasonable. $100 one time fee, then 30% for any game key sold by valve with something like a million guaranteed impressions. Also it’s 0% if you generate the keys for free and sell them elsewhere like on your own website. All with the benefit of the steam network and hosting. I’m tired of people believing Tim’s lies under the facade of “he’s and asshole but he has a point”. He doesn’t have a point. He’s throwing a tantrum because he doesn’t have what he wants which is hundreds of millions of paying customers and he doesn’t want to put the time and investment needed into building out the infrastructure to achieve the same feat. He’s a greedy little fuck that wants to do the bare minimum to get rich while valve has been coasting as a market leader because they built the whole freakin market!
I’d love it if they had a comparable service, because competition is good for the consumer, but they just don’t.
Steam has had a relative monopoly for two decades, and we’re lucky they’ve been customer friendly. But if something were to happen to Gabe, or Valve decided to go public or something, we’re screwed.
Jeff Bozos, Melon Husk, Sam Alternator, and Zark Muckerberg gonna hired a bunch of people to crack the puzzle and it will just be a show where 4 of them compete, the rest of us peasant will be irrelevant.
Same. I play out of habit and will drop it like a rock once I find a replacement game. I’m already at like half the playtime. Haven’t spent a cent since they moved trading.
My condolences just FYI, if you have a PlayStation account or an Xbox account you can use that to link to epic and you do not need to make an epic account to play
If Epic could actually provide a better service, they would be seeing customers and developers actually want to use their platform.
Doubt
Gog is objectively giving you more value for your money but even cdpr had to release the Gwent standalone on steam eventually because people didn’t buy it enough - once it was on steam it sold more than in a year on gog in weeks
People don’t look at the alternatives at all - unless it’s a AAA game with an exclusive deal
Gog is objectively giving you more value for your money
What value do they give you exactly?
The games are mostly priced the same, they don’t have integrated modding support, no input remapping, no remote play, no in-home streaming, no steamcmd for server operators, no VR client, no Linux client and no Steam Deck support.
The only thing they do give you is no DRM, but nothing stops a developer from adding a DRM-free game on Steam.
Steam is DRM. Note the warnings all mention third-party drm. Eventually your login to steam expires and you can’t play your games, and steam can revoke games and your access to them at any point for any reason.
Steam is good, but let’s not imply it’s providing a DRM free experience.
Steam is only DRM if Steamworks is required for the game to launch, e.g. I can copy my Baldur’s Gate 3 files to a different PC and launch them without Steam.
It’s up to the developer how they behave if Steam is not present.
I think what they mean is that when you buy the game on Steam, you can’t just download the game files through their website. You need to install their client. Which can be seen as a form of DRM.
all of the things you have listed are things we as individuals can and have implemented without steam, theyre pretty good like adding code to wine and pushing linux to the larger audience and i myself have been on steam for 11 years with 320 games, but integrated modding? i mean we had mod managers before steams implementation.
game streaming we have moonlite and shunshine > for amd hosts, and theres more.
input remapping can be done through standalone applications i use sc-controller for remapping my steam controller.
id say steams vr client is more of a negative than a positive, leads to segmentation and issues with device support when we should of focused on a wide approach to vr. like what google did with android, funded a free and open eco-system>(less so now)
steam sells accessibility and DRM, personally i see this as a bad thing. force people to become dependent. and while gog isnt natively on linux there are work around like downloading from gog.com or installing heroic games launcher.
Value is personal, I for one want a game, I dont want a bloated web browser that only connects through steam, which is what the steam client is. All the thing I need steam to do I can do and I can do it in a more agnostic way and less bloated. I use wayland therefore steam does not run without xwayland support enabled and even when enabled I can’t stream my desktop over steam remote.
Can’t use remote play and have an open source implementation that has fine tuning controls.
Installing mods through third party tools or manually is easy enough and allows for multiple distributors.
Dont use vr and even so its a closed ecosystem.
More than happy to visit steam in my own browser to buy and download games if that was possible.
Dont care for skins, cards, or any of the inventory system.
I talk to friends through open source solutions.
If you do however want a streaming, mod manager, vr, forum, store front, download manager, DRM and much more in one bloated application then yes the value proposition is there.
I highly value diy solutions in software, you on the other hand may not. And this is fine. GOG offers more to me than to you as steam offers less for me than for you.
I really like steam for its friends network and local streaming, but these are the reasons I occasionally buy on gog:
Games that my wife likes to play so that they don’t tie up my steam account. I still find it weird that ALL games in steam get locked down when one is running. I understand it keeping the same game from being run more than once simultaneously, but more than that is unnecessary.
I also buy games on gog (when available) that I mod a lot, because it’s really easy to stop updates on gog (updates often break mods).
I do know about that, but I want it to be as easy as clicking on a game to play it without worrying about toggling the mode. I know I could make a separate account for her too, but we share machines and again that becomes a barrier when wanting to just click a game to play it.
That is a cool feature, and I do use it though in a different way. I made an alt account that I buy vr games on so that I can share them with friends. That way if a friend is playing one of my vr games through family share, it won’t lock up all the games in my main account.
In the example you’re talking about, say your SO is playing a game shared from your account - it locks up all the games in both accounts! Pretty annoying if you want to play a game, now.
Well, I feel sorry for gamers from those countries but I’m not from there so I’m not impacted by this. Only time regional pricing is not available for my region is when the publisher has opted out of it.
Epic building a launcher that has equivalent features to Steam would do nothing. Everyone wants all their games in one place, and everyone already has their friends list there.
Getting exclusives and giving away games is probably the only way they could even enter the market. Yeah the launcher kinda sucks, but Valve has decades of development that they’ve poured into Steam, it isn’t simple to just copy everything. There was a time that Steam sucked.
Steam is a de-facto monopoly. They luckily don’t really do anti competitive practices, they just focus on having a great product, and that’s why people (myself included) love them. But I don’t think another company can ever really enter the PC market without a few tricks like exclusives or free games.
“As you can see, a whole bunch of people joined our service, downloaded games we paid literally millions for from our servers and didn’t give us money” isn’t a good pitch.
Fooling investors into thinking people will not just start paying them for a worse experience than you can get on Steam is funny but even they should realize once they look at the financials.
they rope kids in with the free price tag over the summer, school starts and they get bullied for only having the default Fortnite skin, and suddenly the “customer” “converts“.
It’s not free. The point is to get me to make an account on Epic and install their stupid launcher. That isn’t free and I’m tired of people claiming things are “free” when in fact they exist to get you to sign up for another service. It’s not free-as-in-air.
You’re right, but I do appreciate getting GTA V for $0. They’ll never get a cent from me but I’ll take their games. I’m also running Windows so nothing about my gaming is free-as-in-air anyways
Chances are they have already gotten more than a cent from you – depending on what they do with your account data. Even just an email address has a price. That’s my only point, really. Just signing up gives them something.
But it wasn’t worthless to Epic, who potentially sold it, active address or not. It doesn’t really matter what happens with it further down the chain after that sale. The point is that simply signing up for an account, even with fake credentials, does give Epic something. Not a lot, but something.
I am missing an equivalent community to “fuck epic”. With all the relevant information of why this service is still not a good idea to follow, even by grabbing their games “for free”.
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