Yes, the Steam Deck is great, and Steam is definitely one of the best games platforms there is. And Valve has done great work supporting Linux and open source development, and forcing more transparency for sellers on Steam.
But I feel like people sometimes just love valve for everything they do. GabeN is still a billionaire, buying super-yachts and stuff. Valve makes a ton of their money from gambling on loot crates in CS2 and TF2, and have not done enough (imo) to stop even more predatory third party item gambling sites. And whenever I bring stuff like that up people keep defending Valve.
We should be able to praise their great games and hardware, at the same time as criticising other parts of the company.
A 30% rake is also absurd. It’s absurd when Microsoft does it, Google does it, Apple does it, or Steam.
Yes, Steam provides some nice services. One, they don’t cost that much to provide. I think Steam would still be quite profitable at a 12% rake.
What really allows Steam to charge those prices is a near monopoly on discoverability/advertising. On PC it’s really only Blizzard and Riot that can compete.
And I bet you don’t get featured if you charge a lower price off of Steam than on Steam (even if you don’t use Steam keys to do so).
All of this walled garden shit should be illegal. You should be able to find the same single player games cheaper on GOG than on Steam, and then we could really see how much people value the Steam extras. Do you value having Steam achievements for a single game at $12 or not?
A 30% take is very standard, and is significantly better than the cut of sales stores took when everything was physical. I think it’s quite telling that the only store that brags about taking a lower cut is Epic, which also spends unreasonable amounts of money handing out free games to try to get people on their platform. You know what that reeks of? Enshittification; provide an unsustainably good deal to consumers to get them in the door before ripping it away, provide an unsustainably good deal to creators before ripping it away, and in the end you are left with both sides of the equation that hate you but feel trapped because they have so much stuff locked there.
Yeah, Epic took a dumb approach, and they’re not the good guy, but they’re also not wrong on this.
I don’t buy for a second that their 12% cut is actually sustainable, and if I’m right then it’s going to be raised at some point, probably up to 25% or so (which is also the cut steam takes after the first $10 million in sales IIRC)
Lemmy here is hosting about half of it for token donations. Bandwidth isn’t that expensive.
Fuck AI, find me a real source and I might believe you.
I agree, this isn’t the way to get information, but all of that’s accurate as far as I can tell. This is all information that’s commonly known. They’re one of the most profitable companies per employee. They make insane profits. They absolutely don’t need the 30% cut, and that’s obvious. There is some limit to how low it could go, but it isn’t 30%. Sure, that’s the standard. Do you know how a standard is made though? People just accepting it. It can clearly be pushed lower, and people advocating for not doing so are arguing against their own best interest and in the interest of a company making billions in profit every year.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/valve-makes-almost-50-million-165500871.html
Epic takes 0% until the first million, Microsoft takes 12%, GOG’s fee is flexible from deal to deal, Itch’s is customizable. Even the mobile stores now charge less than 30%, while console manufacturers need to charge more to justify their hardware being sold at a loss. Since when is the 30% standard?
Everyone is saying you don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re obviously right. They’re one of the most profitable companies per employee in the world. Saying they could take a smaller cut and still be profitable is obvious to anyone who doesn’t have their head in the sand.
Valve is using their market dominance to force price parity too. This is an ongoing case, but all the documents seem to indicate this is true. For all the “Valve can’t do anything wrong” people, wouldn’t you rather pay less for games? If another market is allowed to sell a game for 10% less, isn’t that better for you? Maybe Valve sees this and cuts their share to drop 10% too, but isn’t that even better? Why are you so insistent on arguing against your own best interest.
Yeah, 30% is standard. Who the fuck cares? Don’t you want it to be lower? Do you know how that’s lowered? It’s by other stores competing on that cut. They aren’t allowed to (on the consumer end) though. Epic does on the developer end, but Valve prevents them from giving consumers a cut.
The 30% is not standard. Steam is practically the only one that takes this much on PC and beyond. Only console stores can be compared to it, but that’s at least justified by the consoles themselves being sold at a loss.
You have no idea what you’re talking about lol