There have been multiple accounts created with the sole purpose of posting advertisement posts or replies containing unsolicited advertising.

Accounts which solely post advertisements, or persistently post them may be terminated.

yeather ,

Reliable, low maitenance, with good infastructure. 80 sounds like a solid number when not including game devs and support staff.

fartsparkles ,

80 world-class engineers sounds like more than enough people. It’s not like Valve struggle to acquire talent and are thus forced to have teams and teams of juniors who are masters at building tech debt.

Valve will likely be hiring and retaining the kinds of engineers who love a good refactor and appreciate the time and space to do that rather than some product manager pressuring for the next shiny shit they wanted yesterday.

And Steam is their money printing machine that keeps them free to do whatever they want. It’s no surprise their team have stayed invested in continuing to build out the best gaming platform of all time.

80 talented, passionate, and healthily paid engineers > 800 junior, sleep deprived, and struggling to buy groceries “coders”.

Balinares ,

For serious. I wish they hired remote.

sunzu , (edited )

This likely management 101 in action

Amazing what happens if you treat people right and let them do their job

Instead we got too much management constantly causing churn

Kecessa ,

Or they hire contractors without any job safety

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Also explains why Steam is still a 32-bit binary and didn’t get ARM port on any platform.

I think the point is that with this kind of upkeep costs it’s hard to argue that Steam sales cut is fair, especially given near-monopoly in PC gaming space.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

At this point, their cut is just about mathematically fair, given how little value customers get from buying games most other places and how much value they get from Steam. Then that money got funneled back into decoupling PC gaming from Microsoft and making probably the only mass produced handheld gaming system that’s open enough to let you opt out of their ecosystem. I’d be really curious as to how many games on Steam even have ARM builds, because I’ll bet it’s a very low number, and that would likely make the juice not worth the squeeze.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Their cut is mathematically fair but the inputs for this formula are mostly pain tolerance levels of consumers and producers. I meant fair for having a monopoly. Either you’re a utility or need to be broken up so that actual competition can take place.

Steam Deck and Proton killed Linux gaming because nobody bothers to do native ports. While I don’t agree with that approach it kinda works but it’s not that Valve does this because they like Linux. They’re scared of losing their monopoly in case Windows changes too much.

There are ARM native games on Mac (Disco Elysium for example) and Steam has no issues with them. Not having ARM client though means that you’re running a dynamically recompiling web browser through a translation layer resulting in terrible performance.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Pain tolerance levels? The biggest pain points I have with Steam are that it’s not universally DRM-free (which is why I shop GOG first) and that their multiplayer servers go down for 15 minutes during maintenance windows once or twice per week. Native Linux ports were not going to become more common prior to Proton; they were on the fast track to becoming less common, especially given how many more games are now released every year, and Proton has the added benefit of adding Linux support to games where it was just never going to feasibly happen otherwise.

While I don’t agree with that approach it kinda works but it’s not that Valve does this because they like Linux. They’re scared of losing their monopoly in case Windows changes too much.

It’s both. That fear of losing their market position is exactly how a functioning market is supposed to work. Competition is supposed to come in and outdo Valve. EA looked like they were interested for a little while back when they launched Origin, but they changed their minds. Epic says they’re interested now, but they only want sellers and not customers. It’s not a monopoly, legally, when they attained their market position by just being better than everyone else.

There are ARM native games on Mac (Disco Elysium for example) and Steam has no issues with them.

And I wonder how many more there are out there. Because if that number is low enough, it may just not be worth it to bother. I’d imagine it’s a nightmare to have to support Apple through all of their standards that they dictate at their business partners. Valve went through the trouble of making a Vulkan->Metal translation layer, since Apple refused to support open standards, and then Apple retired x64 on their machines shortly afterward.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Pain tolerance to prices, how good the support is, how snappy the app is etc. Within the space of game marketplaces they’re average and that’s because every one of them kind of sucks. If Epic was first to monopolize PC game marketplaces people would be defending them like they defend Valve now because they want all of their games in one place.

Linux gaming was stable before Proton. It was never big but mainstream titles were getting released. These days there’s nothing. Titles could be broken at any moment by a developer and nobody will have any responsibility to fix it. I very much doubt that a for profit company does anything because they “like” something like Linux. They’re there to make money, period.

I’m not saying Valve should port their games to ARM or update them, it’s up to them and they don’t seem to be interested in developing games all that much these days. My point wad that plenty of games run via Rosetta2 fine. Steam doesn’t run fine because essentially it’s a web browser and that’s where you can say that 80 developers might not be enough to support this money printing machine.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Pain tolerance to prices? We’re talking about the platform whose name is frequently coupled with the word “sale”. Given the complete lack of ideas out of Epic in the year 2024, I don’t have much confidence that they’d have risen to be a dominant market leader in the first place.

Linux gaming was stable before Proton. It was never big but mainstream titles were getting released.

Stable, but not many titles. Mainstream titles were getting released because Valve was either greasing the wheels or because those partners thought Steam Machines were going to be a bigger deal. When they weren’t a bigger deal, those mainstream titles dried up fast. The Witcher 3 and Street Fighter V both announced Linux ports and cancelled them when the writing was on the wall for Steam Machines. Both now work in Proton.

I very much doubt that a for profit company does anything because they “like” something like Linux. They’re there to make money, period.

I was told, to my face, by a Valve employee between the launch of Steam Machines and the release of Proton, that a lot of engineers at Valve “are enamored with Linux” before he gave me a look indicating that he couldn’t say more. But also, yes, the pursuit of making money leads to all sorts of wonderful new things, like simultaneously porting more than half of the history of PC gaming to a different operating system.

I’m not saying Valve should port their games to ARM or update them, it’s up to them and they don’t seem to be interested in developing games all that much these days. My point wad that plenty of games run via Rosetta2 fine. Steam doesn’t run fine because essentially it’s a web browser and that’s where you can say that 80 developers might not be enough to support this money printing machine.

But if there aren’t many games ported to ARM, and if the number of games running via Rosetta “fine” isn’t high enough, then the number of customers you’re benefiting by making a native ARM build of Steam is very low, and throwing more developers at the problem only makes that math worse. I think you should have a better Steam on Mac. I also know that Apple is actively hostile to gaming on Mac, so I get it if Valve isn’t super interested.

the_post_of_tom_joad , (edited )

Found Machkovetch’s Rosen’s Lemmy account

;)

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

I’ve been reading Ars Technica for over 20 years now but that’s because I like their points, not because I write for them xd

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

Haha naw the joke was supposed to be name of the guy who’s suing them but i ruined it by getting David Rosens name like … Completely wrong.

I don’t know how that happened besides not having my coffee and death stick yet

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Yeah, I gathered as much while trying to figure out who that is :)

Passerby6497 ,

it’s hard to argue that Steam sales cut is fair

It’s actually pretty easy to argue it’s fair once you look at everything. Steam offers a shit ton of resources for that 30%, including hosting, distribution, patching, workshop, etc. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the dev can get all of that AND get steam keys that they can distribute themselves (meaning valve doesn’t get a cut of that) that still utilizes the same infra.

I wish I could find it, but I recently saw a video of Thor (@piratesoftware, does his own game dev and used to work for Blizzard) talking about this and going into even more detail than I can remember at the moment.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

The cut would be less if competition was possible. I will bet my arm, first child and souls on this.

Passerby6497 ,

And you’d lose all of that.

Competition isn’t possible? EGS is an active competitor that only takes 12% and they still can’t get fucking anywhere because their store fucking sucks. GoG exists and also takes 30%, their store/launcher are ok, but they don’t offer nearly as much for that 30%, but they make up for that with drm free games. There are other minor players out there, so competition is definitely possible, but not one of them offers a comparable product.

The only way steam would lower their cut is if someone came along and made a game store that actually offered a significant portion of the services steam offered and was about as good but also had a lower cut of sales. But good luck finding someone who can do all of that and also takes less than 30%.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

You don’t seem to understand what a monopoly is. Having some small competition that’s not ever going to threaten you because you can leverage your dominant position is also a case of a monopoly.

Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it. How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on? This is why they need to be broken up or brought to order via regulations. Companies are not your friends.

Passerby6497 ,

Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it.

Yes, Into fortnite, not EGS. The eggs spent all their money on timed exclusives instead of a better product, and that’s why they failed to make a steam competitor.

Kecessa ,

They make billions in profit, fuck off with it being fair.

NocturnalMorning ,

As an Indie dev, a 30% cut of profit could be the desth of my one man studio (if I ever get around to actually starting it)

Passerby6497 ,

Ok, so then handle all of that yourself at cost. Which will lead to the death of your studio faster?

Seriously though, a $15 game selling just 100k copies is still $1m to you (before taxes) and has no upkeep. You do all that steam does yourself, you’re going to drown in operations costs and upkeep time.

Kaeru ,

Wasn’t there just a report from a few days ago that it was closer to 300?

the_post_of_tom_joad ,

This is the second time they’ve pointed out the size of valve. First total size, now steam specific. Is it some kinna dogwhistle to other companies that the size is a weakness to exploit? Cuz what layman cares about how many people work at a given company?

Kecessa ,

“Companies have too many employees!” cries the guy who will lose his job if all companies are run like Valve.

Them having few employees doesn’t prevent them from taking a 30% cut on all sales and making billions in profit and having a billionaire at their head, so are people expecting that if other companies were “trimming down some fat” it wouldn’t simply result in them making more profit because prices wouldn’t come down or something?

Also, a company can pretend to have 10 employees if it instead hires 1000 contractors to do the actual work.

Kecessa , (edited )

They’re making their machine more and more efficient, storage and bandwidth just gets cheaper with time… Yet, they still need their 30% cut to make billions in profit.

Wealth redistribution when?

Katana314 ,

But Infinite growth!! How do you affirm the ability for a new CEO to make tough decisions without going on insane hiring sprees to show growth, and then firing those same people to cut corners and also show growth!? The economy needs blood!

Oh wait, they’re not publically traded? I thought only corner shops were allowed to stay off the market.

Okay, end savage stock market mockery.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

There’s also such a thing as a blue chip stock.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • [email protected]
  • random
  • lifeLocal
  • goranko
  • All magazines
    •