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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

PlainSimpleGarak ,

“I have 8 different bosses. That means when I make a mistake, I have 8 different people coming by to tell me about it.”

Gigasser ,

From a comment below, Valve as a whole supposedly has around 350, of which around 80 work on Steam.

Kecessa , (edited )

Or they hire contractors without any job security

uis ,

without any job security

That’s USA. They don’t belive in job security.

explodicle ,

What good is job security when we get an automatic pay cut every year? We get raises by switching jobs!

ProxyZeus ,
@ProxyZeus@lemmy.world avatar

Love to refactor, the more I watch the Mesa graphics drivers and the employees valve hired that work on it the more I believe it

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.

zelifcam ,
@zelifcam@lemmy.world avatar

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.

No, people accept Steam because of the proven track record, values of their leadership, their hardware and the work they do with Linux.

Linux gaming was stable before Proton.

Please.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

EGS would have all this in that hypothetical scenario, why wouldn’t it?

Kecessa ,

The only reason you don’t see the price as a pain point is that you refuse to see that about 50% of that goes to companies that make billions in profit while people like you and me can’t afford rent.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Valve is not your landlord. They made a good place to buy video games. And come on, now; it’s 30% at most to Valve (which is less than brick and mortar before it) and then some more to the government.

Kecessa ,

30% for Valve, another 10 to 20% for the publisher…

Guess where the billionaires work?

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

There isn’t always a publisher. Sometimes the publisher owns them outright, and the devs will only see a salary in either case. There are only a handful of publishers that are worth more than a billion dollars and therefore run by billionaires, and they account for very few game releases in a given year on Steam these days. There’s a lot of nuance to this. And quite frankly, if a game I want to play comes from a billionaire’s company, I’m going to buy the game, they’re going to get some of my money, and I won’t feel bad about that.

Kecessa ,

Billionaires, multimillionaires, they’re all part of the problem. Right now you’re defending the people making you pay more for stuff than it’s worth.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

If you sold something for $10 that hundreds of thousands of people wanted enough to buy it, you’d be a multimillionaire too. The only way you fund a development team with a handful of people working there is with multiple millions of dollars.

Kecessa ,

Oh so Gabe’s six yachts, that’s for development purposes?

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

It’s irrelevant, is what it is. When you make something a whole bunch of people want to pay money for, you get to buy yourself nice things. I find a yacht to be a pretty wasteful use of money, but when I handed over thousands of dollars for hundreds of Steam games, it’s because we were both getting something good out of that transaction.

Kecessa ,

And you’re doing that while your peers are starving.

Do you realize that you’re the victim defending their abuser in this relationship? You’ll never been one of them, wake the fuck up.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not in an adversarial relationship with the people who sell me video games for fun. Every time you buy a video game from an indie dev on their own web site, that too is money you could have used to buy food for someone who’s starving.

Kecessa ,

When I buy from an indie dev directly the money goes to the person accomplishing the work to make the product I’m buying, not a bunch of rich guys that have so much money they don’t know what to do with it.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

So what happens when that indie dev sells multiple millions of copies and has more money than they know what to do with? The game is just free for everyone else once it reaches a critical mass? Your definition is so arbitrary. Rich people get rich by selling things people want.

Kecessa ,

That’s when wealth taxation comes into play.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I wish you the best of luck.

EveningNewbs ,

If this was true, games would cost 18% less on EGS because they only take 12%. Shockingly enough, they cost the same.

Kecessa ,

Because the same games sell for more elsewhere (also, funnily enough, we’re seeing tons of info on Valve because they’re getting sued for including a non compete clause in their contract to prevent games from being sold for less elsewhere), that’s an issue for the market as a whole and doesn’t apply to video games only. You’re paying too much for your food, for your gas, for your housing, for your clothes, for every fucking thing!

Profit shares for distributors will need to be regulated and wealth tax will need to be applied.

PythagreousTitties ,

Show us price comparisons between storefronts. Prove what you’re saying. Full retail price, not sales prices.

Kecessa ,

That’s my fucking point, the whole distribution chain needs to be regulated to stop distributors pocketing so much of our money when they’re accomplishing barely any of the actual work. It’s not a Valve problem, it’s a capitalism problem!

So you think grocery chains are making record profit every year without it impacting your wallet or something?

PythagreousTitties ,

Still waiting on those price comparisons.

Kecessa ,

Kinda impossible to do price comparisons when the whole is system is rigged, right?

PythagreousTitties ,

If you’re an idiot, sure

Kecessa ,

Alright then, can you do math?

Valve gets a 30% cut, take a game, reduce that cut to 10% and figure out the price. Price stays the same? Alright, that just means more money going to the devs, which are the people like you and me, instead of Gabe, which is a billionaire.

Apply that in all sectors and we end up richer, billionaires end up poorer. The 1% would finally stop owning 63% of all wealth… But I guess you would rather defend their right to make as much profit as they want while you can only afford a 10$ game every six months.

PythagreousTitties ,

Still waiting for the price comparisons

Kecessa , (edited )

Ok, so you can’t do basic calculations then, the education system truly failed you, no wonder you complain that you’re poor but can’t understand who made you so.

Have a good life!

PythagreousTitties ,

What calculations? Lmao.
You refuse to prove what you’re saying. Show us how every online storefront has different full sale pricing for the same games.

There are no calculations needed. You simple look at the price for the same games on different stores. But you’re somehow unable to do that?

EveningNewbs ,

This is completely incorrect. Their contract states that you can’t sell Steam keys for less elsewhere, which is entirely fair in my opinion. If your game is on multiple platforms or storefronts, you can sell it for whatever price you want there. The fact is that nobody does; they list it for the same everywhere and pocket the difference if someone buys on EGS.

bisby ,

I disagree with your definition of “killed Linux gaming.” It killed native Linux development perhaps. But using Linux for gaming is more viable than ever thanks to Valve. They single handedly boosted Linux gaming, if anything.

And they also offer more than the competition. For a while there games on EGS were just telling people to get support on steam forums because epic had nothing for supporting games they sold. Steam has forums, screenshot storage, achievements, remote play, friends lists, a shopping cart (🙄) and is adding new features like clips. I’m not using steam because it’s a monopoly, I’m using it because it’s a better platform.

Pika ,
@Pika@sh.itjust.works avatar

Killed Linux gaming? I hard disagree with that. Yes developers may not do Native ports as often anymore but I would much rather have the ability to play games that are not considered a native Port because the ocean is so much vaster. If anything proton in the steam deck put Linux on the map, prior to the deck AAA titles you would never see running on Linux you barely saw AA titles on it. However with the introduction of the steam deck in proton we now have companies moving closer to at least making sure their game is compatible with the deck which is one step closer to allowing it to be Linux compatible. It allows you to take your windows games and for the most part just be able to play it without having to have the studio spend as much for it as they would with a native port, because that’s the number one thing that holds them back from making a native Port the lack of market share. I would not have switched off of Windows if this was not the case because that was basically the only thing that was holding me on Windows still was the lack of decent gaming support

Let’s take Elden Ring for example, it plays beautifully I haven’t had a single problem playing it. They weren’t going to release a Linux branch but they made sure it was steamdeck compatible, which meant that it was proton compatible which then allows me to play this amazing game on my Debian 12, a game that otherwise would not have worked because none of the other translation layers function with it. I notice zero difference in performance it plays flawlessly, but I would not have been able to play this game otherwise. It might as well be a native Port because I’ve had zero issues with functionality.

rtxn ,

The Factorio development blog has a piece on developing Linux-native. Basically there’s ONE GUY who works on the LInux-native version, and it’s a lot more challenging than people think – from managing and linking dependencies, to working around GNOME’s monumentally stupid decision to expect client-side decorations from all apps. It’s simply more worthwhile to ensure that a game works well on WIne/Proton.

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.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Those free games weren’t actually free, Epic paid for them, you know.

Passerby6497 ,

Oh, I know. I got exactly 1 free game from EGS, which I promptly bought on stream myself once I realized that EGS had no offline mode (so the game I had been playing refused to launch during an Internet outage).

And that’s one of the many reasons EGS isn’t able to get a significant market share, because as I said initially, EGS fucking sucks. If they spent half as much on improving the store as they do for timed exclusives and trying to lure people in with free games, they might actually get somewhere.

ampersandrew , (edited )
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on?

They could offer their games DRM-free, guarantee that their multiplayer games have LAN or provide servers and/or at least provide that information clearly to the consumer, write an open source drop-in replacement for Steam Input and Workshop, guarantee more uptime on their matchmaking/friends servers, retain old versions of games that they distribute, and allow for user-customized or open source clients to fit all sorts of UI preferences, off the top of my head.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Those things are up to developers / publishers, not the marketplace.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

GOG mandates that all games must be DRM-free, so when I shop there, I know what I’m getting. Valve has tags that tell me if a game supports LAN, but developers aren’t required to report that, so I can’t tell if a multiplayer game I’m buying is built to last if the developer didn’t think to list it; if they were required to, that would be different. People lean on Steam Input and Workshop because those features are made easy for them, but using them means you don’t get those benefits outside of Steam, so there should be an open, third party alternative that developers can easily switch to if they’re familiar with developing for Steam; a company running a non-Steam store has an incentive to develop this. Matchmaking and friends servers, as they exist today, are frequently provided by the storefront, so when Steam servers go down for maintenance and I’m in the middle of an online match of Skullgirls, we get disconnected, and we have to wait until they come back up; there are ways to increase uptime and prevent this interruption, but Valve hasn’t improved the situation in at least 15 years.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

If EGS mandated those things it would be as successful as GOG. Which is irrelevant compared to Steam. Steam didn’t become successful because of tags. It’s because they were first.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

GOG is successful and profitable. EGS loses hundreds of millions of dollars.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Boutique shop successful, therefore Amazon is not a monopoly.

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

GOG succeeds in one key area that gives me a reason to shop there. Steam succeeds in other areas. Epic succeeds in none. If GOG wants to supplant Steam, they need to be good in that key area and the areas that I value from Steam. If Epic wants to supplant Steam, they need to give a single shit about what their customers want.

PlzGivHugs , (edited )

Honestly, even those are pretty overkill to make a competing storefront. All you’d have to do is to offer lower prices and/or take a smaller percentage while matching at least a fraction of Steam’s functionality (unlike Epic) or actively working to screw over customers (also unlike Epic). If a store sold games consistantly 5% cheaper than Steam, even without controller options, good support, a built-in forum, explicit Linux support, ect., I’m confident it would be reasonably successful. Just look at Humble and Fanatical. While they do (mostly) sell Steam keys, their prices are arguably what made them a success, not the features you get after redeaming the Steam keys.

Even beside that, the ideas you provided are all pretty minor. If you’re willing to throw more significant amounts of money at the platform, like many before have, you can go a lot further than that even. For example, seeing as Steam’s discovery algorithm is one of the bigger benifits Steam provides, you could one-up them by providing off-platform marketing for games launching on your platform. This would be a way to bring devlopers and players alike to use your platform without screwing over either. Similarly, you could take a page out of Epic’s book and do giveaways regularly. Alternatively, you could use a less generous system such as “buy anything and get x game free” or “every $10 spent gives you a chance to win x game bundle” to make it more sustainable, and/or allow you to market specific underperforming games. It isn’t that hard to come up with ideas that would allow a competitor to do well. You just have to do that rather than putting all your resources into trying to take games away from players, and harvest their data.

rtxn , (edited )

Success is not illegal. Valve isn’t buying up smaller competing storefronts, or paying off developers for exclusivity, or burying competition in legal fees and prepared 80-page lawsuits. The only thing holding back real competition is the competing platforms being dogshit.

I was excited for the EGS when it was announced. Then it turned out to be a garbage platform with the shady exclusivity deals that turned Steam into an ad platform for games that had been poached by Epic. Valve responded to it with the Steam Deck and Proton.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Leveraging dominant position to keep your monopoly is illegal even in the US.

Passerby6497 ,

Allegations of leveraging a dominant market position doesn’t mean its actually happening.

Kedly ,

Valve had nothing to do with its competitors being garbage

tyler ,

What are they doing to leverage their dominant position?

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

At some point you’re so entrenched in the market you don’t have to do anything anymore. I was quite surprised that Valve somehow evaded EU Digital Markets Act gatekeeper criteria.

tyler ,

Ok but you made a claim that they were leveraging their market position to maintain a monopoly. So please describe how they are doing that in any way shape or form.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

There you go: www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpwwyj6v24xo

tyler ,

Just because someone claims something to sue a company does not mean it’s true. You gotta go through the whole court process and prove it.

It says Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms

I’ve never seen any publisher claim this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But it sure doesn’t sound like that has anything to do with being a monopoly. Epic, GoG, Ubisoft, etc. could all do the exact same thing.

Anyway, thanks for the link. I was not the one to downvote you on your last comment. You did what I asked.

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

I give up. Are you an American or something?

Kedly ,

You dont seem to understand what a monopoly is either since steam isnt one

Kecessa ,

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

bizarroland ,

Making money isn't evil.

Kecessa ,

Making billions always happens at the expense of people like you and me.

PythagreousTitties ,

Show us on the doll where the Valve hurt you

Kecessa ,

It’s not a Valve issue, it’s a capitalism issue and you’re a victim of it just like I am.

PythagreousTitties ,

Oh, I see. You’re still in highschool.
Have fun with that.

Kecessa ,

Nice arguments you’ve got there, show me how having 1% of the population having 63% of the wealth doesn’t cause any problems for you.

PythagreousTitties ,

Valve causes zero problems for me.

How much of the population do you interact with outside of the internet?

Kecessa ,

Because you’re intentionally ignoring the fact that every time you buy a game you’re paying more than you really need to, therefore you’re keeping less of your wealth than you should.

PythagreousTitties ,

Yeah man, that ten dollar game I bought six months ago was so overpriced. I’m such a slave, amIright

Kecessa ,

Funny how you’re talking about being poor

lemm.ee/comment/12887154

and when people point out that you’re being overcharged for stuff you’re defending the people overcharging you.

PythagreousTitties , (edited )

What exactly is your point? The comment you linked to has me saying I am poor, and the comment your replying to says the same thing. Ten bucks for one full video game in six months is not being overcharged. A pair of jeans is more than ten bucks.

If you’re arguing that the only good game is a free game, I’m not going to agree with you. I will happily pirate “AAA” games, but indie games I’ll pay for.

Highschool freshman edge bs is annoying as hell. You’re not as smart as you think you are.

Kecessa , (edited )

It is being overcharged when they game should be 7$ instead.

That applies everywhere. You pay 100$ to do your grocery, 30$ goes to the store owner, you’re here defending the store owner while you’re trying to choose between eating and paying rent.

PythagreousTitties , (edited )

So what game do you think cost less than $7 to make?

Kecessa ,

…

Man, you truly are an idiot

PythagreousTitties ,

You would know

Kecessa ,

“Find me a game that costs less than 7$ to make”

Find me a game that costs less than 10$ to make then! It’s the logic you’re coming up with!

Do you think you’re the only one purchasing the game? On a 10$ game you’ve got about 5$ going to the devs, 2$ to the publisher, 3$ to Steam. It’s 5$ per copy they the devs need to cover development costs, the rest goes to companies unrelated to the actual development and they’re the companies that make the most profit in the end because the cost to provide their service is the lowest.

PythagreousTitties ,

Have you ever made anything in your entire life?

You seriously think $5 is enough to cover dev costs? Payroll? Rent? Are you out of your mind?

Kecessa , (edited )

I’m using the example that you provided, the exact same calculation applies to any game sold on Steam because it’s %! “How is 5$ enough?” I don’t know, you tell me, you’re the one who brought up the 10$ game in the first place, how do YOU expect the devs to make a living if they only got 5$ from the 10$ you paid? Because that’s the reality they have to deal with!

old.reddit.com/…/how_much_money_do_you_actually_g…

70$ game? Same thing, about 30 to 35$ is taken by Valve and the publisher, that’s overhead you’re paying for and it’s the part of the revenue that leads to the most profit for the people who get it, the rest of the revenues goes to the people who actually have spendings to cover and their P/E ratio is the worst of the three parties involved.

Heck, Vampire Survivors has always sold for less than 10$, the 50% left for the dev was enough for him to make a living off it and cover his development cost, so I guess it’s actually possible for some indie games, right?

Man, either you’re an idiot or you’re just trolling.

PythagreousTitties ,

Someday, when you actually interact with people in real life, in person, and don’t rely on your parents for everything you’ll see how stupid your entire “argument” is.

You’ve also never made anything, so you really have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

Kecessa ,

Says the guy who complains about being poor to the guy who’s got his shit in order. Guess who of the two doesn’t understand how the world works and is getting exploited the most 🤔

PythagreousTitties ,

So… You still refuse to back anything up. Classy.

PythagreousTitties ,

Waah it’s not faaaair!

Fair isn’t a thing.

ZeroHora ,
@ZeroHora@lemmy.ml avatar

Blame the game not the player, it’s not like they are doing some next level weird shit like all the competition does. This rigged economic system allowed this situation.

NocturnalMorning , (edited )

As an Indie dev, a 30% cut of profit could be the death 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.

bizarroland ,

I agree with you but at the same time I feel like I should point out that this is the China fallacy, where there's a billion people in China and if you could just tap into even 0.3% of their market you would make bank.

While it's technically true, the fallacy behind it overshadows the difficulty of acquiring that percentage of the market. The grand majority of games released never become cash positive, and over 50% of games on steam alone never make more than $4,000.

https://vginsights.com/insights/article/infographic-indie-game-revenues-on-steam

This is not an issue with distribution, it's an issue with marketing and market fit, and accompanied by the base fact of that if you're the kind of person who is good at making games, it would be a rarity for you to also be the kind of person that's good at marketing the games you made.

Those are two entirely different wheelhouses that function best with two entirely different personality types, and that's not covering all of the different disciplines that you need to make a game or run a game making company in the first place.

Kedly ,

Use Steams competitors then if you don’t want to pay Steams cut. If you’re getting less overall from them, that tells you all you need to know about the validity of Steams fees

bizarroland ,

I think you missed my point. I am in favor of steam and valve by far, my quibble is with the idea that anyone can sell 100,000 copies of a $15 game.

For every Stardew Valley there are thousands of other games no one has ever heard of and that almost no one bought.

By all means though, make great games. I'll be buying them on steam.

Kedly , (edited )

Ah fair. My reading comprehension also failed there because I thought you were the same person the person you responded to was responding to was (Person I thought you were - Person you responded to - you - me: if that makes what I said make more sense). I guess my response though is that discoverability is going to be an issue for any new game regardless of whether someone chooses to put their game on Steam or not (and I’d argue that not putting their game on Steam would negatively impact their discoverability, hence another point in favour of Steams cut)

edit: (I actively hate Epic though, so consider taking their money as losing the possibility of ever getting mine. I am NOT for console exclusive bs on the PC marketplace, and Epic is actively trying to make that a thing. So if you except money from epic to go exclusive on their store, I’m only ever going to pirate your game, if I can even be bothered to play it at all)

rtxn ,

After that well-informed take, listen to an actual indie developer talk about why the 30% is worth it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoAmifo9r0 (it’s a separate but similar lawsuit by a “waaahmbulance-chaser” law firm in the UK)

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Yes, developers are also victims of this monopoly. It’s obviously better (“worth it”) to pay 30% for visibility on the biggest marketplace.

ProxyZeus ,
@ProxyZeus@lemmy.world avatar

They also maintain file hosting for saves, game versions and a lot of useful apis for games partner.steamgames.com/doc/features

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

Yes, it’s a nice cage.

Kedly ,

Enjoy accelerating late stage capitalism while pretending you’re against it because you’re incapable of seeing things outside of black and white thinking

misk ,
@misk@sopuli.xyz avatar

I’m accelerating late stage capitalism by being critical of monopolies? What???

Kedly ,

Damn dude that link fuckin DESTROYS every braindead “b-b-but STEAMS MONOPOLY!!!” arguement I’ve seen uttered by idiots who want to bring late stage capitalism to the PC marketplace just so they can pretend they stood up to a company

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.

fishos ,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

That’s just a name we give to “a share of a well-known, profitable, and established company with a history of success”. I.e. “companies that experience constant and consistent growth”. That’s literally what OP is criticizing. They do the same things. Microsoft is a blue chip. You think they don’t have layoffs to appease shareholders? Google? Apple?

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

More along the lines of a Coca Cola.

Agrivar ,

“Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.”

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Downvotes don’t make me wrong.

www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bluechipstock.asp

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?

Albbi ,

If it’s that easy then make your own competetor and charge less. It’s not like steam has exclusively deals with anyone.

Kecessa , (edited )

That’s not the point at all.

If they make billions in profit and Gaben is a billionaire while 80% of the population of his country lives paycheck to paycheck then there’s a fucking issue. The same logic applies to all businesses.

Bronzie ,

Then what is the point?

Why are they not allowed to create a good service and profit?
Why are the competition unable to take marketshare with lower fees?

It feels as if you have this number, >billion, makes a company evil. Why?

I agree with you that no single person needs a billion, but having earned it doesn’t make them bad. They innovate and move everything forwards. I’d much rather see my money with Valve than with EA, Activision Blizzard or any of the other faceless giants out there.

Kecessa ,

Multimillionaires, billionaires, they’re all part of the problem.

They’re allowed to make a good product and profit, there’s no reason why we allow them to profit so fucking much, if they do it’s because we’re paying more for their product than they actually need to charge us, the fact that they consider it ok makes them bad people.

Stop defending the people profiting from you, you’re the cattle defending the butcher.

Bronzie ,

Sure, then «attack» the politicians allowing this to happen.

Up corporate tax and income tax for the wealthy.

Don’t attack the companies that play by the rules.

Kecessa , (edited )

All of them deserve to be attacked, there’s nothing moral about being a multimillionaire while people are starving.

Bronzie ,

Right, but there’s nothing immoral about it either.

I live in a place where the rich pay their fair dues to the benefit of the less fortunate. That’s where I think you need to focus on getting, not slandering every successful company out of envy.

Thanks for the chat. You were nothing but respectful. Have a great weekend.

Kecessa ,

Yes there’s something immoral about it, it’s a choice they they consciously make to make us spend more than necessary on the products they have to sell so they can accumulate more wealth and we can accumulate less wealth.

Katana314 ,

The funniest thing is, there are billionaires out there that agree tax laws are messed up and think they should be paying more taxes. For them it’s just a stressful hassle to work out which charities should take their money.

SpacetimeMachine ,

I don’t believe them for a second. When you have that much money you could just hire people to vet charities for you.

Albbi ,

I agree with you that there’s a problem, but I think you’re targeting the wrong villian here. I shop local whenever I can but there are a few things that are just… big. Video games are worldwide and getting them off the internet is nice. There’s no such thing as a local video game distributor. There’s local indie game development which I do support, but Steam is a product I like which does its job very well.

The problem here is scale, not necessarily who individuals are buying from. Take major league sports as an example. Salaries for indivudual players are in the millions because of the amount of eyeballs attached to wallets that are interested in watching those players. Less eyeballs, less money, and the players would probably be doing the same thing but not be making as much money. Same thing with music. It’s very hard for an artist to make a good living with music, but once they hit global awareness suddenly money will come rollin in from all over the place. This isn’t a problem with the people doing the jobs (although it could be said that major league sports should charge less, they are trying to maximize their profit) but is the result of the amount of people who are willing to pay.

The probelm you’re having is that a company is allowed to suck up so much money and keep it. That’s a problem for governments to handle. Individuals can choose who to give their money to, but sometimes there aren’t any other good choices.

Kecessa ,

It’s their choice to take a cut big enough that they’re making that kind of profit, no one is forcing them, it’s all greed, stop acting like they wouldn’t be able to lower it.

explodicle ,

A million dollars isn’t what it used to be. There are older working class multi-millionaires who have saved that much from entirely their own labor.

CileTheSane ,
@CileTheSane@lemmy.ca avatar

Multimillionaires, billionaires, they’re all part of the problem.

So what laws are you proposing to fix this? Or do you just think whining that they exist will cause them to give away their money?

Kecessa , (edited )

Wealth taxation up to 100%

Limited share for distributors/publishers

Implement that and just watch as everyone but the super wealthy becomes richer all of the sudden.

morriscox ,

So he should get the address of every single person in the country and divide his money equally among every single person and have no money for himself? Maybe only keep the same amount for himself that each other person is getting? That’s ~342 million people. Give them $3 each and no more billionaire. Worth $10B? $30 for each person.

Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the USA and is worth $251B. $750/person would help for rent for one month. You could take money away from babies and maybe get a full month, maybe two.

Jeff Bezos is next at $161B. That’s about $480/person.

Of course, this means that their money is gone. No golden goose. Do you think that they should subsidize every person in the country?

Kecessa ,

Or simply say "I guess 30% is more than we need, let’s cut that to 10% and see how that goes.

If billionaires didn’t exist we wouldn’t need to subsidize anyone, the majority of the world’s issues are related to the fact that a minority keeps a majority of wealth to themselves and just try to acquire more and more.

morriscox ,

Perhaps 10%. Taxes at one point went up to 90%. Some companies do need more, especially small businesses. As for not needing to subsidize anyone, when the pandemic struck and the checks went out a lot of people paid bills (I managed to get rid of my student loan debt, with help) but many went on spending sprees and some of those still couldn’t pay rent. Wealth distribution isn’t as great as it sounds and I’m on SSDI.

Kecessa ,

“when the pandemic struck”… The pandemic that was caused by poor people hunting wild animals to sell their meat to make a living? Gosh darn, I wonder what we could have done to make it so these people wouldn’t have to resort to that to make a living… Oh well 🤷

morriscox ,

Nothing. That happened in another country. Also, hunting wild animals to sell the meat has been a thing for millennia.

Kecessa ,

Oh and you think wealth inequality is an issue that only affects the USA?

morriscox ,

The pandemic that was caused by poor people hunting wild animals to sell their meat to make a living? Gosh darn, I wonder what we could have done to make it so these people wouldn’t have to resort to that to make a living.

What the poor people were doing happened in another country and therefore there was nothing that we could have done to change their way of life. We can’t dictate to China how they treat their citizens.

RiikkaTheIcePrincess ,
@RiikkaTheIcePrincess@pawb.social avatar

You’ve got the proverbial “patience of a saint.” Shame about all’ the bootlickers around here, though. I’d thought/hoped better of Lemmy but still people’s brains turn off when they’ve chosen a team :(

Kecessa ,

Incredible how you look at the comment history of all these people and all of them have comments about not having enough money or being angry at rich people, but all critical thinking goes out the window when it’s for a hobby they like, suddenly whatever they’re told to spend is perfectly OK!

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.

Zahille7 ,

Someone’s upset that they’re following their own successful business model.

I get that people don’t like wealthy people regardless, but Gabe is probably one of the few that’s actually not bad.

I don’t know where this contractor bullshit is coming from; if anything that should be aimed at Microsoft.

Kecessa ,

There are no good billionaires, the reason they exist is because people like you and me are paying more for things than they’re truly worth, billionaires exist because of the surplus we pay.

EddoWagt ,

the reason they exist is because people like you and me are paying more for things than they’re truly worth

There is no true worth, worth is defined by how much people are willing to spend on something, doesn’t matter how much something costs to produce and distribute

Kecessa ,

Brainwashed by capitalism 👍

EddoWagt ,

How? That can go both ways, I can make some thing for €5000, but if nobody is willing to buy it, it’s still worthless

Kecessa , (edited )

There’s a cost to producing things. All the overhead you’re being charged that ends up enriching investors and bosses that have so much money they wouldn’t be able to spend it if they tried? That’s money you could keep in your pocket.

Have you ever thought that maybe you evaluate that some things are worth a certain amount just because that’s what you’re used to seeing them sold for so in reality you just underestimate what your money is worth and how much you should be able to purchase with it? Because that’s exactly what’s happening, especially with digital goods, there’s no supply vs demand relationship here, there’s no rarity.

If bread sells for 5$ for long enough you’ll think you’re getting your money’s worth by getting it on sale for 4.50$ without realizing that it cost 2$ to make it, transport it and put it on the shelves and there’s still 2.50$ going to the grocery store owner. You were paying that bread 3$ a couple of years ago and at the time it cost 1.75$ to make, transport and store, but you’re ignoring all that because what’s important is that right now it’s 50¢ less than full price so you’re getting your money’s worth. Most of the surplus is going to a company that’s just making record profit year after year after year, but that record profit comes from somewhere. It went up 100% in a couple of years while the people who made, transported and put the bread on the shelves have seen their salary increase by 10% and you’ve seen what you spend on grocery increase by 66%, but hey, you’re getting your money’s worth and the price is fair because that’s what people accept to be paying, right?

mnemonicmonkeys ,

I don’t know where this contractor bullshit is coming from; if anything that should be aimed at Microsoft.

TBF, Valve does hire contractors to help work on Proton and Steam OS. I have no idea what the terms and compensation are, I’m just pointing out that they do hire contractors

uis ,

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

Less wasting resources, good. Ah, you mean under capitalism.

fishos ,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

A lot of companies have been trying to sue them and are trying to tarnish their name in any way possible because their case is already shaky at best. The whole “monopoly” thing despite competition existing and Valve only being on top because they’re the best feature wise stuff.

Zirconium ,

And a lot of publishers already have their own launchers that dont need steam or use steam. Theyre just dogshit

fishos ,
@fishos@lemmy.world avatar

Exactly. It’s hard to argue that Steam has a monopoly when the other launchers exist and suck. Steam, despite its flaws, is still the best storefront we have. Gabe is the person who taught us that piracy is largely a service problem, not a price problem. People will pay when the paid option is quality.

Kaeru ,

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

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

That’s total employees at Valve. This is a subset of those that work on Steam.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

It’s very impressive. Although it explains why the remote streaming and controller stuff is so GD buggy.

Theres probably like 3 guys total working on them. Maybe not even full-time.

simple OP ,

The report says that Valve has ~350 employees total, and of those employees only 80 actually work on Steam as a storefront. The rest are working on their games and hardware.

https://lemm.ee/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffiles.catbox.moe%2Fdwjs9s.png

whyalone ,

So they have people working on their games? HL-3 confirmed!

Riven ,
@Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

They have other games in the works. I’m in the alpha or beta now? Of their overwatch like called deadlock.

Corigan ,

Who the fuck cares what’s with this constant desire to try and shit on steam

HawlSera ,

Because they tried competing and it didn’t work because they kept offering an inferior product, so they’re trying to weasel Steam out of the market

homicidalrobot ,

As for as storefronts go, which is what’s being talked about here, they are competing and winning. With a fraction of the employees other companies employ for storefront work. Origin (Rest Unpeacefully) and Uplay never stood a chance and epic has had plenty of time to market saturate. The company not being publicly traded doesn’t prevent competition, it prevents investor interests like quashing competition.

rickyrigatoni ,

They meant the other companies tried competing and failed so they’re pushing these anti-valve lawsuits and articles.

synae ,
@synae@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

How is this even shitting on them? It’s impressive af

Leate_Wonceslace ,
@Leate_Wonceslace@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

The way the headline is phrased suggests a disapproving tone.

Pregnenolone ,

How so? It’s about as neutral as can be.

RizzRustbolt ,

Anything not directly biased towards my interests are against my interests.

;p

HKayn ,
@HKayn@dormi.zone avatar

Explain.

Corigan ,

Just more seems to be a lot of posts on this topic and they are filled with anti steam crap

lanolinoil ,
@lanolinoil@lemmy.world avatar

Shit on? This is some baller ass shit – What is the rev per employee a billion dollars!!!

ampersandrew ,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

They’ve touted before that they may be the most profitable company per employee on earth. They make a few billion in profit per year with a payroll of a few hundred employees.

lanolinoil ,
@lanolinoil@lemmy.world avatar

Must be – I can’t think of anyone else that could come close unless you count Berkshire Hathaway or something

GoodEye8 , (edited )

I don’t know, there’s plenty of anti-Valve rhetoric on Lemmy. Plenty of people try to spin it as Valve having a low employee count because they have a lot of contractors. One guy was making a point that Valve employee count is much lower because they buy in AMD GPUs for the Steam Deck… As if Valve should buy chip manufacturing plants and design and manufacture their own GPUs.

Even here somewhere below (or maybe up later) in this thread someone said

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

Which is an argument, if you can prove Valve is buying in 10 times the amount of contractors as they have employees for positions that should go to full-time employees. But I very much doubt such information exists.

ripcord ,
@ripcord@lemmy.world avatar

I definitely didn’t interpret this as shitting on Steam. In fact, the opposite.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

That feels like free advertising to potential job-seekers.

If just a few staff are running the whole thing, it means they are all probably the kind that do more actual work and less politics. That means, if anyone interested in learning fast and getting good at their field were to work there, they would have the time of their life.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Buffalobuffalo ,

I infer from this that they don’t hire fast learners, they hire people who are already well demonstrated experts.

ulterno ,
@ulterno@lemmy.kde.social avatar

Yeah, that’s most probably the case.

Doesn’t stop me from wanting to join though.

count_dongulus ,

All i read is “Damn, they’re a super capable team.”

RizzRustbolt ,

Who probably tear ass around the office in camaros.

PythagreousTitties ,

Bitchin’ Camaros!

Rayspekt ,

These numbers keep getting smaller with every headline. Tomorrow it says that Steam runs off of Gabens private NAS.

rovingnothing29 ,
@rovingnothing29@lemmy.world avatar

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/the_cloud.png

RootBeerGuy ,
@RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

Because other articles cite about 350 (heh, inb4 three-fiddy) for the whole of Valve. This is just Steam.

T00l_shed ,

Gaben isn’t actually one person. Gaben is a conglomerate.

Rayspekt ,

Gaben is a state of mind

T00l_shed ,

It’s the level beyond zen.

Spacehooks ,

Budda statue is based on Gaben confirmed!

Rayspekt ,

Budda is just a Garry’s Mod asset flip.

franklin ,
@franklin@lemmy.world avatar

Is it like Negan from The Walking Dead? They’re all Gaben.

GBU_28 ,

Why is this getting posted so often?

TurboHarbinger ,

This is a “they are hoarding all the profits” “they’re not open to stock exchange” “why I can’t have a piece if this cake, it’s unfair” kind of news.

Pure pressure politics.

GBU_28 ,

Who should they share it with?

Agrivar ,

Just me. Don’t worry, I’ll do great things with it. Trust me, bro.

shadowspirit ,

You sound confident. Like a person I can trust.

pyre ,

gives confidence too. like some sort of superhero that has confidence powers. you could name him, uh… let me think…

ysjet ,

Because Epic Games is really hoping to turn people against steam any way they can other than actually improving their service or morals.

jol ,

And how… is this supposed to help that?

HauntedCupcake ,

By making it seem that Steam is raking in money and uh, money bad?

jol ,

This is so silly. Do people think hosting thousands of games and having thousands of users is cheap?

HauntedCupcake ,

tbf, it’s likely significantly cheaper than the 30% margin. I still think it’s silly though

Daveyborn ,
@Daveyborn@lemmy.world avatar

Millions* of users, I guarantee it isn’t cheap.

ByteOnBikes ,

I honestly think it’s a badge of honor.

I worked in a company where we had 1000+ engineers on a SAAS platform for three years. And it barely has the same relevance or reach as Steam.

lengau ,

Pretty amazing that years of effort from massive competitors like Epic and Microsoft haven’t managed to crack this. I wonder what they’re doing wrong?

(Ok I lied. I know exactly what they’re doing wrong and there’s zero chance of them changing.)

ByteOnBikes ,

The Microsoft Store and how to redeem games is so mind-numbly stupid. GamePass wowed me with their library and the subscription service. But how they do everything, from DRMing their games in a absolute mindfuckery app folder, to locking it into your Microsoft account and ecosystem, was so frustrating. Modding? Eat a Microdick. Hell, save files don’t even transfer between Steam and Microsoft GamePass games because FUCK YOU PLAYERS.

I’m glad Steam was extremely proactive at moving off of Windows.

Etterra ,

Well large corporations are at least 50% dead weight by volume, weighted overwhelmingly in management and at the executive level. So naturally it’s the ones doing all the ACTUAL work who get terminated whenever the line isn’t going up hard enough. Capitalism folks, it’s doomed us all and there’s no way we can fix it and those who could never will.

PhAzE ,

80 people who are doing a bang-up job, i might add.

Phegan ,

That’s an insanely efficient machine.

Kedly ,

These “B-B-BUT STEAMS MONOPOLY CROWD” really do think we have stockholm/boot licker syndrome as if a good 60%+ of steam users didnt know how to Pirate games if we truly didnt like the service

Wilzax ,

Failure of larger companies to make a competitive alternative to steam is not anticompetitive behavior on the part of Valve

LodeMike , (edited )

Yeah who TF are their lawyers? Anticompetitive behavior is just that—there have o be actions taken, at least in the United States. And Steam doesn’t have exclusivity agreements so IDK what they’re gonna argue.

Wilzax ,

The closest thing they can argue to any kind of “exclusivity” is that the free steam keys developers can generate for their games may not be resold for a lower amount than the game can be purchased for on steam outright. That says nothing about other means of distributing the game outside of steam, and nothing about alternative platforms the devs might want to use. It’s a tiny and far away straw to grasp at.

skaffi ,

TF2 lawyers, it would seem.
Their legal Offense has evidently been workgrouped by Scout, Soldier and Pyro, judging by this particular legal argument. To think the Mercenaries would turn on their creator… Well, they’re mercenaries!

HauntedCupcake ,

The case seems like such a reach. At worst it’s an effective monopoly for devs, not consumers. Devs have a really hard time selling elsewhere.

That said, I love Steam and think it’s genuinely one of the best companies out there. And whilst it’s not great that they’re so big, they aren’t that big due to anti-competitive behaviour. It’s quite the opposite. You can add non-Steam games to your library and use Steam features. The fucking Steam deck isn’t locked down, and you can install non-Steam games. Just because Uplay wants to log me out every time I reboot doesn’t mean Steam should be sued.

There are so many other companies more deserving of the lawsuit

Wilzax ,

Nintendo for example

Kedly ,

Had me in the first half ngl

6gybf ,

Seems like a good example of how running a company for the shareholders doesn’t produce a a better product after all.

Wilzax ,

B-b-b-bingo

Rakonat ,

Precisely what the share holders don’t want people to know. They worship money and what the public to think more money = more good. If people realize these investor backed products are generally not anything better than someone can make in their garage they’ll stop buying overpriced junk. So here we are about to see how the sausage gets made.

digdilem ,

shareholders … worship money

Well, that literally is the only reason to become a shareholder, right?

I mean, technically you’re participating in the management of the company and can influence decisions such as environmental benefits, but it feels like that only happens when there’s secondary benefits that also improve profit.

Bakkoda ,

Product becomes the byproduct. Dividends and massive returns are the #1 priority.

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