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kamenoko ,

I mean that’s awesome.

Ultimately they’re only responsible for the steam client and the servers.

szczuroarturo ,

That actually makes a lot of sense given the fact that i havent heard about massive steam data centers. I suppose they just rent their servers from data centers around the world. Which actually is very suprising. I imagine at their scale making their own data centers would save them money.

Actually i just think they must subcontract a lot of their daily operation. I refuse to belive such low numbers are enough to even handle the complaints from stolen shipments and broken devices not to mention all the other complaints. It is more than enough to actually develop the platform but surely not to handle day to day operations.

Excrubulent ,
@Excrubulent@slrpnk.net avatar

I suspect subcontracting is how they get around the lasseiz-faire nature of employment there. There’s a famously open policy where nobody tells anyone what to do.

But I imagine that policy can’t extend to subcontractors. There it’s “here’s money, make the servers happen”.

phx ,

I remember reading that having a version keyword in your user alias would cause issues with steam, and it was actually because it was a blocked word on CloudFlare where they store/pull a bunch of steam data from

chemicalwonka ,
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

That’s how you maximize profit, isn’t it?

knitwitt ,

Valve is profitable because of the reputation they’ve built up over many years as being an incredibly consumer friendly storefront. Avoiding corporate bloat, and focusing their attention on the core aspects of their business consumers care about has allowed them to thrive where many others failed. Valve created and maintained a fantastic product. So yes.

chemicalwonka , (edited )
@chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

You’re right but missing an important factor

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!

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.

Mwa ,
@Mwa@thelemmy.club avatar

i thought it was a big team

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