Wasn’t Valve the one who pointed out that Russia was always pirating games not because they were inherently pirates but because the game releases had zero support for Russia lol. Hence why Valve was the first foreign developer/publisher that gained an actual foothold in the Russian market.
This is kind of like the same thing. Sony will just say something dumb like “we don’t allow PSN accounts in these countries because they’re full of pirates”.
The second problem is absence of regional prices in other markets but Steam.
They are selling games two (!!) or so times cheaper in RU region. For example, AAA game might cost 60 dollars or 6000 rub in US but it will costs 35 or 3500 rub in russian steam.
Even though I couldn’t afford games in the past and pirated them - at some point I started buying stuff just because it gives much better, hustle -free experience.
I often took the same approach back when buying a game was a financial consideration. But even though now 4/5 times I already know hat I’m buying and just pay, there are still the 1/5 times I’ll pirate first as I’m really on the fence. Due to this I have a few games I ended up completing on pirate, but bought the game (and DLC if relevant) with 0 hours in my library because good work deserves recognition.
Otherwise we risk losing those good developers to other careers or into the AAA meat grinder.
For clarity I’m talking Indy titties here, I doubt I average much above 0.5/year AAA purchases anymore
Edit: actually I’ll go one step further. If I pirate your game and hate it, then its delete and forget. If I buy your game and hate it that’s a potential negative review, maybe even though me and that title we just a bad fit. This is why demos need to become ubiquitous again
I love reading the comments on Mac Rumour articles when it’s negative news for Apple’s platforms or services. To paraphrase: “Vulcan bad!” “Lazy Devs!” “But they support Linux?” and “What a dumb business decision!”
Yes, Apple zealots, Valve is absolutely going to support your vendor-specific graphics API on a platform that they aren’t making much money from, and will continue to support and test that platform for years, operating as a charity because they love Apple so much 😂
You can expect this to continue happening for as long as Apple pushes Metal and refuses to support Vulkan […] If macOS wants to get anywhere it has to be a case “why not support it” instead of “we need to make a Metal compatible version of our engine”.
Don’t forget that Apple actively breaks software build processes quite frequently for their platform and doesn’t allow you to fully automate a lot of them because you need accounts to download the relevant tools and can only use them on Apple hardware. That makes supporting it a pain for cross platform projects.
It sucks when you want to port an app to iOS, or an application to MacOS and find out “oh… I need to have a Mac to compile to these platforms… and there’s no way to otherwise test…”
Meanwhile, with android you can just run an emulator.
I don’t know if I want my friends knowing that I’m typically murdering prostitutes at the Valentine Saloon or getting lap dances at the Vanilla Unicorn before I shoot the place up. Can’t let Wade have all the fun.
I find it surprising that existed. Not an unreasonable change.
For the lazy, when a game sold “advanced access” as part of a pre-purchase; game time before release didn’t count to the 2h refund limit. So you could play eg 10h of a game, then refund it on release. This is them fixing it.
Yeah I do have a similar fear. Valve is something special. I tried to hate them, they’re filthy-rich corpos after all, but I can’t. Something of value will be lost when Valve finally succumbs to enshittification, which cannot be said of a lot of other big companies.
But my fear isn’t necessarily about Steam. I have like 20-30 games in my library. Steam is simply the least shit way to play games you have/want to pay for.
I love valve, I have 1000+ games in my library. I also have every crack for every game I could fine. For the rest, I have live virtual machine snapshot of the running game. Of course anythibg live service will not work without a server simulator. To do that we need to, for each games, using wireshark, record all server and peer traffic while also saving all privaye encryptions keys used in the session.
Once games start using TPM processor, they will become uncrackable. Make sure to use a compromised TPM in that case.
They’re mandating you have a playstation account to play on PC. That was always in the terms, and on the steam page, but you didn’t have to. Until very recently.
And if you don’t live in one of the 65 countries where PSN operates, you can go fuck yourself, because your game just stopped working.
Can’t you just use an US account though? I don’t mean to say that this isn’t a major issue as it is, but are you really blocked from linking it? I don’t live in the US but I have a us pen account since forever
I’m aware of this, but I’ve never heard of this being enforced outside of people trying to use credit cards of other regions, and they only resulted on temporary suspensions.
My question is on the enforcement of the linking. Does it stop you from doing something like this?
Also worth point out that up until yesterday, Sony said a PSN account wasn’t it required to play games games on PC. They changed it shortly after the backlash.
Sony dropped an announcement requiring PSN accounts, even for PC players with no cross play enabled, presumably because it makes the numbers look better to their shareholders. Apparently it was supposed to be a requirement at launch but the PSN servers were busted and it was preventing people from getting in so they ‘temporarily’ disabled it.
Something not rally being mentioned is that their monetization system has gotten predictably worse, for example nerfing a weapon in advance of a premium battle pass weapon that coincidentally fills the niche that was just nerfed away.
I mean, that’s not really so bad considering you can unlock the battle passes without spending a dime past your initial investment. The timing of the nerfs might be coincidental - I do also seem to remember a Breaker - Railgun - Shield Pack monoculture being a pretty big issue.
Unlocking the battle pass with grinding takes forever. With over 40 hours I only just made enough to unlock one. Except I didn’t because I spent a little along the way on armor. Playing normally does not get warbonds at a reasonable pace.
I mean, that’s the game, isn’t it? You either grind out the super credits, and the fact that’s an option at all is the Hallmark of a good game, or you pay for instant gratification. Live service doesn’t support itself.
Hopefully “we’re still trying to learn what’s best for PC” isn’t some sort of code for “PC players are too whiny and won’t bend the knee, this weekend was bad PR that wasnt worth it. we just won’t release future games on PC”
I mean $107 million in Steam sales within 2 months is something worth it for Sony to put up with a whiny playerbase. If there’s something I know Sony likes, it’s more money. I doubt they will pass up the opportunity to collect money from PC gamers, and digging their heels letting players develop grudges against them were going to hurt Sony’s future sales figures all around than what they would have benefited from PSN integration.
“We want to try to convince you that this was unintentional and not a calculated business decision that was made with the objective of profit at your expense.
We want you to believe that our multi-billion dollar company did not foresee this even though we have hundreds, if not thousands, of business analysts who work for us globally who definitely suggested this was a possibility in the first 10 minutes of account linking on PC after 4 months being suggested internally.
Also our PR people probably suggested it as a possibility.
Also our legal team probably suggested it as a possibility.
But even though we analyze the industry and the market and the users, and the business, and the case studies, and the marketing, and the games constantly, not stop, day and night, globally; please believe us that we are still trying to learn whats best for PC teehee.
In the future, we will be sure to try to force you into account linking from the beginning with any future release.
Please ignore our transgressions and instead give us money. Goodbye”
To be the Devil’s advocate, I’ve noticed that PC gamers are unpleasable, they all have different machines to optimize, they sometimes play a new game on their shit machine and give an unfair bad rating based on that, throwing off the review ratings, and something like %35 of PC gamers pirate their games. That honestly doesn’t sound like an attractive market to me 🤷♂️
Love how you say that while ignoring that the difference between total sales and PS sales is topping the charts and hitting 20th place. But yes, let’s talk about the pirates some more.
End of the day, a lot of people prefer consoles. I looked up the price of making a gaming PC even comparable to a ps5 or Xbox and it was easily double the price. And I don’t wanna hear about PC building, I could build my own car too but I don’t want to.
You come home pop in a game and it works, and years later new games come out and they work! With PC you’re outdated within a year
Bro, you’re the one shitting on everything here by being misinformed. But you take any critique of your opinion as hate and then get defensive af. Lol…
35% of players don’t pirate every game… Thats absurd. If you’re referring to the pc gamer survey from like 10 years ago, there was way more nuance to it than that. Go read more than the headline please.
But even so, its not up to the consumers to bend over and be “pleasable”. Devs should treat the platform well, instead they shit out bad ports, they dont bother with basic options, they require more layers of launchers and stores, drm, kernal anti cheat, etc etc etc.
The pc market is huge, even excluding people who haven’t upgraded in 10 years. Its plenty attractive
It hurts, but PC gamers are the most toxic, unpleasable, tribalist gamers out there. This thread is proof. I’m getting a lot of hate and no actual facts. You debate my source numbers, but you provide none in return.
I’m not a PC player but you start off attacking a whole group of people and wonder why they get upset about it. Take a step back and reevaluate your position.
You know, part of me wants to believe there was actually nothing malicious going on here and when this all went down some guy at Sony was just very surprised this turned out to be a big deal and wa just kinda like “if it matters that much to you we just won’t do it I guess, idc.”
I don’t even work for Sony and “you need to create a third party account to play our game” isn’t something I expected to generate 300k negative reviews in 3 days. There are a lot of games that come with third party accounts and launchers. With all the shit companies like EA, Epic, and Ubisoft force onto their players, I’m genuinely surprised this caused any pushback.
We think the main reason was the amount of countries you couldn’t make a PSN account in, locking out a lot of people from playing a game they bought. So honestly, with that in mind, it’s probably justified.
I need a change of scenery once in a while. I’ve been on a slow Dwarf Fortress - Factorio - Minecraft loop for about the last 15 years. Currently playing Minecraft, specifically the Enigmatica 6 Expert modpack which I started nearly 2 years ago.
I think this post massively overestimates the power a CEO has. The CEO is beholden to the shareholders. Valve is private, so and its shareholders are its workers. It would be useful to know how many shares Gaben has of valve, but I still don’t think the next CEO would suddenly also be the majority owner.
Also, I know things have changed a lot in the last 12 years, but 12 years ago regarding the total dissolution of Valve, Gaben said:
“It’s way more likely we would head in that direction than say, ‘Let’s find some giant company that wants to cash us out and wait two or three years to have our employment agreements terminate."
Also, forcing users onto windows is THE way to kill valve’s profits. The whole point of the Linux push was a direct response to the windows store, and msft’s threat of forcing valve to give them a cut of purchase through steam. Msft will still do that the first chance it gets. So even the most profit-minded new leader wouldn’t make that choice, as it’s plainly shortsighted.
Also Valve isn’t the charity they believe it is. It’s a de-facto monopoly, and it has serious moderation issues (basically if you bought enough games, they will less likely ban you for hatespeech and such).
Valve isn’t pulling any anticompetitive moves though. They just try to secure profits by being the best instead of destroying everyone else that dares to compete with them.
Valve isn’t pulling any anticompetitive moves though.
Well, they are allegedly forcing price parity on publishers, so they can’t sell cheaper on their own website or some other storefront that takes smaller cuts. That’s anticompetitive as shit, and they are being sued over it.
That parity thing was debunked 2 years ago when a similar lawsuit against Valve was dismissed, their parity thing is for resold Steam keys, which Valve issues with no profit margin. Milberg London are trolls that tried to do the same lawsuit against Sony and PlayStation last year. Also got nowhere.
They’re not a defacto monopoly? There’s many different ways to buy games online and valve does not have anti-consumer practices like exclusivity deals. I have not heard anything about them not banning for hate speech? Every time I’ve ever reported something its been taken down within 48hrs
It is because of a limited understanding of companies in the startup phase. At some point, there is enough cash flow to buy labour outright rather than giving up capital on each hire. This allows shareholders to captute all future capital created by future wagies.
You are most definitely right that the major shareholders aren’t the workers. The major shareholders are Gabe Newell, and some bankers in Japan.
Still, it is known that Valve employees are partially compensated with stock for working in the company, so most of the employees are still shareholders. They just aren’t the major ones.
How are you differentiating stakeholder and shareholder? The employees are certainly shareholders.
Valve doesn’t really hire “grunts”. The people who are actually considered employees of valve are very few and highly skilled. The number of Wikipedia from 2016 is very out of date and estimates 360. But valve’s LinkedIn still says “over 300”.
there are common definitions for both terms. the employees aren’t shareholders as long as they don’t own a part of the company, but they are stakeholders since they have something to do with the company. their partners, publishers, etc. are stakeholders too
Yes, I was making sure that was the distinction you were making, because I’m trying to disambiguate for you: the employees of valve are both shareholders and stakeholders.
Shareholders is the owners and since they are private we don’t know who they are. Right now it could be all Gaben or it could be a mix but Gaben is majority resulting in the culture is what he wants. Private companies don’t have to be maximizing profits focused but will die if they don’t make money. When people die it is whoever inherits or has majority share that pushes what happens.
Below is what I can find it isn’t well sourced but ownership isn’t the same as shares. You can have profits shares without having any ownership stake.
Valve Corporation, the American video game developer and digital distributor company, is a private company with a secretive ownership structure. Gabe Newell, the company’s co-founder and CEO, is the majority shareholder, and his ownership stake is estimated to be over 50%. Other investors include Valve executives and employees, as well as major shareholders such as The Custody Bank of Japan, Ltd. and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation. Wikipedia Valve Corporation - Wikipedia Founders. Gabe Newell. Mike Harrington. Headquarters. Bellevue, Washington. , US. Key people. Gabe Newell (president) Scott Lynch (COO) Products. show. Video games. show. Hardware. show. Software. Total equity. US$10 billion (2019) Owner. Gabe Newell (>50%) Number of employees. ~360 (2016) Subsidiaries. Valve S.a.r.l. Valve GmbH. Campo Santo. ASN. 32590. Website. valvesoftware.com. Valve was founded in 1996 by the former Microsoft employees Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington. Their debut game, the first-person shooter (FPS) Half-Life (1998), was a critical and commercial success and had a lasting influence on the FPS genre. Harrington left in 2000. namria.gov.ph Which company owns Valve May 28, 2024 — Valve is a private company with a secretive ownership structure. Its investors include cofounder Gabe Newell and Valve executives and employees… In 2003, Valve moved to Bellevue, Washington, and reincorporated as Valve Corporation. namria.gov.ph How much of valve does Gabe own - NAMRIA May 24, 2024 — Valve is owned (mostly) owned by it’s CEO, Gabe Newell, one of the founders of the company. The only real connection with Tencent is their . Newell’s ownership stake isn’t disclosed and he’s attributed 50.1% of Valve in this analysis to reflect his control of the company and status as co-founder… NAMRIA Who is the majority shareholder of Valve - NAMRIA May 25, 2024 — Gabe Newell has led Valve Corp., which develops video games, since he cofounded it in 1998 with former Microsoft colleague Mike Harrington… Over the years, the ownership of Valve Corporation and Steam has remained primarily with the founders and major investors. Gabe Newell . Major Shareholders (Top 10) ; The Custody Bank of Japan, Ltd. 2,596, 2.88 ; Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, 2,553, 2.83 ; KITZ Corporation Employee Stock .” Valve ostentatiously makes little use of direct authority. majority shareholder, Gabe Newell) is used At the same time, contextual .
Valve Corporation is an American video game developer and digital distributor company in Bellevue, Washington. It was started in 1996 by Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington, two Microsoft employees in the past. steam.fandom.com Gabe Newell | SteamWiki | Fandom Gabe Newell, known online as Gaben, is the co-founder and majority shareholder of Valve Corporation. He attended Harvard University, but dropped out and worked at Microsoft until 1996, where he and co-worker Mike Harrington left to found Valve. Newell and former Microsoft colleague Mike Harrington founded Valve in 1996. Their first game, Half-Life, was released in 1998 and was a critical and commercial success. Harrington left the company in 2000, and Valve moved to Bellevue, Washington and reincorporated as Valve Corporation in 2003.
Highly recommend putting that in a quote and giving a source rather than copy pasting a wall in plain text. For all I know you just asked ChatGPT and this is what it spat out.
And in this context, just the part about Gabe being majority shareholder would have sufficed.
steam
Top
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.