Around the 2010’s, both MS and Google were seen as “noble monopolies”. Even if Steam is the better video game distributors, always stand on more than one leg when it comes to buying games.
I’m a bit surprised that someone hadn’t already posted this
“Buy” games on Steam? Sure wish they let you own them.
Obligatory GOG shill?
I get it but its not like they are buying up competition or doing bad practices to win unless doing what your customers want is being unfare. In this case I blame the competition.
Billionaires shouldn’t exist.
An earned monopoly is still a monopoly. Anyone who feels that the power that Steam wields in the gaming market is not an issue, I urge you to think or learn about why monopolies are harmful – not in relation to steam. Think about a manufacturer of gizmos completely cornering the gizmo market and what that would mean for the people wanting to buy gizmos, as time passes. Don’t think in terms of the laws or definitions of some specific country, just think about the effect it would have on society. Worst case scenario you lose some time and gain some insight on monopolies
This gizmo maker is making the best gizmo that everyone loves, best delivery and best support for people that buys the gizmo. Why would you fault that company for delivering what majority of people wanted. They didn’t corner the gizmo market by buying out smaller gizmo makers, they didn’t block smaller gizmo maker by undercutting them, they didn’t even advertise to cut into other’s profit share. They win the capitalist market by making the best gizmo plus the best experience of buying and owning the gizmo.
Somebody needs to make a better gizmo than I guess 😉. Americans seem to love capitalism…so than, capitalize.
Think about a manufacturer of gizmos completely cornering the gizmo market
If your monopoly in the Gizmo market is because you’ve actively fought other companies, lobbied governments, filed frivilous patent suits, etc… in order to KEEP people from competing with you, than you’re a piece of shit.
If your monopoly in the Gizmo market is because despite there being no hinderance to them doing so, no competitor has been able to match your quality, than kudos.
In your example, you’re effectively saying that governments should force people to use shittier services just to avoid a monopoly, even if that monopoly is earned.
If people want to buy Gizmos, and that first company is losing their trust, another company will come in and compete successfully because that first company isn’t preventing them from doing so. If that second company does it better, great.
An earned monopoly and a forced monopoly are not nearly the same thing, precisely because an earned monopoly is on the whim of the consumers. If your product turns to shit, a replacement will make itself known. Whereas a forced monopoly is on the whim of the government and lobbyists.
Oh no. They’ve made gaming accessible on Linux, games still run you purchased 20 years ago on the latest hardware and they’re not a bloated pile of garbage
If anything, they’ve actually made things better for everyone
In contrast, if you purchased wii u games, you need to re buy for switch. Ps5, wii u and Xbox all basically are limited to what publishers can sell
I’d even argue they’re not a real monopoly because they Don’t control the hardware, and there are other platforms
But other stores exist, they just don’t offer what steam does (which includes Play on Linux).
It like if you bought an amazing vacuum that does everything (hardwood, carpet, car attachments, air filtration), and the competitor offers a vacuum that only does carpeted floors…its not a true monopoly, its the competitor not understanding what sellsOf course it’s bad. For decades Valve has shown others why gamers value their game store yet most game stores still do stupid shit that drives gamers away.
The only one making an honest attempt is GOG. And their only issue is low purchasing volume which means they are slow to develop and improve their platform.
And a launcher that makes epic look good.
Of course he’s not going to come out and say it, why even ask him?
Yeah, sure.
Developers don’t, though. If you don’t release your game on Steam, you might as well not release it. They could have ended up with a lot worse than Steam though, so at least there’s that.
Plenty of indie developers on itch.io
I would like to see their income breakdown between Steam and other platforms.
Difficult to measure. A lot, and I do mean a lot, of indie devs on itch.io will likely get the biggest sum of their income from Patreon subscriptions.
From what I’ve heard speaking to some of them, when it comes to succesful Patreons, even a Steam release is peanuts compared to how much money was made through Patreon.
Oh interesting. I hadn’t really fought of patreon as a source for indie game developers. I think the only one I know of is chinchillas art.
But how exactly is that steams fault? What should they do to remedy that?
What is their fault is using their monopoly status to charge 30% of sales for an online storefront. For many games, Steam’s cut is the single largest expense.
If you’re a developer of a game being sold on Steam, Gabe Newell’s personal cut on the game that wasn’t produced, published, or marketed by him or any company he owns is more than yours because he charges an unconscionable toll for the storefront.
If Steam charged 5% instead of 30% they’d still be making a killing, but since they have an an effective monopoly it doesn’t matter.
30% is the standard cut for game sales across the industry. Epic has a smaller cut, but customers don’t want to use it. As someone offering a product, you have to sell where your customers are. Steam COULD abuse their position by taking a higher than standard cut, but they choose not to. Steam isn’t a bad guy here. They made a good platform that customers prefer, and have made no attempts to stop competitors from competing and despite having the market position to abuse it, still only charge the industry standard for selling on their platform. If anybody would bother actually trying to compete with them, then you might see the cut come down, but all their competition seems content to just whine instead of actually making a platform worth using.
It’s the industry standard for online PC game sales because of them. They established that number when they were the first major player to the market. They don’t get to blame the industry for a pricing scheme they invented.
This is the company that didn’t offer refunds until they had to. They’re the company that used to make indie developers get permission to launch games through them with exclusivity agreements (Steam Greenlight program). They cry foul when devs put in loot boxes, gacha mechanics, and other live service bullshit when they don’t get a 30% cut.
They’ve been exactly as shitty as they can get away with. The only things that have allowed them to be less shitty are that they were first to the game and that they’re privately-owned l, meaning they do what’s in Gabe’s long-term interest instead of having to drive the stock price up every quarter until they collapse or allergens with someone else.
When Steam launched, gamers were very upset because they didn’t want to have to log into an online marketplace to play Half-Life 2. And now people get pissy when the games they want dont require you to give data and money to a billionaire who long ago stopped giving a fuck about gamers as anything other than a means to buy more yachts.
Steam provides not only a storefront with lots of features that devs can use, they also provide servers, backend support through different APIs and not to mention the insane amount of data users need each day. (Around 275 PETABYTES a day, or 100 exabytes a year) That kind of infrastructure is not cheap, and seeing as that was the industry standard (it’s still what Google and apple get from their storefronts) I’d say that’s pretty reasonable.
Also the 30% cut goes down to 25% after the first $10 million in revenue, then down to 20% after you reach $50 million. I do think they should put in a lower cut for independent developers who are releasing small games, until a certain revenue threshold is reached, but overall I would say it seems reasonable to me.
That is also something that would allow a competitor to come in to outseat their dominance. In fact, charging 5% instead of 30% would make it much more difficult for competition to develop because it would be next to impossible for somebody to penetrate into the market by offering a lower rate that’s only viable with huge volumes of sales. Usually, offering unsustainable prices is a way that a dominant player achieves a monopoly. If they have big cash reserves, they can run at a loss until their competition dies out.
That 30% is industry standard, steam didn’t even set it. You people are morons
Steam was the first major online games distribution platform. Who else would have set the standard?
I’m not assigning blame on them, and it doesn’t make sense that they would voluntarily do something to compromise their own business model, unless they fear regulatory oversight or serious competition (which, let’s be honest, aren’t happening) and decide to self-regulate instead.
Regardless, any change would come from outside factors.
They don’t have to push Steam DRM on devs. They could just leave stuff open like on GOG… They could use a scaling model of fees based on the popularity one’s games receive, since people have said the current levels are prohibitive for micro indie devs…
they don’t push steam DRM…devs choose whether they want it or not
I know devs can choose; I didn’t say “force,” after all. But the fact that so very few games are DRM-free bugs me…
That not steams fault so why bring it up?
They encourage it, I’m sure.
So a hunch is all you got…
If you want to sell your product in a store, your product has to abide the stores rules. This is nothing new. You don’t get to whine about how you can’t sell enough anywhere else because customers prefer buying from the store, that’s asinine.
Not true at all starsector is one of my favs and so is vintage story and before that Minecraft in its early days. Your just straight up wrong.
Neither of those games have released and at least one of them is planning a Steam release
Of course counterexamples exist (Fortnite probably being the biggest one), but it’s true for the vast majority of releases
Yeah, but how did you learn about those games?
not through steam, whats your point relating to this question?
You did not answer the question. Developers that self publish are repying purely on word of mouth marketing. Its rarely successful. Minecraft is very rare exception.
No they’re not, they’re good games and didn’t need steam to get recog ised by the comunity, Im failing to see your point.
I learn about vintage story from a very obscure video on youtube a few years ago. I never see any media talking about it. Lemmy is the only place i see people occasionally talking about it.
Idk what to tell you I found videos about it on YouTube and Iv found plenty.
Enormous choice? Lol, sure. Think of all the individual studios 20 years ago making games. You could buy them at multiple stores, on CD or DVD, maybe even download a patch or two from the developer online.
Today most of those individual studios have disappeared, many bought up and dismantled by the industry, and every single one of those industry titans is trying to corral you into their system via downloader or subscription, and the majority make sure you don’t actually own the game you bought. Steam is just the least evil among them, and there’s plenty of apologists that say Steam makes it possible for indy developers to get exposure. But at what price?
What’s stopping indie developers from hosting their downloads on their own site? Sure, offering all the other features Steam does would be hugely expensive, but that’s why consumers prefer it. Those features aren’t necessary though and people would forgo them for a good game. Advertising would be more difficult but they could get popular streamers to play it or do Reddit or twitter posts to get exposure.
Doing all those things themselves are riskier than using Steam but there’s nothing actually stopping them from trying. Steam takes a big cut but a big cut is still preferable to a smaller total amount they would likely get by not using Steam. It’s not Steam’s fault no other platform has gotten their shit together in decades.
Valve has a monopoly at being the only online gaming storefront that doesn’t suck.
Gog and itch.io are decent. They’re different types of stores, but very usable.
Yup, it’s why I am willing to argue for them, at least until Gabe dies. He’s proven to be far more fair and I know you wouldn’t get that deal anywhere else. These days it really does seem like there a coordinated push to attack valve for not being scum like the rest of the industry these last couple of months.
It’s because they actively fight for the consumer rather than the publishers.
It’s funny though because valve has so much fucking money because they are not chasing next quarters arbitrary gains…
Valve is proof that if you don’t try to screw over your customers somehow you end up with profits. Weird how that works, and instead of companies learning something from that we’ll… they do what capitalism does…
It does make me nervous though that one player has so much power.
But certainly in the here and now as a consumer, I use steam because it makes life easier. It makes it super easy to join and host multiplayer games, gives me access to convenient game recording stuff without having to have separate software, lets me share games with my found family, and most games have achievements, which my silly achievement-whore brain loves. I’m also grateful because if not for Steam’s work developing proton, I doubt my switch to Linux would have been as straightforward as it has been.
I agree that it does seem like a targeted attack on Steam by industry hacks who I trust infinitely less than Steam. Corporations are never our friends, merely our temporary allies. However, the hacks attacking Steam are definitely my enemies, and the enemy of my enemy is my temporary ally
The only one that lets me keep in my library, download and install at any time games that were delisted 10 or 15 years ago by their publishers.
For that reason alone, they deserve my money over any other storefront.
Has he inherited the David Jones curse? Is there any photo from him in the last 10 years that is not on a yatch?
Dude likes his yachts so much that he literally bought the company.
Fuck billionaires. Yes, even this guy.
His hobby is yachts, which tells you how well Steam is doing for him.
His hobby is marine biology, which in turn necessitates yachts.
He’s actually made quite a few discoveries working with his team.
I thought that was James Cameron?
…Yknow, now that you mention him, I wonder if Zuckerberg would become less… Zuckerberg, if we somehow got him into marine biology.
Nuance doesnt exists in the minds of the dim
Honest question, is there any other store that directly supports seamlessly running games on Linux? Even games that do not natively build for Linux?
Edit: Because in that case, Steam does have a monopol on Linux, since it’s the only store that can seamlessly/without 3rd party tools run most games.
I was going to point out how heroic launcher is fine, but that’s not a store.
That’s not really Valve’s fault that all the other storefronts don’t care to support Linux, though.
Given that Proton is open source, provides plenty of instructions and permits reproduction and distribution (BSD-3-Clause-Open-MPI), any other store could likewise include it or a fork of it. They may have a factual monopoly, but it’s not enforced legally in any way.
It’s just that nobody seems to compete meaningfully. Steam has a vested interest in being independent from Microsoft, maintaining their own SteamOS and making games run on it. Other companies just might not have the same commercial drive. And if there are easy to use 3rd party tools that people are content with, why would they bother investing in their own solution? They’re accessible to the Linux market through no work of their own.
Of course, there are some companies actively not wanting to work with Linux. Some just don’t trust the platform. Some require particular technology that might not work on Linux. For example, things like kernel-level-anticheat being confined to the wine environment defeats the point of spying on the whole OS. And some would require additional work to make it run smoothly, which obviously is an investment into a market they may feel doesn’t promise enough profit.
There are plenty of frontend alternatives out there that work fairly seamlessly and, at this point, I don’t think work on compatibility tools like Proton would be too affected even if Valve decided to stop working on it tomorrow.
running gog games through heroic is pretty much as seamless as steam
Faugus Launcher works too
I use Lutris myself to run GOG games and have the same experience.
Mind you, sometimes I do have problems and have to tweak things to get them to run (usually switching the runner to wine-ge instead of wine-staging).
It’s very rare to be totally unable to run a GOG game in Linux with Lutris.
I would say that my rate of success with Steam is roughly the same.
That said, in Lutris I can run my games sandboxed with networking disabled, which I cannot in Steam (even if I started Steam itself sandboxed with networking disabled, Steam itself needs Internet access).
Maybe Steam is a little more seamless for non-technically adept users (of which there are more and more running Linux nowadays), but at least Lutris (and, I expect, Heroic) are way much more configurable and hence give a lot more possibilities for power users to do things like sandboxing or even to solve problems with running some more obscure or AAA games from a certain DRM-heavy era (for example, there’s a game which no matter what I couldn’t get to run in Steam, but with a bit of tweaking I could get a pirate copy to run in Wine under Lutris - still now that game is listed in ProtonDB as not running in Linux)
It’s good that the community stepped up when CD Projekt didn’t.
Sorry but I have to disagree.
Holy failed updates batman. After I update some games, I have to fully restart heroic or it is an endless loop of “installing update” -> “Update available, click to install”
‘pretty much’ is doing heavy lifting
idk about that problem but some games just fuck. sometimes the instructions from others in “check compatibility” help
I was just curious whether technically Steam is a monopol for Linux, as in being the only store where you can run games without using 3rd party tools.
Not that I mind, running games on Linux is super easy nowadays (My favorite is Faugus launcher), but technically it can be another hurdle for some people.
But when I need to play some Epic free game, Heroic is awesome.
Well, things like Lutris do the same automated configuring of the underlying tools to run Windows games under Linux and putting it all under a “press button to play” interface as Steam as well as letting you manage your collection.
Lutris (and I believe Heroic too) even integrated with game stores and will list your games there and download them directly from there to install them.
What they don’t have is the store part - you can’t actually BUY games from those tools.
People using for example Lutris to play GOG games in Linux, have pretty much the same experience as using Steam from a browser to buy the games and then Steam app to manage your games collection and launch the games.
Having both Steam and Lutris, I personally prefer the latter because it seamlessly integrates with multiple stores and even works fine with games from other sources (such as games I bought in physical format way back in the day or games I bought directly from the developer).
Sure, the open source apps doesn’t include a store, but as I see it that’s actually a good thing since I’m not interested in getting the sales push to buy more games everytime I want to play a game, same as I’m not interested in seeing ads when I’m browsing the web.
What they don’t have is the store part - you can’t actually BUY games from those tools.
Heroic does let you buy games through the app, but it seems like it’s just a browser that gives heroic an affiliate link when you make the purchase.
I mean, they develop and maintain Proton yet they don’t even prohibit you from using it on other things. If literally any company did that, their shareholders would riot…
…so I don’t think it technically qualifies as a monopoly, but they probably could have had a legal monopoly using an exclusivity patent on the tech (although they technically can’t patent the whole thing because it’s based on Wine, but they could have done this in a way that they could have).
If literally any company did that, their shareholders would riot…
If Valve were a publicly traded company, their shareholders would have rioted over it
That is a fair point. I’m also not trying to discredit Steam, I don’t really think there’s any kind of a problem as of now (well, apart from the fact that it could go downhill very fast once Steam changes hands), and the services they provide are reasonable and for me worth the 30% cut, especially their Proton work.
No. You can use Lutris although it appears to be unmaintained. Native GOG games work fine. Even better than the Windows versions do on windows because you don’t need Admim privileges to install for whatever fucking reason
Oh, I know how to run my games, my point was more that in that case, Steam does have a literal monopol on being the only store that can run most games on Linux without using any 3rd party tools.
Not that I mind at all, and it’s not a real problem, but I was just wondering if that’s technically the case.
Here’s the thing. There are other places. Epic, Amazon Gaming, Origin/Battlenet/Ubi, itch, Microsoft store, gog…
Most suck at discoverability or they don’t have the variety of Steam. Some are shitty by design (Origin, Ubi, Battlenet) - intended to only get you to play their games. Others like itch aren’t built for scaling out to deliver thousands of big games.
This isn’t a thing like Apple’s walled garden, I feel like this is Steam out performing the competition.
Epic you get flash banged even when grabbing free games… Their UI is over a decade old. GOG’s UI is frustrating to navigate. I love the deals and free promotions on steam, and the UI.
And don’t forget GOG fucking still doesn’t have a native Linux client.
Because they pretty much said “It isn’t worth the effort for just a handful of nerds”. They’re supposedly on it now, though.
I didn’t know that, I am still on Windows 10. Most of my games won’t work on linux.
You might be surprised, unless you exclusively play multiplayer games with anti-cheat.
Steam quite literally provides almost everything you could ever need too, it’s so much more than a storefront. It’s genuinely mind blowing just how many services steam offers, I don’t think anybody, including valve employees knows about every function and service it offers tbh.
I would have killed for Steam Input alone back in the day when I was using xpadder to sloppily translate controller inputs to keyboard keys so the game would recognize it
Does steam provide a good service? Sure. Is it worth the 30% cut they take? Absolutely not. Gamers don’t realize the amount of money valve is making off them. What we need is a good old fashioned bill at every purchase detailing how much money these rent seeking stores are extracting from you.
I don’t want the 90 services and bloated platform steam offers, I want to play my game and pay the developers.
Is it worth the 30% cut they take? Absolutely not. Gamers don’t realize the amount of money valve is making off them.
The same cut that is industry standard and they could ABSOLUTELY jack up by abusing their market position and choose not to? Especially given how much extra infrastructure they supply for that 30% vs literally anyone else?
When the competition (excluding any stores operating at a loss to build marketshare) is charging both developers and gamers more, they’re less bothered about Steam taking 20-30%. Consoles charge 30%, have extra fees, take a cut of third party keys (or restrict them altogether) and require a mandatory subscription for online play/cloud saves, while disallowing third party stores on their hardware.
Nothing is stopping a dev from putting a game on Steam for the exposure, then putting it for sale DRM free somewhere else so they don’t have to pay the 30% cut on those sales (I assume they’d have to at least charge the same as the Steam one, though). I bet the Steam version would make them far more money even with the cut.
30% is industry standard, everybody but Epic charges that and also Steam is not just a flat 30% many devs and pubs pay less.
I agree 30% is high for every storefront besides Steam and and arguably GoG. The sheer range of services and support for both players and devs is exponentially above literally everything else, you are not just paying for a storefront with steam like you are literally everywhere else.
As for GoG, I’ll let them slide on 30% because of how much effort and resources they put into preservation as well as their “customer is the administrator of their purchases” attitude.
Might be unpopular, but I think it’s a fair cut. They provide a Plattform to anyone, and indiegames regularly outperform AAA. You don’t need huge publishers to succeed if your game is fun. I don’t think that would be possible with epic at the top.
It’s absolutely worth the cut they take. Ask every developer and publisher.
It’s hard getting recognized outside Steam.
It’s hard getting recognized on steam too.
Try going to any other platform and tell me how much better it is.
95% of the players on pc are on steam, if you don’t publish your game there you’re just shooting yourself in the foot - this has very little to do with the quality of the service valve provides and everything to do about their monopoly on the market. Would devs like to pay a smaller cut to valve? Sure, but it’s just the cost of doing business, you go where your customers are.
Because they provide a lot of value.
It’s not like GoG or EGS are better stores that can’t get traffic.
In fact, if anyone actually put enough money and created a store with better moderation, people would be more than happy to use it. It’s just that there is none. Not because they lack users, but features.
Customers flock to valve because it’s more than a storefront. It eliminates the needs for everything else, no need for discord, forums, lfg pages, recording software, controller mapping software, 3rd party mod hosting, mod managers, etc etc etc. look at how much further Valve has pushed Linux and Linux support in gaming than anyone imagined possible. Look at their return policy, absolutely no other storefront is that consumer friendly.
30% is industry standard, get mad at the storefronts that are just storefronts as well as steam or you’re just sounding like Tim Sweeney on another unhinged nepo baby rant.
Epic does somewhere around 12% and the end user still pays the same so if you think that extra 18% would come back your way rather then going to a devs pockets? Hoo boy.
Also, Steam charges the industry standard rate iirc, same as google, apple, etc. While we can complain about that rate (last paragraph in mind: To what end?) its not as though Valve is doing anything extra greedy.
If any of those games on Epic are also sold in steam, then the (nonsale) price cannot be lower than the steam price because of steam’s TOS.
Also the “industry standard” was arbitrarily chosen to match the cut that brick and mortar stores usually operate at… Despite there being very different costs related.
But yes, steam is being just as greedy as all the other big walled gardens. People complain about that rate across the board, not just about steam.
Despite there being very different costs related.
How different?
How likely is it that it just so happens to exactly match brick and mortar stores?
So you don’t know?
That’s simply not true. They aren’t supposed to generate steam keys and then sell them at a lower price at other stores. Which is completely fair, as you can generate keys for free, but the game would still be using steams servers and services. But you can absolutely sell a game for cheaper on other store fronts if it isn’t using steams backend.
It IS true. They’ve threatened to delist developers who wanted to sell on non-steam key sites at lower prices.
There’s a ongoing class action lawsuit (which is already 2+ years old), started by Wolfire games, for exactly this scenario.
After looking into that more I’ve yet to see any hard evidence of valve threatening to delist devs for selling cheaper elsewhere. And presumably, so have the courts, because otherwise that seems like it would be a slam dunk case. I’ll believe it when I see it, but just going on word of mouth doesn’t convince me.
Epic does somewhere around 12% and the end user still pays the same so if you think that extra 18% would come back your way rather then going to a devs pockets? Hoo boy.
And most of the time that extra doesn’t even go to the devs, the publishers keep it. So you’re not even helping the devs for the most part.
Besides, Steam won’t even take a single cent from Steam keys sold outside of their storefront. Devs are free to sell their games on stores like Humble or Fanatical at whatever price they deem fit.
Steam charges the industry standard rate… That Steam set originally decades ago.
Steam initally launched in 2003 as a updater/server browser for Valve games like counterstrike, half life, and team fortress classic. Apple music came out earlier that year, which isn’t a 1:1 relation but likely influenced things wrt download pricing.
Steam didn’t have its first third party game til late 2005 which puts the chance for it to standardize a rate for game downloads right around the timeframe of xbox live and psn launching (late 2005, mid 2006 respectively), so I wouldn’t be shocked if word got around the industry about that stuff, though that’s just me making reasonable logical deductions (People love opening their big fat mouths, lot of folks in the same circles, etc.) rather then anything solid.
Then you have the option to buy from epic who take a lower cut. I prefer Steam because of the convenience and features it offers. Until another storefront can supersede steams features then I don’t see a reason to switch
I agree. That’s not what this is about though. This is about Valve using their market dominance to force price parity, supposedly to “protect consumers” (which is bullshit and doesn’t make sense). Yes, they’re the better storefront. I’d be willing to pay a little more to use it.
That’s one way the competition can compete though. They can’t make as good of a product, but they can make a cheaper one. They should be able to charge less, and make less profit per sale. Valve has ensured no developer can do this though by threatening removal if it’s cheaper anywhere else, and you can’t afford to not be on Steam. This would be good for consumers as it’d drive Valve to compete, either with an even better product or by lowering prices. There’s no way consumers lose, and I don’t get why people rush to fight for Valve on this.
So like most stores? What do you think MSRP is? A lot of places will pull their product from stores who undercut pricing outside of occasional sales.
Looked into this, found a source: https://steamyouoweus.co.uk/faqs/ points made by @Cethin@lemmy.zip are legit.
I did a quick scroll on that site, but couldn’t find any sources or evidence about Valve actually doing this
I hate to agree with a billionaire, but he’s right. Currently steam is not a monopoly at all, and hasn’t yet gotten so dominant that it amounts to one.
But they are the single most dominant outlet, and are in the first stages of having an ability to control the entire market in unfair ways to the point of crushing competition. It won’t be long before they do have that ability completely. And we can’t just trust the billionaire because he’s shown an unusual degree of user focused choices overall. Even if he’s perfect, he ain’t immortal, and as soon as he’s not in control, there will be fuckery
as soon as he’s not in control, there will be fuckery
This is what I don’t think a lot of people will be prepared for …
I dread if there’s gonna some useless MBA coming around afterwards and saying some shit like: “why don’t we charge steam users $9.99 to play their games per month?” and start cutting projects that benefit gamers to “save money” – who needs Proton? who needs to invest in things like couch co-op? Then give themselves a shitload of money in exchange for all the goodwill that Valve have built up over the years.
Oh no. Most of us are pretty much expecting the apocalypse whenever Gaben is gone.
I’m ready for it, I “backed up” my steam library because of it. The whole movement these last few months against steam make me think the industry is coordinating against it because steam won’t play ball.
But Valve is not a public company, so you don’t get randos. Gabe is very aware of this fact himself.
Yeah, since Valve is not public the odds of the next head being an outside hire or some loud tech exec are extremely low.
GabeN is most likely to pick someone who’s been around with the company since the early days, like Erik Johnson or Scott Lynch.
If he wants it to stay in the family, his own son Gray could take over, he’s also a game dev.
Gabe has often expressed distrust of publicly traded markets, a plausible outcome is that his ownership gets converted into an employee-owned trust or a collective buyback, this would effectively permanently lock Valve into its current profile, distributing profils back into salaries and bonuses for the staff.
Yes but it’s not a certenty
How would you want it to be certain?
deleted by creator
Yep. This is how it goes downhill.
Some business analyst will make a pretty chart showing a massive revenue increase Vs some minor player attrition caused by the monthly subscription model, and the board will salivate at all those billions they’re gonna get.
Is that revenue necessary? Not at all. But capitalism says you must maximise profits regardless for the sake of it, and without an all powerful overlord to say otherwise, it will be a tragic downfall.
I really hope Linux will get a bigger market share, thanks to Steam devices, before Steam has to change CEOs and starts the inevitable enshitification.
Because for Linux gaming, Steam’s support for Proton is pretty much a monopol.
Most of 3rd party launchers for other stores also rely on Proton under the hood, IIRC.
Nobody stops EGS to implement Proton. Neither ActiBlizz, Ubisoft or EAs Origin.
The “monopoly” in this case is again just other stores not wanting to do what gamers want. Proton is FOSS and anyone can use it.
Asked about this rule, Newell repeatedly denied it exists, even when shown internal communications seemingly showing Valve employees enforcing it: “Valve does not have a policy or practice of dictating prices to third-party software developers on other platforms.” When asked how Valve would react if it ever happened, Newell initially said he was confused by the question and then added, “Many of our partners and many of our customers are quite happy with the service that we’re providing.”
It would be interesting to see what happens if some of the larger publishers did this.
Someone few weeks ago posted a link where there were few emails that were exchanged with Valve and puglishers(?) with redacted pieces here and there. Their point was that Valve tells devs/publishers to match prices of their games on their own stores to prices on Steam.
I may be not a great english speaker, but in reality it did read that if a company wants to make discount somewhere else, they need to match the exact same discount on Steam. Point of that was that Valve doesn’t want customers to think that Steam is an expensive option when shopping for games.
I think that this is a common misconception and Gabe was annoyed that interviewer had not double checked information regarding Valve policies.
This has been re-hashed over and over. The terms are that if they want to discount steam provided keys on another platform they have to match that price on Steam. Steam keys are free to generate for them. They are free to distribute them on any platform. But the deal they make when they generate the steam keys is that they will adhere to the pricing rule.
If they want to discount keys generated on Epic’s store, then they can generate and sell them at any price they want.
I believe there is an exception for bundles like the humble bundle.
This is becoming hair splitting, it’s clear they don’t want publishers give out keys on steams dime, that might change with charity bundle but the general rule stays the same.
