What the hell are these points?
Steam forces developers to ask for higher prices? Ah, yes, because Activision is so eager to sell Call of Duty for just $20 but big bad Steam is just forcing their hand and they have to sell it for $70. See if you look at their own store where they can set their own prices its… also $70… hmm, that’s weird. Maybe others… nope same prices across all platforms. Almost like publishers can actually freely decide on their prices.
Steam also forces customers to buy DLCs for games on their platform. Well, how else is this going to work? I buy a game on Steam and then call up the devs to venmo them $2 and they send me a DVD in the mail? Or should I make a new account on some other website and get my DLCs seperatly from there? Most games don’t even sell you DLCs, they sell you credits so you can unlock content that’s already in the game. Often times you have to buy those credits trough the devs website and link your account to Steam. That’s already a pain it the ass.
Steam takes 30% of the cut. True, that sound like a lot. Imagine you’re a solo Dev and you’ve been working 9 years on a game. 3 of those years you’ve essentially been working just to pay off Steam. But look at what you get for those 3 years. You get a seperate store page for your product that you can essentially design however you want. You get access to high speed distribution servers all over the world, that also allow you to effortlessly push updates out, the option for regional pricing, the industries most reliable user review system, an integrated discussion and fan art forum, third party controller support (important for people with disabilities), and a refund system. Sure 30% still sounds like a lot, but would you be able to provide all this if you would’ve self publish the game, probably not.
Steam is consistently the cheapest option to buy games on sale. And even if it isn’t the cheapest, at no point in time have I thought, man Steam has this game for $7.49 but EGS has it for $6.99, I better get it on EGS. Maybe on GoG but no where else.
It’s mind boggling to think that through inflation and some shortages almost all groceries have nearly doubled in price over the last 20 years, but a AAA game is still $60, even though the cost of making a game has skyrocketed. Imagine gas prices would’ve stayed the same over the last 20 years and people would complian that gas station sandwiches would tast like shit.
I copied my own comment from a cross post on another instance, so don’t @ me.Some of these arguments are a bit disingenuous.
First argument is about a Steam forcing published to sell games at high costs and using a major publisher known for overcharging already as a counterpoint. Yes the publisher that charges $90 for a deluxe edition game and still includes a battle pass system and other garbage is going to overcharge anywhere. You know that the point here is clearly referring to smaller publishers who are probably being pushed to charge $60 for a game they’d rather charge less for, but Valve may want to keep game prices high across the board so as not to make the Activisions out there look absurdly high. Its price fixing.
Steam forces users to buy DLC on their platform. Your counterpoint is about Venmo’ing a dev cash and getting a DVD in return, which is just such a bullshit counterpoint. Did you suddenly forget Steam’s key system that enables you to purchase games on other sites and redeem the code on Steam? By keeping DLCs in Steam Valve can keep costs up on them at $1.99 each (talking cosmetics and micro DLCs) where another site might offer a bundle purchase of 10 for $5 or something since those DLCs may not sell anymore on older games.
Steam takes 30% of the cut. Yeah that’s a lot. You’re acting like these devs would fail if it weren’t for the good graces and will of Valve because they give them access to the number 1 platform or whatever. That’s a huge cut for small publishers. All Valve is doing is handling the transactions and taking a 1/3 of the ticket price at the door. Never mind these publishers also need to pay overhead, employees, bills, etc, something that’s made more difficult for small publishers selling games they don’t want to charge $60 for. The 30% take off the top goes right back to Steam forcing devs to keep their costs high. If devs want to pay the bills, they can’t charge what they expect to, they have to charge much more to compensate for that 30% loss. Plus this forces a cost increase on other platforms because the dev can’t charge one price on Steam and another on Epic, it would piss off people who primarily buy games on Steam.
Steam is consistently the lowest cost. That’s just patently false. Yes Steam does great sales regularly. What about Humbles $25 for a ton of game bundles? GoG? Epics constant take this free game? There’s tons of sites out there. I buy games on plenty of other sites than Steam, not because I just felt like trying something new, but because you can find better deals if you look.
Lastly you talk about inflation and how AAA games stay at $60, but they haven’t have they? What’s the last AAA game you bought that was just $60? These days it’s $60 for the base game, but you’re missing key parts of the game unless you get the $80 version, but hey you’re already spending another $20, so why not throw in an extra $10 and buy the deluxe edition which also gives you this cool item to get you ahead, plus some cosmetics, by the way there’s also a loot system + battle pass + you must purchase each season to play + a subscription cost. AAA games aren’t $60 anymore. Shit like that is exactly why something like Baulder’s Gate can come out at $60 for the FULL game and make such a fuss with other publishers because that’s how it should be.
Regardless if it’s copied from another instance I’ll reply anyway to your arguments.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Steam and have spent a ton of money on the platform, but I won’t pretend their gods gift to gamers and can do no wrong.
These like to dislike ratios feel manipulated.
I thought maybe they were saying regional differences in prices were the cause of concern, but again that’s not really a basis for a lawsuit, is it?
As far as I know, regional pricing through Steam is completely controlled by the publisher/dev. It’s literally a checkbox for each region and a text field to enter an adjusted price. And Steam has made great efforts to stop regional key trading to prevent people from just buying cheaper keys from 3rd world countries and reselling them.
Literally all pricing is set by the devs and publishers. The guy you’re responding to has no idea what he’s talking about. The Steam store terms of service are public and easily available to read through. I know, I’ve done it. The only pricing requirement they have is keys sold off store can’t be significantly discounted under the store price. That’s it.
WDYM I don’t know what I was talking about? I never claimed anything about whether steam or the publishers control prices, I was just making a statement about how no matter who controls the prices it’s not in violation of any current UK laws or rights.
I think I just have responded to the wrong comment. My bad.
Well yeah but even if it were hypothetically something steam could control, would that really be grounds for a lawsuit?
No, but anything can be grounds for a lawsuit as long as you have enough money to throw out. And given that they are being sued by the government, all bets are off.
That’s my whole point, none of the provided arguments are a good reason for a lawsuit. This has early 2000s “It’s those darn videogames” vibes, except this time instead of saying that their doing it to protect our children, they are openly doing it to get the money.
As a “theoretical hobby game dev”: steam also provides workshop, networking and matchmaking (lobby) tools. For all the stuff you get I personally find this reasonable. If I remember correctly, mobile phone app stores take a big cut too and I can’t see how they would come close.
Edit: cloud saves, (proton), dlc handling
I think the DLC point is the one valid argument, although nontrivial to implement.
How do you think DLC works on DRM-free games works, like GOG? The game is just gonna check if you have the DLC installed, without any real DRM.
The main issue is, this is entirely possible right now for games to do, but it won’t be integrated with steam, and needs to be done by developers themselves. I don’t know how feasible it would be for Steam to realistically do something about it, but it’d definitely be nice if you could buy a game on steam, and later decide you want to buy DLC on another platform and install it onto your steam game.
I think DLCs are becoming a thing of the past in general. Usually the data for the DLC comes with the main game, you just buy a license to unlock it. I can’t remember the last time I bought a DLC and hat to download something additionally or update my game. I’m not a fan of it, but this is where we are going. This just means that wherever you bought the main game from, you will also have to buy the DLCs, since companies will never accept to share licenses between each other. This is not a Steam issue, this is a developer issue.
Well, some games that come to mind are Stellaris, RimWorld, Oxygen Not Included, and I think the upcoming Factorio expansion. And from those, I think it might be possible to buy RimWorld DLC off-steam and install it in a steam copy.
Fun fact, you can check - on steamdb, you can check depots for a game, and see if it has one for a DLC. If it does, then it is downloading extra files for it.
All that said, I wouldn’t say it’s 100% a developer issue. The way I see the accusation, Valve is very comfortable providing convenient libraries for various things, including working with DLC, that only work on their platform, making it hard to release the game elsewhere in the future.
I’m generally fine with that for a simple reason - Steam really does have great features that just work. However, if somebody forced Valve to make features like Steam Input available independent of Steam, it could be a great boon for gaming.
The uk and ubisoft government should be sued for not preserving games like the crew
Putting my tinfoil hat on here, but Sunak totally called the election because he saw the petition was gaining traction!
I hold my hand up as someone who hates the Tory scum but even I wouldn’t make a claim that bold simply because they’re too incompetent to be actively screwing over a market they simply don’t care about.
My wife used to work as a researcher in Westminster. She always laughs when she hears most conspiracy theories, as she knows first hand 90% of the people there couldn’t conspiracy their way out of a wet paper bag.
Long winded way of saying I should’ve put an “/s” on the end of my original comment.
Bubbled
Monopoly, noun: the exclusive possession or control of the supply of or trade in a commodity or service.
Imo this does not apply to Steam. They do not have an exclusive possession or control of the PC gaming market. As is proven in the rest of this thread by just about everyone, there are other online game stores/launchers besides Steam. Literally no one is forcing you to use Steam (because then it would be considered a monopoly), when Epic, GoG, Uplay, Origin, and Rockstar Launchers all exist.
Again, like it was said elsewhere in this thread, they’ve just crushed the competition so completely that it feels like they have a monopoly.
In the article
- Price parity obligation clauses: We say that Valve Corporation imposes price parity clauses that restrict and prevent game developers from offering better prices on PC-games on rival platforms, limiting consumer choice and harming competition.
This seems to be common practice, but is anti competitive. If another platform would charge 20 instead of 30 pct and the publisher would give half this discount to the customers this would be against these clauses. Good that these are looked at.
- Tying: We say that the restrictions Valve Corporation imposes, that mean the add-on content for games must also be purchased from Steam, restricts competition in the market.
And vice versa, steam dlc does not work with games on epic. Interesting case here too.
- Excessive pricing: We argue that Valve Corporation has imposed an excessive commission, of up to 30%, charged to publishers, that resulted in inflated prices on its Steam platform.
The 30% market standard seems to be under fire across the board, so if there is a solid case to be made that this is excessive, I’m glad the watchdog is trying to make it.
In all good that this is investigated, cause just paying for another yaght or house for Gabe is not nessecary.
It wouldn’t be the first time the first point has been brought up. If true it does sound pretty anti competition. But so far there’s been no proof valve is actually doing this and I’m skeptical that it’s happening at all. If it were happening I don’t think we would be getting free games on epic (at least not ones that are also sold on steam). Nor do I think we’d have games on gamepass that are also on steam. I also routinely see sales for games on Green Man Gaming, Humble Bundle, and epic that at the time at least make the games cheaper than they are on steam.
Maybe they have agreements with certain publishers to provide a lower platform fee than 30% in exchange for them not providing the games cheaper on other platforms?
Sure it has been brought up. But that’s why these investigations are good. If it’s true, slap em with a fine, if it’s not… valve can make a victory lap.
Yeah agreed.
IIRC Steam has used that first clause to limit Steam keys being provided on another store at a cheaper price. I believe devs have been allowed (maybe unofficially) to sell at whatever price they want if there’s no steam key being provided.
I thought it was lower retail price not allowed but lower price allowed for discounts?
Pretty much most my Steam games I have bought have been from places like fanatical after taking a look at isthereanydeals to find the lowest price for steam games.
Here we go. It’s not a monopoly because vAlVe aRe gOoD GuYs aNd eVeRyOnE ElSe iS BaD. The internet defends this company like they are the godfather of their children it’s insane.
MEGACORPS ARE NOT YOUR FRIENDS!
When the competition is trying to bring in scummy, sugar-mommy approach to gaming by luring unsuspecting players with sweets, a company that has consistently proved to be rationally pro-consumer is bound to earn the right to be defended, as long as they keep their pro-consumer approach intact. Which Valve still does, while others are quite shit.
Except GOG, but I’m gonna presume GOG had higher currency conversation rates or advised rates, which made the games there 3-4 times more expensive than Steam in many 3rd world countries. Still cheaper than most other storefronts, but it was more expensive than Steam till the latest currency change.
Sometimes, monopoly implicitly means a business that is so much better than the competition that the competition is pretty much irrelevant.
I think that used to apply to Steam.
TL;DR: Entitled parent is angry that Valve makes a profit. Claims they’re a monopoly. They aren’t.
No need to have 100% of the market to be a monopoly, just need to have enough influence that you control the market, which is their case.
It’s so crazy how Valve gets called a monopoly because of how their competition refuses to make anything of equivalent quality. It literally took the epic games store years before they had a shopping cart to check out in. Valve is the only one with good customer service, a solid refund policy, and no 3rd party exclusives in the platform. Valve is basically the only one that’s not a publically traded company, so it’s not responsible to shareholders and going through enshittification like everything else.
Its like imagine five barbers in town. One gets all the business and is rich, but he’s nothing amazing, just a reliable barber. The other four barbers are constantly using rusty razors and punch customers in the throat right before they leave. No matter what anyone tells them, they won’t stop. New razors cost money they don’t want to spend, and your hair gets cut mostly the same in the end so why bother?
So they sue the first guy for having a monopoly.
A monopoly is a monopoly is a monopoly.
Stop defending them, monopolies are never good to consumers.
By your logic they shouldn’t be broken because it’s the competitors’ fault if people don’t do business with them instead.
Well no, if your company is big enough that it doesn’t make sense to go for the competition then no matter what the competition does you are so far ahead that they’ll never catch up and you can sway the market as you please.
Monopolies are often great for consumers… When they’re nationalized. Obviously that’s not going to happen with Valve any time soon.
What would the benefit be to breaking up Valve? How would you even go about doing that? The obvious choice is to break out different business units- break things like the hardware sales and game development into separate companies. But that still doesn’t address the issue of them having too much market share for software sales.
The next beat thing I can think of would be to have some sort of regulatory body just to place restrictions on the industry. Which, of course, would vary from country to country, and would probably have to include all of their competitors: Epic, GoG, and the various publisher-specific stores, maybe even other storefronts like Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Apple. It would be hard not to also hit the mobile games industry too (which, to be fair, might be a good thing). But this kind of thing is usually reserved for things like utilities, communications, financial markets, etc. Such an organization for a luxury recreationak market… I have to wonder how much political appetite there really would be for that? Is that really what people want their governments to be focusing on?
Do you have a better solution to propose?
By your logic they shouldn’t be broken because it’s the competitors’ fault if people don’t do business with them instead.
Yes exactly, that’s why they shouldn’t be broken.
They’re consumer friendly and are not taking specific action to BE a monopoly, contrary to many other companies.
There’s also enough competition and it’s exactly their fault that they fail/refuse to implement what makes Steam so popular.
I’m definitely against monopolies, but mindlessly slapping rules on them just because they’re labeled monopolies is some of the dumbest shit I’ve heard
You cannot base your decision on if the monopoly seems friendly to you or not, what kind of Mickey mouse logic is that? Fucking hell.
You’re going to wait until it’s problematic to do something about it? Man, I hope you show more logic in how you managed things in your personal life!
“I’m definitely against monopolies”
No, you’re not, you’re against the monopolies you don’t like, there’s a major difference.
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As a consumer, I don’t care about this. Even if Valve’s cut were lower, the prices would remain the same. I don’t get a cheaper game, the publisher just gets a higher cut, so it doesn’t directly benefit me.
Do you think you would get the same buggy mess if every single publisher had 30% more budget to work with?
What actually doesn’t benefit you is the hundreds of millions being accumulated in gabbens bank account.
I’m totally cool with just downloading it from their website. Or they could send me a flash drive. Wasn’t Steam originally the cheaper, easier option instead of designing a box and writing a bunch of disks?
No, the problem steam was originally created to solve was distributing updates for pc games. Before steam getting updates meant visiting shitty dev websites or ad farms that also hosted update files and manually patching your game.
It was awful.
That’s literally when I did most of my PC gaming. What was even wrong with visiting a website to download a patch? It was way more convenient to update at your own leisure instead of having to log onto a service that would randomly install updates every week before you could even start the game up like nowadays.
You could even save the patches locally and when you had to reformat Windows, you could have your games installing before you even had the internet back up, hah.
There was literally nothing wrong with downloading updates from a “shitty dev website” because they worked just fine and the worst thing you had to do was decide whether you wanted to run the install wizard or not lol
That’s a valid opinion. It’s not one I share but if you preferred that situation then that’s fine. I feel pretty confident saying you are in a pretty small minority though.
-edit I just realized what you said and if it’s true that you did most of your pc gaming before steam got popular, you may be out of your depth in this conversation. It’s been like 20 years. If you did most of your pc gaming more than 20 years ago, I don’t see how your opinion is informed at all.
Steam hasn’t been popular for 20 years, my dude. 20 years ago, Steam was LOATHED. I’m not gonna google it because I’m at work, but you can find a gif of the Steam logo performing anal on a bent-over dude.
10-15 years ago it was still fairly common to avoid Steam on purpose. I personally started using it actively maybe 6-7 years ago, but I’ve been gaming for just a bit over 20.
We can argue all day over when steam “got popular”. For me, I’d consider the launch of HL2 to be the most reasonable point in time to choose.
Do you think you would get the same buggy mess if every single publisher had 30% more budget to work with?
Yes, 1000%.
Games are buggy because developers/publishers/players don’t care. Money has nothing to do with it and if they had more money, they would just pocket it and release garbage for people like you.
Money has nothing to do with it
While I agree with everything else, I think it’s the opposite of this, money has everything to do with it. If people stopped preordering and buying day 1 every AAA game, they would rethink their strategy, but since money keeps coming the don’t need to change much.
Yes, the issue is the low standards.
We are the problem
I absolutely agree. Customers are just endorphin (dopamine?) riddled animals waiting for the next opportunity for expenditure to drop.
I’m not even joking, this is the problem with pretty much everything. If we could pace ourselves, the world would look very different, but we just can’t stop consuming. I have colleagues who kill boredom with shopping.
Shareholders always want more money, i.e. as much money as is extractable from the consumer. So yes, I think companies would still invest as little as possible to make a game profitable, even if that leads to bugs.
“There’s this flaw with capitalism.”
“No no, it’s a feature!”
Steam, GameStop, Toys-R-Us, Walmart… Someone always makes a profit on selling games, or any products - even digital. Steam has not reinvented the wheel here. It’s not a new concept. Are you arguing that the idea of stores should be eliminated?
In return, the game is more likely to be seen, just like placing a product in a real store where people walk by it. It also gets advertised, reviewed, has another community outlet, and Steam uses their own servers and bandwidth to distribute it.
It’s not a bad deal for the devs and publishers.
I’m mostly tired of seeing huge soft monopolies being defended. Whatever competition they have doesn’t actually compete with them. They lock people into their ecosystem just as much as Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony do.
And just like other shady companies like Walmart and Amazon, they should be regulated to death, or something. But not defended and treated like some gold furred lamb. Everytime a post pops up, dozens jump over themselves making excuses for Gaben.
Replace steam with Amazon and reread the thread and my point of view might be better understood. I don’t understand the veneration, they use and sell our data, they kill competition, they do all the bad stuff. They just have a better pr team and realized they could leverage Foss to save on OS dev costs.
We have plenty of examples of this.
No Man’s Sky came out to much fanfare, and was kind of shit. They took their massive profits (of which a significant chunk went to distributors, publishers, etc., just like back when physical copies were the norm) and used them to transform their initial offering into something that was far more like their vision than the original product.
Minecraft also followed this paradigm for a very long time.
Now, how many very successful game developers just took the money and ran? A lot? Yeah, a lot. The simple fact is not many companies are willing to spend already-earned profits for a fraction more sales.
i think if steam took 0%, the number of bugs in larger games would remain completly unchanged.
It might help the smaller devs, but not the big games.
I think you severely underestimate the cost of hosting servers for ~46.000 Games, across 9 regions, in 190 countries, with 500Mbit download speeds. On top of that billions of screenshots, trillions of lines of text, customer service, development of new features and hardware, etc.
Valve has an est. revenue (not profit) of roughly $10 Billion this year. Tencent Games has an est. $85. How is Steam even remotely considered to be a monopoly in gaming?Do you think you would get the same buggy mess if every single publisher had 30% more budget to work with?
Has capitalism given you cause to think otherwise thus far?
i mean, games launched on epic arent perfect either… and devs get much more of a cut, and a bonus if its unreal engine.
FF7R for example ran poorly, stutters in directx modes due to a poor implementation of shader compilation and these bugs STILL exist in the game today last ive seen.
the developer didnt take a 30% cut for the game, being epic exclusive and being unreal means the oppisite, they got PAID and still released a buggy POS.
its a fallacy to assume if a dev had 30% more budget that a game would be bug free.
In fact I do think that, but it’s not like I’m arguing in the interest of his bank account either; I don’t see this directly affecting me, so I don’t care.
It’s affecting you because of a loss of quality in the product you are receiving, a loss directly caused by greedy middle men you are here defending.
The amount of companies being taxed by Gaben, Microsoft and Sony is vaste and not many of them would just take the 30% and run. There’s a lot of indie and medium sized companies that are barely making it.
You can plug your ears all you want, it is affecting you and you are boot licking for pretending it isn’t. Gaben isn’t your friend even though he probably spends a lot of money trying to make you think he is.
Again, I’m not defending Gaben. If you think I’m a bootlicker, you can lick my ass. As stated, I don’t agree that it affects the quality of the product to the extent you’re suggesting, and going “well, it does” isn’t going to change my opinion.
You were saying it didn’t affect you. Regardless of how much will go directly to shareholders, a good portion will be reinvested and lead to better games, which will affect your enjoyment.
I never talked about extent, you are the one that took the hard approach by putting the level at 0. When I pointed it out that it can affect quality and not just price, you came back with “well it doesn’t”.
I’m pretty sure in this context, saying a 30% increase of funds won’t lead to a jump of any kind in either the amount or the quality of products is being willfully blind.
I guess it might be hard to admit that some of these billionaires are directly stealing from us.
I maintain that it wouldn’t affect me. As for what would be reinvested, you say “a good portion,” I say an amount so low that its impact will be immeasurably low.
You talked about extent in that you’re suggesting the improvement in quality would be worth caring about; this is just you being pedantic. Allow me to be pedantic as well: I never retorted “well, it doesn’t” because, unlike you, I’ve made it very clear that I’m giving my opinion rather than speaking in absolutes.
I can admit that billionaires are getting more than their fair share, never having expressed otherwise here, which is also why I believe the money would largely be going from one well-padded pocket to another.
We’ve both expressed our views so I won’t be continuing this conversation.
It’s weird to me how people(are they?) here bend over backwards to defend a monopolistic drm platform like steam.
I get gamers like their games. But come on.
I think it’s because there’s no real competition and nobody wants to be buying DVDs (blu-rays?) nowadays.
Consider that the only other storefront that treats its’ users with any sort of dignity is GoG and many major publishers would rather avoid it because it has a policy of being DRM free, so you lose out on a lot of games by sticking to GoG for everything.
You’re left with Steam, Epic Games Store, and some other platforms nobody’s ever heard of. Epic Games’ policy is “we don’t need a better store interface because it doesn’t affect sales” and “there’s no need to support Linux, nobody uses it”. Steam has a good-enough UI and not only supports Linux for Linux-native games, but also integrates Proton (which Valve also develops) so you can play Windows games on Linux.
Sure Epic will take less of a cut from publishers, but I’ll have an inferior experience and probably pay the same.
The inverse of 70% is not 130%
Then you go after the publishers next.
It’s clear that Valve’s cut has an influence because it being a % it means that as development costs go up the price of the games need to increase exponentially to compensate for the 30% Valve gets no matter the price.
To quote myself for some numbers:
It you need to make 30$/copy to cover costs in 2015 and Steam is taking 30% you need to sell for 43$/copy, Valve is making 13$/copy.
Development costs go up by 20% over the next 10 years, you now need to make 36$/copy to cover costs, with Steam’s cut you now need to sell for 51.50$, Valve is making 15.50$/copy.
If it was 15% instead? 35.50$ and 42.50$ would be the prices.
That’s just how numbers work. Those aren’t exponential increases, they are proportional. 30% will always be 30%.
There’s no benefit to sensationalizing the math.
The profit in dollars increases exponentially as the price goes up, punch that in a graphics calculator and tell me it’s not a curve that becomes steeper.
you should really inform yourself what “exponential” means lmao. poster was right, it’s proportional growth(linear), not exponentional, there is no exponent here. The graphic with x for how much the product costs and with y for how much 30% of that are is a straight line:
f(x) = 0.3x
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Sounds like the claims people made saying move from physical to digital would result in cheaper prices. Then you see games when they weren’t on steam still going for $60 or $70 despite being launched on their own platform where they pay no cut. Same for games launched only on consoles by the console owners.
A company that makes a billionaire out of its owner is overcharging you, no matter how much you like the company or the owner.
It’s funny because if it was any other companies I’m sure a bunch of you would be happy about it, but it being against Valve you can’t help but defend them.
Should I dig in everyone’s comment history to show who are the hypocrites that otherwise act like they’re left wing?
Valve doesn’t set the prices for any of the products you buy through their store. The game developers and publishers do.
The exception is valve developed games which are mostly free to play and make money on useless cosmetics. Most of their successful games are built on mods that are only possible because valve takes the very consumer friendly position of supporting and encouraging modding of their games.
Hell, they even allow and promote fan made remakes like Black Mesa and unofficial sequels.
If valve is a monopoly, it’s only because they’re the only corporation in the pc gaming space (OK maybe include gog too) that respects their customers. They’re not perfect but they’re orders of magnitude better than the competition.
I was shocked when Valve allowed Black Mesa to be monetized on Steam. I respect the fuck out of them since then.
Unlike the shit heads at Nintendo, suing everyone dares to touch their overused decades old IP.
No matter the reason, private monopolies are a bad thing for consumers.
The game devs and publishers set the price by taking into consideration that 30% goes to Valve, without that 30% games would be cheaper as they wouldn’t need to sell for as high a price for the devs and publishers to recover their investment.
No need to have studied economics to understand that if you need to have 30$/copy in your pockets in order to cover your cost and someone takes 30% from every sales then you need to sell to the consumers for 43$.
No matter how nice Valve acts towards consumers (in many cases because it was imposed to them, not by choice), in the end you’re defending a billionaire while you make less a year than he spends running one of his yachts for a single day.
Bullshit. Games on steam that hit sales thresholds pay less to steam and the prices remain the same. Games on EGS only pay 12% and prices haven’t dropped.
Reality does not comport with your argument at all.
I’ve been in product development and management for 10+ years. I know how pricing decisions are made. You’re very naive.
Well no shit they’ll look at the highest price on the market and use the same price everywhere, but the highest price is based on the fact that the distributor takes a 30% cut!
Again, you are very naive. What you’re describe is cost-up pricing which hasn’t been a generally used method of pricing goods and services for decades at this point. The reason is that doing cost-up pricing is a really good way to go out of business.
The way pricing works today is that sellers set pricing based on what they believe the customer is willing to pay. From there you work backwards accounting for retailer margin, cost of goods, transport, discounts, etc… To find your maximum cost per unit. If you can’t produce the product for less than the maximum cost, you either need to scale back your features, add a feature that would justify a higher sell price, or abandon the project.
Your notion that companies would lower prices if they had to give retailers a small cut is not borne out by theory or by observed real world outcomes.
You’re wrong. Doubling down won’t make you less wrong.
So what solution do you propose then?
Ideally I’d like to see media distribution be nationalized. Video streaming, audio streaming, videogames, e-books. There have been multiple cases of companies selling digital goods, then ceasing to provide those with consumers left holding the bag. Multiplayer games whose servers are gone. Movies “purchased” on Amazon that become unavailable when their agreement with the publisher expires. I am concerned about what Valve will look like when they inevitably get new leadership.
But I suffer no delusion that nationalizing that is realistic. Certainly not in the US where I live, where even libraries are under attack from conservatives. I’m doubtful that would happen anywhere else either. So what’s the next-best thing?
Seems to me like the capitalist response would be to try to encourage competition. A lot of companies have tried and failed, so I’m not sure what else can be done on that front.
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It’s just something I’ve noticed as these discussions started yesterday, a bunch of people defending a multiple yachts owner while also pretending to hate the rich in other discussions.
There are no good billionaires, it’s that simple. If someone became one it was done through exploiting people that are just trying to make it through life. You’ve got people saying they “hope to be able to retire at some point” also defending Valve by gaslighting themselves into thinking that they get their money’s worth when buying on Steam. Well, no, people just think they do because they were conditioned to believe that their money is worth a whole lot less than it really is in order to enrich people like Gaben.
These people aren’t on your side, if they were they wouldn’t be billionaires in the first place, they’re on their own side and just want to become richer and richer.
And I mean…
https://lemmy.world/comment/10588480
That’s from your own history so I guess you should be the first one wanting to point out when people are hypocrites, right?
gaslighting themselves into thinking that they get their money’s worth when buying on Steam.
Wait till you find out value can be subjective
Valve does plenty of unethical stuff, you’re right, but the store isn’t really it. Go after them for their shady loot box gambling and really predatory monetization in f2p games that creates secondary gambling markets. It’s insane.
Valve has actual blood it’s hands and you’re complaining about the legitimate business front that covers for a deeply profitable and unethical core.
Loot boxes suck but I’d argue valve is still one of the better approaches. Makers of skins get cuts of sales, Dotas sales help the international prize pool to an extent, and it doesn’t lock you into a treadmill just to unlock gameplay elements.
Every other company seems to be doing the same but somehow even worse.
I disagree. There’s a deeply unethical core built into Steam that is distinct to it. Since you can sell your loot drops for actual money, they are more literally scratch tickets than your standard loot boxes.
I don’t know, I’m all for keeping people away from addictive behaviors and would rather micro transactions not be a thing at all full stop - but allowing users to get money out of games they have already invested in is also a benefit, so it feels weird to single out the one option that provides consumer value. Don’t play CS anymore? Sell the AK Fire serpent you unboxed for 2.50 back in 2014 and buy yourself a steam deck and keep a gift card for a few games. Or a new set of skins in whatever game your playing now is.
As far as the API goes, Im pretty unfamiliar so Im not sure what responsibilities a company has when using their site as a login to another site. There’s porn sites that allow me to sign in with Facebook / Gmail, if someone uploads CSAM to that site do those sites have a duty in some way?
A company that makes a billionaire out of its owner is overcharging you, no matter how much you like the company or the owner.
I agree, but I think people who subscribe to this mentality should be focusing their efforts on more than just Valve.
Lot of people misunderstanding just how fuckin strict anti-monopoly laws are in parts of Europe
You know how we all laugh at American internet prices? That’s only one example of how much more Freedom©®™ we actually have
Oh boy, German internet prices would like a word.
All jokes aside, it’s gotten way better the past few years.
But I’m still paying for texts. Imagine that.
We don’t talk about Germany
Germanistan needs help though, please talk about us. :(
Your bread is 6 to 10 times more expensive… Bread.
How people took this so wrong is beyond me. Obviously I mean US bread is the expensive one.
Well at least it’s actually bread?
- The French
Where on propaganda earth did you get that idea?
Cool subreddit of people posting what’s in their shopping cart.
So, your claim has absolutely no basis in fact, just something you read on Reddit? A quick check online suggests that supermarket bread prices in the US are pretty much the same as most European countries (apart from the fact the US bread couldn’t be sold in the EU because it would be classed as cake due to the sugar content)
Plus looking at artisanal bread from independent bakeries, it’s the US whose prices are far higher
So do you have any other sources for European bread being “6 to 10 times more expensive”?
I’ll just pop up to the bakery and get my €1, freshly handmade organic baguette while you’re looking
You surely got your feathers up. I’m from Europe.
You wrote an essay about something so meaningless… While completly missing the point. I can’t be bothered to argue about why you’re wrong on pcgaming sub.
American Internet companies are fucking disgusting.
Their speed rates are just throttling speed, yet just this year they got rid of my 300mbs plan ($80/month) and forced me into a 500mbs plan ($110/month!!!) without saying a word. I had it on auto pay and just happened to check to make sure it’s still going through…
That should be fucking illegal, but this is America: land of the fee home of the billionaire.
It’s true that Steam is in a dominant market position so I do agree they should be kept in check. At the same time, their value-add is quite reasonable, so I wonder what the “correct” charge is for the service they provide. Or perhaps some system they need to make more open to competition like Steamworks or the Workshop?
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Megacorps has shareholders. Tell me, how many shareholders are there in Valve? What’s their current stock price?
The only thing keeping Valve on keel is the fact they are not publicly traded.
Caught replying without actually reading 👏
Private companies can have shares and shareholders too, fyi. They just aren’t traded on a public market and aren’t beholden to a public mandate of profit or share growth above all else.
The only thing keeping Valve on keel is the fact they are not publicly traded.
Caught replying without reading. 🤦♂️
I was like…what comment did they make in response to mine that got removed before I got a chance to see…and now I can guess the type of comment it was. It’s ok to be wrong, it doesn’t mean you’re weak or a bad person.
I had made a reply for this user here: https://lemmy.ca/comment/9780622 but I guess he wanted to give me a copy paste reply for a reply I was giving to someone else…
The comment can be boiled down to: Everyone is sucking up to Valve like usual, they could just as easily become evil like Google did, despite their old motto and everyone in tech loving them in the past. Being private is the one thing keeping Valve from enshittifying themselves so they are just as bad as any company.
Megacorps
How big do you think Valve is? They’re estimated around 8 B net worth. That’s 3 orders of magnitude less than Microsoft, at 3 trillion. 8 B is chump change at the megacorp stage.
So long as Valve remains private, the experience getting shittier in the name of more profits is a pressure that faces Valve but not necessarily an inevitably.
If Valve breaks the trust they have built in ways that Google and Microsoft have and continue to do, of course I will stop using them where feasible. Assurances mean nothing, I will respond to action with action of my own. Support more games for Linux, I will buy more of their games. Support bad practices like kernel-level anticheat, launchers in launchers in launchers, PSN, I will buy fewer of those games. I have an account with GOG (I have spent a little bit of money, I would more it Galaxy was available for Linux), Epic (I have spent $0 there because of Tim Sweeney’s aversion to Linux) and Itch.io (has a Linux client). I can move platforms if Steam has a sudden change of heart tomorrow and becomes hellbent on screwing customers over.
I think that there is regulation to be had re: the ownership of games or minimum availability of service for what is paid on both the seller and consumer side. But “I’m paying too much for games because of Valve’s monopoly” wasn’t really on my radar of things that Valve is doing wrong.
Valve is a private company that acts with good will. Not sure what you’re on about.
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It’s amazing how folks support valves monopoly while screaming bloody murder at every other tech company.
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Every single argument there could be applied to every Amazon, Google, etc.
As a publisher if you do not publish on steam you are review bombed, rage bait is plastered across the internet, and every other comment online is about boycotting.
Oh and there is an easy solution from 15 years ago. Steam killed it. Discs. Or a modern digital representation where you can resell and use the content with a launcher.
I always find it funny when i point out too pcmr that console gaming is far cheaper and easier fairer to the consumer for this reason.
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I resell and rent games all the time. It’s far far cheaper and you aren’t waiting for sales. You can easily relist software for 90% of its value. I use gamely so I spent $250 and played maybe 40 or so titles not having to wait for sales.
Add in the costs of a PC vs a console and it’s not even close. I save literally thousands of dollars a year.
Add in the costs of a PC vs a console and it’s not even close
PC: 0€ because you already have one for all the other stuff you do that’s not gaming?
Or does everyone really just rely on smartphones exclusively nowadays?
has games from companies like Riot games, or various MMOs been reviewbombed for not being on steam?
Of course there are edge cases.
So… What do you suggest be done about it?
Break them up
They don’t need to be a store, a launcher, a community, a mod database, etc
Break them up… How?
You can split off business units like their hardware sales or dev studios, but that isn’t going to reduce their storefront market share at all.
Are you suggesting that they just split users up randomly? That would be probably worse for consumers- suddenly the friends and communities people have built up through Steam would be fractured, and users would look to find ways to get around it.
Split up by what publishers they have deals with? Well then those new companies would only be indirect competitors, not to mention that would also be worse for consumers as I’d have to suddenly make a new account with each new platform just to keep accessing my current library.
Like… How do you want to split them up in a way that doesn’t hurt consumers and publishers more than it helps?
Read the second line, I already answered that
But the store piece is the only problem.
For community, there’s tons of different communities for every game and Steam is usually one of the least active anyways.
For mods, as far as I know there’s no exclusivity there. In fact, it’s kind of a pain to mod Bethesda games because they don’t go through Steam. It’s similar to DLC in that it’s just a better experience to have mod support included in the launcher.
For the launcher, that seems like once again a huge blow to consumers to have a separate steam store vs steam launcher. You can already add non-Steam games to the steam launcher or launch games without the steam launcher.
The problems identified in the article, and what they are getting sued for, are solely related to the store. So I don’t see how breaking out these supplemental features would solve that.
launch games without the steam launcher.
How do you download and launch steam games without the steam launcher?
Those things put seperatly Steam is far from the best option , except for the store part because that’s their main thing.
The launcher part is just part of Steams basic DRM, some games can be started from their directory without Steam running.
The subreddits and Discord servers for certain games are usually more organized, cohesive and feature better fan made content than Steams Community Hub.
Nexusmods is far superior to the Steam Workshop in every single aspect.
For Reviews most people go to YouTube and watch a video. Steams review system is more an indicator of general reception rather than actual gameplay.
Steam doesn’t try to squich all the other platforms they just provide a convenient alternative to them. So why are all those things suddenly an issue.
How do you even enforce breaking all those things up? Should there be a law that all governments agree on, that states Steam exclusively can’t host mods anymore? Should they be split up into subsidiaries, like Steam Store, Steam Community, Steam Mods etc.?So then there’s no problem requiring steam to only be a storefront right?
And yes the latter, steam store, steam community, steam mods all become independent
Yeah, but why? They would still all be owned by Valve. Or are you suggesting the government forcefully taking away private company assets?
Splitting a company isn’t a new thing
It’s neither of what you suggested
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What? We still have useful idiots saying “X show is available on Y(netflix, apple, disney, amazon, etc) paid streaming service” instead of just giving a link to free streaming services like https://hydrahd.com/
Manufactured outrage is just that: manufactured. People get mad about things other people get mad about to fit in.
Going to love witnessing the gymnastics G*mers will do to try and justify Steams Monopoly.
So what’s your solution?
I’m a firm-believer that if there was a product that could compete with Steam, then people would use it of their own volition.
GOG is the only platform people ever willfully recommend to others without twisting their arms because of exclusives or deals. Why? Well, they have something Steam doesn’t. Epic, Blizzard, Rockstar, all of them have platforms that exist to do one thing: make rich people richer off of the backs of useful idiots.
Getting mad at Steam for having market dominance is asinine. Get mad at the market for rewarding bloated companies who put out garbage just to make themselves more bloated and the useful idiots who go along with it.
It is easy to rant, but what is your actual solution?
