Everything except making a store people wanted to use? Ethan Evans, who was previously Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon, has a short retrospective of trying to take on Steam.
Everything except making a store people wanted to use? Ethan Evans, who was previously Vice President of Prime Gaming at Amazon, has a short retrospective of trying to take on Steam.
Nobody is going to overtake Steam even if they’re better. People don’t want to have multiple libraries to deal with so you see them brag about paying for games to have them on Steam even though the game has been free on other platforms… Sometimes they even have claimed them and will still spend money to have them on Steam.
Steam will stay great so long as they stay a private company. It’s the enshitification of going public and appeasing boardmembers and shareholders that ruin companies like Valve. I hope GabeN chooses a great successor when he decides to step down. Hoping for another 27 years of awesome.
You realize that the cut they’re taking ends up being used to pay for a yacht collection, right? They don’t need board members and shareholders to enrich the few at the expense of the many and to take anti diversity decisions…
There’s nothing great about Valve at this point, they disrupted the status quo back in the day, came up on top and take advantage of their position, just like any other company, private or public, does in their position.
God forbid a man spend his money however he wants. Get that commie bullshit out of here.
Money changes hands consensually and Gaben/Valve have more than earned mine. Treating your customers like they are your priority in running a service will do that.
Except their massive contributions to the Open Source/Linux ecosystems with Vulkan and Proton, SteamVR being the only properly supported agnostic VR library, and them basically being the one thing between us and Microsoft becoming a walled garden when it comes to gaming, and more recently the Steam Deck?
If you gotta be a hater, at least be correct.
Wow, continue defending billionaires like that, I’m sure their wealth will trickle all the way down to you any day now.
Implying I care LMAO
I’m more than economically comfortable, by no means a billionaire but I’m not hurting like, at all. I own my own home, I am set to inherit like 2 more houses, I make good money at a stable job, I have time for my hobbies and a family I love.
I want for nothing that I can’t have, with some patience.
Gaben having a Yacht collection makes no difference to me, Steam existing and Valve doing what they do does, so I am happy to see them thrive.
Not everyone is an envious crab in a bucket who feels the constant need to compare themselves to others and ensure nobody is more well off than they are.
What a sad life you must lead that you get this angry over something that doesn’t affect you in the least, or did Gabe outbid you on your dream yacht?
Me me me me me
My dude, the world isn’t only about you. You’re much closer to ending up on the street than you are from any billionaire that exists.
Now off to the block list you go, people like you don’t deserve anyone’s attention.
It’s not about you and your inferiority complex, either.
I’m also much closer to the center of the earth than the sun, I’m still quite far from either, and I’m not very worried about being near either anytime soon.
Short of world war 3 or some other world-shaking catastrophe that won’t be my problem alone, I’m pretty sure my biggest worries are my health and not getting hit by a car, rather than sudden bankruptcy, and I don’t live in the US so the former can’t lead to the latter.
You’re not a plane, you don’t need to announce your departure.
What position are they taking advantage of? If they ask for a smaller cut than 30 percent they get botched at for being anti competitive and being too cheap to try and compete against. They ask for more than 30% and they’re price gouging. Sure, everyone who works there is happy and sleeps in piles of money, but they can’t do anything about it without turning into more of a monopoly. As it stands they at least blow money on potentially cool things in R&D like the steam controller, steam box, and Steam Deck.
What do you actually want Gabe to do? He’s already far and wide the industry leader in employee compensation, and he can’t take a smaller cut without becoming a monopoly. Yeah, he could donate loads of money to charity, but his giant stack of cash also keeps his private company lush with funds to continue paying his employees if anything dire does happen, instead of doing like everyone else and laying off people.
You’re defending the owner of a yacht collection and saying his money is used to keep his business lush… Get real.
And you didn’t answer my question.
Because such a ridiculous take doesn’t warrant a response.
Lol. Sure, buddy.
From the get go you start by saying that if they try to lower their cut people will accuse them of trying to become a monopoly, which is completely idiotic considering they’re already in a monopolistic position. Then you act like rich people have no power over the fact that they’re accumulating wealth while the majority of the world is struggling to live.
I have zero respect for people who defend those who take advantage of the majority.
Off to the block list with you.
No no, you don’t understand!
He’s one of the good billionaires!
(/s for some of you, and for others perhaps you should reconsider why you feel the need to defend a billionaire, regardless of your opinion on video game platforms)
They disrupted the status quo back in 2003 (2001?), then in 2009 they were doing Linux ports, then in ~2015 they were doing HTPC stuff (and also funding Linux graphic driver dev the entire time, Linux gaming in its current state would not exist without Valve), there was their Steam Machine experiment somewhere in there (it flopped but that doesn’t make it cost any less), then they were doing Steam Deck stuff. They’re still paying Linux graphic devs BTW.
… and then they’ll recoil in horror when you mention that’s what a monopoly is.
Monopolies can be positive and functional. They’re still monopolies. Streaming was better was Netflix was the only choice, and had everything, for a reasonable price. Competition’s supposed to be what drives those qualities. Exclusivity breaks that. Exclusivity splinters the market into desperate fiefdoms.
But there’s still a word for when only one store matters.
Yeah, Steam is a monopoly, but 1) they’ve been a monopoly since forever and there hasn’t been a Comcast-ish disaster, and 2) more competition doesn’t seem to actually benefit us here but could potentially make things a lot worse.
In principle, Steam is a Sword Of Damocles just like any other Monopoly. In practice, the alternatives are EA and Epic, no thank you (I know itch.io is a good competitor, but they don’t have any pull on AAA publishers so I don’t expect them to take the market if Steam implodes).
Also, Valve is innovating in ways that nobody else seems willing to - not just their Linux ports (represent!), but also their attempts on HTPC gaming (which was unnecessarily a huge pain in the ass on PC, for no good reason) and their steam controller. And their portable PC gaming with the Steam deck (which to be fair GPD probably did first).
All in all, I’m happy to pay the Steam tax for what they’re doing. I have no illusions that Epic Games Store would provide serious competition in terms of the goodies I want, because they already aren’t, and they’re still in their sweetheart phase.