Good service is not taking 30% of the revenue on projects that took years to developp and create loot system to get kids addicted to gambling. Life must be so easy when you only care abour you and yourself.
Yes it is, if the service is actually… you know… good.
Let’s see what Valve offers for its 30% cut:
The most robust catalogue on the internet, complete with user-generated tags, search functionality, recommendation algorithms, and fast download speeds.
Steam servers for online multiplayer games, which even supports multiplayer mods like Skyrim Together.
In-depth lifetime analytics for every item on their platform, accessible to everyone.
Reviews, discussion threads and forums for every single game on their platform.
The Steam workshop.
Research and development towards VR, both on the hardware and software front.
Research and development towards their own console.
Funding towards open-source compatibility tools, such as Proton.
Giving employees of Valve an actual good salary, which is unheard of in the gaming industry outside of Valve or the occasional indie team.
The cost of maintaining all the above.
Pro-consumer practices, such as:
Keeping games on their servers, and installable by the customer, even when they’re delisted.
Allowing customers to refund games.
Refunding games when the publisher pulls some garbage, like Sony this year… on several occasions (look into Helldivers and the PSN mandate).
Supporting repairability and modability for their console, the Steam Deck, complete with blueprints and tear-downs.
Find me any platform or company that does all of these things. But I guess you want everything to be free and handed to you on a silver platter?
Resale your datas aggregate or not to relate your habits, usage patterns, and demographics of customers as a group or individual to 3rd party
Can close your account without any notification
Everything publishing on steam is the facto their property. This content can be use by Valve for steam offering, promotion, etc… Same for your workshop contributions.
They use cookies, web beacons, pixels, ad tags to track you.
They store your datas as long as they need to
They share your personnal data with third party service providers
…
The prices charged are similar to those for games that you can buy outright. Prices are only increasing, with licences now exceeding $120 for some AAA. What is the benefit for the customer?
Steam only represents 79 jobs. The price of infrastructure and servers has gone down, operating costs are going down, but Valve is not reducing its margin.
About indie productions we can read everywhere about the financial difficulties faced by devs. At valve the per-employee profit are evaluated about $15 million per year (2021). So yes this is not fair and totally disproportionate.
There is no evidence that Valve sells your data. And they wouldn’t even need to.
Are you a scammer? Why would you be concerned about them closing your account?
That’s a blatant lie.
Same as the selling data point.
Yes, they’ll store your data forever if necessary. Because your data is… You know… Evidence of all the things you bought… On their catalogue. That’s a service, not a problem.
This is the third time you mention Valve selling data. Then you go on a random tangent… Let me try to dissect that…
Prices increase for games… Except Valve doesn’t dictate that, the game’s publishers do.
Valve only represents 79 employees… OK? And? So what?
Indie devs financially struggle… Yes, as an artist myself I am very well aware of the struggles any sort of passion project, or ambitious creative work, has. This has nothing to do with Valve.
Most of those points including what you called a blatant lie are directly extracted from their privacy policy. And bad elsewhere never justifiés mediocre here isn’t it.
Lol, you steam fanboy are the biggest jerker on the Internet. You hate video games, what you want is “convenience” because the only thing you can think of is your ass. Let’s be clear, the very second Valve believe it can make more money by selling you buttplugs with Gabe’s face it instead of videogame, they will do it. They have less then 100 employees and take 1/3 of revenue from studios with thousand of employees and people like you will make 30 minutes to jerk them while spitting on those who makes the games. Gamers are the stupidest, most easily manipulatable loser on the planet.
Ok, so, read what you just wrote, carefully. And I do mean actually read what you wrote, because I do hope you will realise how much like a parody you sound like.
Lol fuck off “gamer”.
Any point to make?
I’m sure you believe you love music but only listen to it via Spotify lol.
I use to work in sound for videogames (did you ever had an actual job?) but the main reason I’ve quit his because of people like you who don’t give a fuck about actual studios.
See what’s happening is that most talented people are leaving, the others are laid off and replace by generic AI bullshit that perfectly suits idiotic gamers. Meanwhile there’s more money in video game then ever was, but you people are killing the industry because you keep sucking a business that takes a third of the revenu for basically nothing. You suck, capitalism suck, one day steam will fuck you all the ass because it’s a soulless business and you will get what you deserve. Now go play something and watch Amongog or whaterver stupid youtuber you lioke.
They do provide a good service. There’s no subscription fee. They maintain delisted games so you can download games you bought years ago that are no longer available. Not to mention steam OS and other projects like the steam deck that put pressure on other gaming companies to do better.
This could go up in a cloud of smoke at any point and it likely will as soon as Gabe passes on and the in fighting begins. So this is a “good king” situation and the system itself will not be sustainable long term by any means.
I have read the Subscriber Agreement, most of it is standard legal boilerplate. I don’t see anything about collection of data. Steam is a vehicle for capitalism, no one has claimed otherwise.
And the share of Valve in the computer video game market is around 75% and even more than 80% in Europe. This company is clearly in a monopoly situation that prevents any competition. This situation is clearly undesirable.
Honestly, I’ll probally care about this more when someone else tries to make a service remotely close to what steam provides. Hell epic is probally the closest we got and they are in the red AND lacking in function set that steam provides. Steam charges 30% up until 10m and then 25 till 50m then it’d 20% while giving a multitude of extra services the other companies charging similar rates don’t, seems fair to me.
some examples:
gog: 30%
store
review system
epic: 12% (isn’t turning a profit)
store
cloud save
return system
steam 30
store
mod workshop
reviews
discussion forum
return system
Microsoft store 12%
store
review system
Looking into it, IGN made a nice picture (2019 though so a little old perhaps) so I’ll add that too
They provide an easy platform for me to buy games so I use them. The steam deck too. Just because they have a competent product, i don’t think that justifies any arse kissing. Like you say, they’re a company and they’re in business to make money.
Yeah, I can see why developers would be unhappy about the 30%. Maybe there’s an argument to be made that the platform gives these games a greater potential market but I don’t know enough about the business to try making that argument.
And Steam gives devs the option of selling Steam keys on their website without the cut, with the only rule that they can’t sell it for less on their website than on Steam. So Valve only takes a cut oft their platform leads to a sale, users can still use the platform to play the games without Valve taking a cut.
Neither Apple nor Google allow this afaik, and I don’t know enough about other platforms to know if this is common or unique to Valve.
Yes but they cut off their margins. As Microsoft did.
Steam key is not an advantage. It is a means of retention to keep a seller captive.
A company should be free to sell its game in any way at any price without any restriction coming from one vendor.
Microsoft cut their margins because they didn’t want to get sued.
A company should be free to sell its game in any way at any price without any restriction coming from one vendor.
And that’s exactly what Steam’s agreement is. If you sell on Steam, you can sell your game with or without Steam keys on your own website, you can sell on any competitor’s platform, and you can cancel your game from Steam at any time. There’s no lock in here. You can even add your own DRM or no DRM at all (or use theirs), you can make your game free and only sell additional content through your own website (where you keep all profit), etc. There’s no lock in whatsoever.
Neither does Steam. The dev can sell their game directly, provide a Steam key, or a key for any other store. No lock in, this is merely an option if the dev decides to distribute it that way.
For example, I bought Factorio a little after launch (early 2013), and later got a key for Steam when they released there in 2016. I also bought FTL around launch (2012), but I didn’t have a Steam account because they didn’t yet support my OS (Linux), so I didn’t activate my Steam key until I made my account in late 2013. Some bundles also give you an option on how to get the game, and I’ve activated GOG keys instead when I already had the game on Steam.
Valve doesn’t care how devs sell their game, they only take a cut made through Steam itself. There’s no lock in whatsoever.
Let’s read the license agreement : “Developers retain the right to sell the games through other channels.”
The EU court confirms that the agreement and use of geographic restriction were harmful to competition by object.
The key doesn’t have to go back to steam. Check Humble, plenty of games give you the choice of Epic or GOG, or even directly from the publisher if they have the servers.
A company should be free to sell its game in any way at any price without any restriction coming from one vendor.
People keep bringing this up like it’s some kind of a fact but any time I ask for a source I get no reply. So I’m going to ask again, can you please link the source because I’ve searched for it and I haven’t found it.
Ah, yes, capitalism. Because they don’t have to pay to maintain servers and infrastructure or anything, right?
Nor do they pay for bandwidth when you download your 100gb game for the nth time in the past month.
Nor do they have a ton of functions and services for both devs and consumers like easy refunds, regional pricing, steam keys, trading cards, steam workshop, steam forums, chatrooms, remote play… just to name some.
Yeah, such moneygrabbing comic book villains that just sit in their pile of money and don’t provide anything good.
As far as capitalism goes they are not the shittiest of companies out there.
They have predatory tactics with lootboxes on their popular games though.
But most of their practices are not anticonsumer.
And they do not enforce drm and their own drm is a joke, so you can basically own most games if you want with very little effort. Just copy the files and have a generic steam crack around and you are golden for most cases.
Pirating games is easy-ish enough so if Valve ever enshittifies I will be quickly learning how to remove Steam’s DRM and put all my games on a server and never purchase another video game in my lifetime.
I believe this is something to be aware of and if this is something you don’t want use GOG instead. But in reality as long as Steam exists you will be able to download and play your games. If Steam ceases to exists then you will not be able to download them, but there will be ways to still play them, if you previously downloaded them. It is not like “owning” movies on Amazon (or just recently on the Playstation Store), where you always need to stream the movies.
I know according to their license if steam ceases to exist you lose everything, but I can’t see them ceasing to exist and having it not end up being a bloody mess. There is no way with how large steam is that if they decide to file for closure tomorrow that regulators wouldn’t get involved in trying to provide a way that everyone doesn’t lose their games. I believe steam has hit the point that banks are where enough people use the platform that if it tried to close government is going to get involved
Of course this is under the understanding that it’s a just choose to close situation, if it is a financial issue, I would expect that people would see that coming ahead of time and they would have a longer period of trying to find out a solution. And that solution could very well end up being a court order saying every purchase that’s been on Steam has to be able to be played without the steam client when they close the doors
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Valve takes 30% on every game sold and you don’t even own the games. That’s sick capitalism in action, yet everybody kisses their ass.
EDIT for the Steam jerkers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3r0a7-qyjss https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y
Because somehow their competition is even worse
Why would I care about Valve taking a 30% cut when they’re the best platform around? You do realise what makes them the best platform, right?
deleted by creator
Exactly. Why would you care about anything else than you own selfish little ass? You do realize that you’ve been brainwashed by capitalism, right?
Brainwashed by capitalism!? Jesus, what world do you live in? XD
Clearly not one where paying for a good service is acceptable.
Good service is not taking 30% of the revenue on projects that took years to developp and create loot system to get kids addicted to gambling. Life must be so easy when you only care abour you and yourself.
Tim Sweeney, is that you?
Yes it is, if the service is actually… you know… good. Let’s see what Valve offers for its 30% cut:
Pro-consumer practices, such as:
Find me any platform or company that does all of these things. But I guess you want everything to be free and handed to you on a silver platter?
They don’t.
That’s not unique to Valve.
That’s not unique to Valve.
There is no evidence that Valve sells your data. And they wouldn’t even need to.
Are you a scammer? Why would you be concerned about them closing your account?
That’s a blatant lie.
Same as the selling data point.
Yes, they’ll store your data forever if necessary. Because your data is… You know… Evidence of all the things you bought… On their catalogue. That’s a service, not a problem.
This is the third time you mention Valve selling data. Then you go on a random tangent… Let me try to dissect that…
Prices increase for games… Except Valve doesn’t dictate that, the game’s publishers do.
Valve only represents 79 employees… OK? And? So what?
Indie devs financially struggle… Yes, as an artist myself I am very well aware of the struggles any sort of passion project, or ambitious creative work, has. This has nothing to do with Valve.
Most of those points including what you called a blatant lie are directly extracted from their privacy policy. And bad elsewhere never justifiés mediocre here isn’t it.
Lol, you steam fanboy are the biggest jerker on the Internet. You hate video games, what you want is “convenience” because the only thing you can think of is your ass. Let’s be clear, the very second Valve believe it can make more money by selling you buttplugs with Gabe’s face it instead of videogame, they will do it. They have less then 100 employees and take 1/3 of revenue from studios with thousand of employees and people like you will make 30 minutes to jerk them while spitting on those who makes the games. Gamers are the stupidest, most easily manipulatable loser on the planet.
Ok, so, read what you just wrote, carefully. And I do mean actually read what you wrote, because I do hope you will realise how much like a parody you sound like.
Lol fuck off “gamer”. Any point to make? I’m sure you believe you love music but only listen to it via Spotify lol.
I use to work in sound for videogames (did you ever had an actual job?) but the main reason I’ve quit his because of people like you who don’t give a fuck about actual studios. See what’s happening is that most talented people are leaving, the others are laid off and replace by generic AI bullshit that perfectly suits idiotic gamers. Meanwhile there’s more money in video game then ever was, but you people are killing the industry because you keep sucking a business that takes a third of the revenu for basically nothing. You suck, capitalism suck, one day steam will fuck you all the ass because it’s a soulless business and you will get what you deserve. Now go play something and watch Amongog or whaterver stupid youtuber you lioke.
They do provide a good service. There’s no subscription fee. They maintain delisted games so you can download games you bought years ago that are no longer available. Not to mention steam OS and other projects like the steam deck that put pressure on other gaming companies to do better.
This could go up in a cloud of smoke at any point and it likely will as soon as Gabe passes on and the in fighting begins. So this is a “good king” situation and the system itself will not be sustainable long term by any means.
Did you ever read their terms of use ? This company is not a work of charity. They collect all kind of datas about you. It is voracious capitalism.
I have read the Subscriber Agreement, most of it is standard legal boilerplate. I don’t see anything about collection of data. Steam is a vehicle for capitalism, no one has claimed otherwise.
And the share of Valve in the computer video game market is around 75% and even more than 80% in Europe. This company is clearly in a monopoly situation that prevents any competition. This situation is clearly undesirable.
They’re not preventing competition. Valve did not go out of its way to kill Epic, Epic just sucks. They’re not doing anything to kill GOG either.
There’s a difference between a monopoly, and people just choosing one thing over another.
There’s Xbox, but when that’s the alternative it is clear why Steam still dominates
The problem does not come from other plateforms but from the abuse of dominant position.
having a monopoly isn’t illegal but abusing it is
In what way did Valve abuse their monopoly position?
Honestly, I’ll probally care about this more when someone else tries to make a service remotely close to what steam provides. Hell epic is probally the closest we got and they are in the red AND lacking in function set that steam provides. Steam charges 30% up until 10m and then 25 till 50m then it’d 20% while giving a multitude of extra services the other companies charging similar rates don’t, seems fair to me.
some examples:
Looking into it, IGN made a nice picture (2019 though so a little old perhaps) so I’ll add that too
They provide an easy platform for me to buy games so I use them. The steam deck too. Just because they have a competent product, i don’t think that justifies any arse kissing. Like you say, they’re a company and they’re in business to make money.
Yeah, I can see why developers would be unhappy about the 30%. Maybe there’s an argument to be made that the platform gives these games a greater potential market but I don’t know enough about the business to try making that argument.
Apple and Google commissions are around 15%.
They used to be 30%.
And Steam gives devs the option of selling Steam keys on their website without the cut, with the only rule that they can’t sell it for less on their website than on Steam. So Valve only takes a cut oft their platform leads to a sale, users can still use the platform to play the games without Valve taking a cut.
Neither Apple nor Google allow this afaik, and I don’t know enough about other platforms to know if this is common or unique to Valve.
Yes but they cut off their margins. As Microsoft did.
Steam key is not an advantage. It is a means of retention to keep a seller captive. A company should be free to sell its game in any way at any price without any restriction coming from one vendor.
Microsoft cut their margins because they didn’t want to get sued.
And that’s exactly what Steam’s agreement is. If you sell on Steam, you can sell your game with or without Steam keys on your own website, you can sell on any competitor’s platform, and you can cancel your game from Steam at any time. There’s no lock in here. You can even add your own DRM or no DRM at all (or use theirs), you can make your game free and only sell additional content through your own website (where you keep all profit), etc. There’s no lock in whatsoever.
No lock with a key bringing you back to steam, with a unique price. Even the music industry doesn’t impose that.
Neither does Steam. The dev can sell their game directly, provide a Steam key, or a key for any other store. No lock in, this is merely an option if the dev decides to distribute it that way.
For example, I bought Factorio a little after launch (early 2013), and later got a key for Steam when they released there in 2016. I also bought FTL around launch (2012), but I didn’t have a Steam account because they didn’t yet support my OS (Linux), so I didn’t activate my Steam key until I made my account in late 2013. Some bundles also give you an option on how to get the game, and I’ve activated GOG keys instead when I already had the game on Steam.
Valve doesn’t care how devs sell their game, they only take a cut made through Steam itself. There’s no lock in whatsoever.
Let’s read the license agreement : “Developers retain the right to sell the games through other channels.” The EU court confirms that the agreement and use of geographic restriction were harmful to competition by object.
The key doesn’t have to go back to steam. Check Humble, plenty of games give you the choice of Epic or GOG, or even directly from the publisher if they have the servers.
People keep bringing this up like it’s some kind of a fact but any time I ask for a source I get no reply. So I’m going to ask again, can you please link the source because I’ve searched for it and I haven’t found it.
The source is Evian.
The water bottling company?
And I guess, yet again, no source is provided.
Ah, yes, capitalism. Because they don’t have to pay to maintain servers and infrastructure or anything, right?
Nor do they pay for bandwidth when you download your 100gb game for the nth time in the past month.
Nor do they have a ton of functions and services for both devs and consumers like easy refunds, regional pricing, steam keys, trading cards, steam workshop, steam forums, chatrooms, remote play… just to name some.
Yeah, such moneygrabbing comic book villains that just sit in their pile of money and don’t provide anything good.
I read somewhere most of the cost is payment providers, scams, chargebacks and refunds they can’t offload onto the publishers.
They are stacking billions. It means they are paying peanuts compared to what they are making.
How does valve’s ass taste?
Delicious :)
I like Steam but come on, they are more profitable per employee than Apple. They are clearly not hurting even if I download my games over and over.
And they provide a better service than Apple.
Absolutely. There are iOS apps and games I bought that don’t run anymore and Apple wants us to accept this as normal.
As far as capitalism goes they are not the shittiest of companies out there.
They have predatory tactics with lootboxes on their popular games though.
But most of their practices are not anticonsumer.
And they do not enforce drm and their own drm is a joke, so you can basically own most games if you want with very little effort. Just copy the files and have a generic steam crack around and you are golden for most cases.
Honestly, I pay for the service alone.
Pirating games is easy-ish enough so if Valve ever enshittifies I will be quickly learning how to remove Steam’s DRM and put all my games on a server and never purchase another video game in my lifetime.
Yeah. Really wish they were more like gog or itch
I believe this is something to be aware of and if this is something you don’t want use GOG instead. But in reality as long as Steam exists you will be able to download and play your games. If Steam ceases to exists then you will not be able to download them, but there will be ways to still play them, if you previously downloaded them. It is not like “owning” movies on Amazon (or just recently on the Playstation Store), where you always need to stream the movies.
I know according to their license if steam ceases to exist you lose everything, but I can’t see them ceasing to exist and having it not end up being a bloody mess. There is no way with how large steam is that if they decide to file for closure tomorrow that regulators wouldn’t get involved in trying to provide a way that everyone doesn’t lose their games. I believe steam has hit the point that banks are where enough people use the platform that if it tried to close government is going to get involved
Of course this is under the understanding that it’s a just choose to close situation, if it is a financial issue, I would expect that people would see that coming ahead of time and they would have a longer period of trying to find out a solution. And that solution could very well end up being a court order saying every purchase that’s been on Steam has to be able to be played without the steam client when they close the doors