I agree mostly, but Valve employees are reportedly paid an incredible amount of money compared to the market average, so underpaying would probably only refer to the hefty (but industry standard) 30% cut of game sales they take from game publishers.
I’ve been told over and over again that Valve needs that 30% and they can’t possibly do all that they do with a lower margin. Clearly hosting some files, hosting a forum, processing payments, etc is about ONE THIRD of all the talent and effort that goes into creating a game.
Lol yep they’re an extremely wealthy company with that 30%. But it seems like almost every other storefront operates under those margins for digital sales (not just in gaming).
I do value the cloud saves, I think those would actually add up a bit for their storage requirements as well as hosting all of the game files in presumably many locations globally.
15%, they’d still be a multibillion dollar company
True that text is small files, but some Skyrim saves are easily in the dozens of MB for example. I’m sure you multiply that by millions and it adds up. Surely them needing to store many copies of the game files themselves is a larger file size footprint for them though.
I think the underpaying would be not having nearly as many employees as similar sized companies. They could have several divisions producing games while also developing their hardware and software. He has been happy to make changes at a slower pace while their store keeps taking large cuts of each sale.
I suppose so, but maybe they don’t want to grow too large. Microsoft absolutely devouring studios the last few years has not produced any truly great games. Valve clearly know how to make a good game still, when they want to.
More developers doesn’t always means faster shipping of products, but it can lead to disconnected and soulless releases.
Valve only release something new when it makes sense to or they have an innovation that means it makes sense to.
They don’t really work at a slow pace in my opinion, it’s just you may not always see constant changes in one part of their products all the time because of how the engineers work (freedom to work on whatever).
Probably for the best they aren’t hiring thousands of people to pump out random stuff that is only there to make money. They make stuff that makes sense.
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I agree mostly, but Valve employees are reportedly paid an incredible amount of money compared to the market average, so underpaying would probably only refer to the hefty (but industry standard) 30% cut of game sales they take from game publishers.
I’ve been told over and over again that Valve needs that 30% and they can’t possibly do all that they do with a lower margin. Clearly hosting some files, hosting a forum, processing payments, etc is about ONE THIRD of all the talent and effort that goes into creating a game.
Lol yep they’re an extremely wealthy company with that 30%. But it seems like almost every other storefront operates under those margins for digital sales (not just in gaming). I do value the cloud saves, I think those would actually add up a bit for their storage requirements as well as hosting all of the game files in presumably many locations globally.
15%, they’d still be a multibillion dollar company
Epic only takes 12%, and they too have cloud saves.
If they could take 15% while being a multibillion dollar company, then taking 30% is by definition overcharging.
And that many others also overcharge doesn’t change that fact.
I’m not disagreeing. Epic’s 12% would still be hugely profitable for Valve.
I bet I, myself, with my current hardware could store ALL of the cloud save files with redundancy.
Save files are usually some type of text. All of the text on Wikipedia comes out to about 24 GB.
True that text is small files, but some Skyrim saves are easily in the dozens of MB for example. I’m sure you multiply that by millions and it adds up. Surely them needing to store many copies of the game files themselves is a larger file size footprint for them though.
What are you betting? Paradox save files even compressed are quite large.
I think the underpaying would be not having nearly as many employees as similar sized companies. They could have several divisions producing games while also developing their hardware and software. He has been happy to make changes at a slower pace while their store keeps taking large cuts of each sale.
I suppose so, but maybe they don’t want to grow too large. Microsoft absolutely devouring studios the last few years has not produced any truly great games. Valve clearly know how to make a good game still, when they want to.
More developers doesn’t always means faster shipping of products, but it can lead to disconnected and soulless releases.
Valve only release something new when it makes sense to or they have an innovation that means it makes sense to.
They don’t really work at a slow pace in my opinion, it’s just you may not always see constant changes in one part of their products all the time because of how the engineers work (freedom to work on whatever).
Probably for the best they aren’t hiring thousands of people to pump out random stuff that is only there to make money. They make stuff that makes sense.