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I do agree that monthly voluntary surveys is not an exceptional way for the general audience to have a clear idea on things are going on, but my point is less about the general audience and the responsibility weight Valve itself sit onto.
We can endlessly speculate on the secret/true data Valve is hiding from the general public, but in fact, only the actual public data affect their business: that’s where publisher and developers make the strategic choices on which platform (OS) and hardware (VR HMD, highend GPU…) to support. Any incorrect or nonfactual data would lead to less sales, and less happy developer/publisher/customers.
Yes, of course Valve does have it’s own “secret recipient data” they don’t share… but I think the secret data is used more as sort of control on those who try to cheat the stats.
Sometime simplified Chinese language goes on top, resulting English language as secondary for the whole platform… quite often Valve fix those stats, no doubt by cross referencing their secret sauce.
That’s how most modern anticheat in videogames works: the data is keep secret, until one special day you get one big wave that flush all them at once (if you throw constantly daily updated data on which kind of cheater you caught… the cheater got a precious feedback they can play onto)
I’m getting pretty tired of seeing these posts every five minutes from the same couple of sites.
Statistics have variance, especially when they’re recorded from voluntary surveys, please get over it.
Currently Valve is the only billion dollar company who invest in Linux gaming industry.
…incidentally is basically the only billion dollar PC company who invest in PC gaming and don’t have any kind of conflict of interest with Console (Microsoft’s Xbox? any major AAA game company who also publish/make exclusives to console? Epic Games’s Fortinite earning is 48% Playstation, 27% Xbox and remaining 18% for Nintendo Switch/Android/PC)
So, yeah, the earning on the only billion dollar company who is 100% all in in the PC gaming industry matter: those stats matter for Valve, at the very least.
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Well, you have to go with loss leader for a long time… then progressively bullying your own customers to arise the price until reach parity.
…from then you finally earn by continuing bullying the remaining customers as some sort of whales (people keep paying for shitty service due to constant spending habit).
I don’t see why this would work with the simple concept: pay & get value that come with indie.
You need a big plan to screw your customers and, like Google Stadia, carelessly drop millions in the trashbin just to buy that only lucky ticked that made Netflix win (but you did lose)
PC today sold at 1500€ will be sold at 500€ in 2028, so… yeah, I don’t know what people is thinking.
One could say “you’re missing the whole picture, Alessando: in 2028 people would want to buy shiny new 2028 PCs capable of 2028-tripleA-gaming”
But this is also not the whole picture: if a brand new in 2028 that cost 501€ (500+1) doesn’t, at very least, match a 1500€ from the 2025 PC… it simply mean that only rich idiot will buy brand new PC in 2028 (aka: OEM won’t simply sell new stuff)
Snapdragon platform is already tailing PC gaming… if OEM won’t sell new X86 PC, Snapdragon (and like) are coming to get that hole in the PC market.
(but my true hopes are in RiscV: ARM holding can easily dragged in the hardware AI hell as well as AMD and Intel were)
Bluetooth controller do exist by quite some time. …also bluetooth mouse and keyboard.
…ad also USB-C hub that recharge/give power, offer HDMI/DP port and usb slots.
I recall Ubuntu Phone back in 2011 was set to use these features to give a complete computing, Ubuntu Linux, experience on smartphone (and TV, as the smartphone connected to TV)
Well, ARM looks like is hoping to leapfrog over x86 (Intel/AMD) in desktop computing. Once the “RISC” technology (Box86,FEX and alike) head in the PC gaming… we may begin to see options to companies who fed on the PC gaming industry (mostly AMD/Nvidia) and now are turning their back after various things coming along (crypto currency, AI…)
Clever idea would be to give to option to sell it without RAM and SSD (as option, you can still buy the whole package).
They need an open platform to soar, who cares if RAM and SSD comes from second hand market? Steam is a store, they could even lead the second hand market for the (key) accessory components!
Epic can take “some money” by selling third party indie and AAA games… or take “all the money” when people spend in Fortnite. It’s a conflict of interest: Epic don’t want a good store that do the job for other companies, Epic want advertisement for their single product. They give free games with the same logic you get free merchandise to gather people around place that cost money… they don’t give the customer free stuff to make them happy, they don’t give “free money” to publisher/developers because wants them happy (well, aside for the purpose to have happy business).
They want as much as people possible, regardless of their role as customer or publisher, to bring their business in their pocket.
It’s not about the “cut” you’re thinking; it refer to in-app purchases.
Once you bought a game, Valve keep demand a 30% cuts on anything you sell once the customer launch your executable (.exe, binary file/game engine).
hypothetical scenario to help visualize (it won’t go like that most of the time, but useful to understand the concept):
- customer Install and Launch Steam
- customer buy (Valve earn 30% cutshare) and install game on Steam
- customer uninstall Steam, keep installed game
- customer launch game (if is made in a way don’t need Steam dependencies).
- Anything sold while game engine is running must give 30%,of further earning, to Valve.
On Steam you can pick your version of choice among the various update.
If it’s some sort of forced update in which the game is made to not work with previous versions (it require special DRM or online activation by the third party): that’s more another issue (planned obsolescence) that’s being addressed with the Stop Killing Games campaign.
It’s worh noting that the old version still remain “free” if you purchased the old one: that’s less about Square but Valve policy in which purchased items can be withdrawn… Well, actually it more about laws in most countries that if you buy something is yours to keep (or even resell) without the previous owner policing on what/whatnot
It’s an open source platform: if an american company makes and arm device, they need to pay tax to a British company. RiscV require not to pay IP tax to any foreign country.
Also, it’s not like “they move”: stuck there in the US, they would simply shut it down. So I don’t see how your tax money went in better use.
That’s the general idea: they don’t shutdown games because “you can’t support/keep server up forever”… they shutdown games for the otherwise illegal planned obsolescence.
You shut down a game people is playing, people that were playing that game are out looking for new game to (buy) play.
Anthem may have different interest from EA because nobody was playing; but they may still be out there to normalize planned obsolescence (and thus “protect” Anthem from being repaired
“don’t use our tools to sell mods”.
I think there are still misconception: CDProject was smart, albeit dishonest, into presenting the whole thing as “Cyberpunk’s Mod”; so, you (as general and misguided reader) inclined to think the modder took something from CDProject and generate something from thin air… added games are just icying on the cake.
The framework was already setup and working for several games even before Cyberpunk addition.
What is CDProject doing here is just some PR magic to blameshift their actual responsibility: they didn’t ask the modder to remove support for Cyberpunk, they went on and sink down is whole business by addressing directly another company (Patron) which are more “sensitive” to business and discuss less.
It doesn’t need to be legal: Patreon, like Valve and any other big company, deem request from other companies as top priority over any commoner.
Patreon think “we may have extra business with CDProjeck, but mod authors are nobody that need to work for free at best”.
So they know who need to be sacrificed.
(Had to look for AI on this, sorry: I am not an accountant)
for the US: Yearly franchise tax( California: 800$ min per LLC).
Annual report fees (50-300$ per state (Delaware 300$ // New York 9$).
…and also there’s a percentage of the income (if it’s not exactly zero, I guess)
…then, if you’re not an accountant, and don’t want to mess with taxes, you may want to pay someone (an accountant) that make sure your reports are correct (even if they are 0)
A small check for moral consistency: what about Loseless Scaling and 3DSen?
Given that, I’m okay with this DCMA.
Just a small detail that doesn’t look considered, if you ear only one side of the story. The "Cyberpunk VR” mod is not actually a "Cyberpunk VR” mod, but a framework that came to support Cyberpunk after many other games (like GTAV). If you’re still okey, bear in mind the same logic may apply to Loseless Scaling (sold for ~7€ on Steam) and 3DSen (sold for ~13€ on Steam) or you need to take VR Injection Framework apart from Loseless Scaling and 3DSen.
It’s never a good idea to fall in love with CEOs; a company may sometime “help” their customer, but when strategic partner asks for a slap in the face for the customer… there’s no “may”, only must.
Steam comes with Denuvo, third party launcher filled with ads and kernel level anticheat. None of these was required by Valve… yet… they still slap their customer in the face per strategic parteners requests.
Also, refund is not something in Gabe’s book: it was written in Australia’s laws (also EU and other countries) and only after lot of struggles he conceded it.
So… you’re gonna lower the price, right?
Right?