this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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There aren't many option and all of them except one are predatory. Regulation that would limit the amount taken would be a real boon to the industry. Steam, Epic, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all guilty of this. The government should step in but they don't because of lobbying and donations.
No one defends Microsoft when it comes to this. Gaben gets a free pass because he pretends to be a cool guy when he's just another billionaire essentially robbing his workforce and customers.
Steam is the only store putting the customer first. The refund policy is top notch. Heck just making proton, giving gamers the choice of os, is the best thing for gamers since computers was invented!
https://youtu.be/gwoAmifo9r0
Microsoft's refund policy is top notch too and I see proton as leveraging open source to avoid dev costs.
More importantly, everything steam does could be done with 5% instead of 30% and Gaben would still be filthy rich.
Steam is as greedy as the other platforms and it's us, the consumers, and the indie scene that suffer for it. Are you okay with your favorite indie studio closing and your favorite game not getting a sequel because Gaben wants 8000 million a year instead of 1000 million a year?
There is most likely collusion and soft monopolies, these platforms are clearly not competing in good faith.
As a developer, I have no problem with this. Why do work that doesn't need to be done?
I don't either, that is what open source is for afterall. I'm trying to point out that this decision wasn't out of love for his customers but out of love for his bottom line. This let him compete with platforms with devices while having a seriously low entry cost compared to them. It's just a smart business decision but people treat it as if it was charity.