this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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The product stays the same if we bring down their revenue to 1 billion, they aren't close to bankruptcy. If they took 0.5 %, Gaben would still be able to afford a yatch or two, just not 6.
Having a competitors product on your platform doesn't have anything to do with collusion. They are rivals but they don't actually compete or strive to give their customers any kind of competitive prices.
And yes, you are defending a billionaire.
So? I don't care if they're forced to lower his salary. You said nothing differentiates Steam enough and I'm saying it does so by being good.
The majority of customers on all storefronts are fine with the pricing as-is. Steam's competitive advantage comes from being the best storefront with an amazing library and . That's why it's the top dog
I'm clearly not. I'm defending the service itself
Pricing has nothing to do with Steam dude…. that’s publisher/developer controlled. And they have a quite a lot of stink to say about the cut they take for nothing. They need to curate and moderate all their own store page, Steam does what and takes 30%?
It’s no wonder some take epics deals, the cut they take is 12%, that’s significant. And if epic can operate by taking that much with their employee count, clearly valve could be doing a far better job of what they do, but they do what again…? Line Gabe’s pocket and what else?
Took from what? Is this about the revenue share again? Stop listening to that idiot Timmy.
We know that many others take the same %% so I could say even if they took 50% they wouldn't deliver a product as good as Steam.
With a 30% cut they make enough surplus that the owner is a billionaire that can afford 6 yacht, there's no reason why you or anyone should defend Valve's decision to be so profitable instead of making games cheaper and that applies to any company where the owner is rich.
Yachts. This can't be more silly. And what would you say if he didn't own those yachts? "Look at the bank account of that guy who owns almost a whole gaming platform because others are not qualified enough to compete with his company"?
That's exactly what people should say, billionaires shouldn't exist, it's that simple. 80% of US citizens live paycheck to paycheck, people have a hard time affording to pay for basic needs, meanwhile you've got companies that take a big enough cut on everything they sell that their owner can afford to spend in a day more than the average person will make in their whole life without having to even think about the impact that will have on their ability to pay their bills.
The wealth they accumulate comes directly from our pockets, stop defending them, they exist because we pay more for things than they're truly worth.
I don't get what you want. Propose a reality where it'll be impossible to become a billionaire? Would it be like communism or something?
Doesn't need to be communism, just need a system in place to limit profits. Everyone but the most wealthy would end up with more money in their pockets if companies didn't make billions in profit that goes to their owners and investors.
Good luck with that? I don't know how much far this reality is, but I'd guess it's not current century. Not that I wouldn't support it, it just doesn't seem realistic and positive st the same time right now.
If steam took a smaller cut game prices wouldn't budge a single goddamn cent and you know it
It's not just about Steam taking a smaller cut, the whole distribution chain makes it so the people developing the product are the poorest ones in the development to consumer process.
If publishers and distributors took a smaller cut and prices stayed the same instead of going down, it would mean that developers would get more money for their work, developers are people like you and me.
To be clear, I'm not listening to anyone. I think the government should step in and force a maximum of 5% on all stores, or something similar.
The fact that they all take the same percentage is exactly the reason why I'm saying there's collusion going on.
I'm sure you came up with that 5% number after careful research and didn't just pull some low round number out of your ass.
/s
I did say something similar, it's clearly just to give an idea.
I'm basing it on the fact that it would still be insanely profitable with such a percentage, personally I would rather see it much lower.
An utterly meaningless challenge just to defend daddy Gaben. Why don't you talk about my actual points instead of spitting out useless dribble. Stop defending billionaires.
Government of which country or countries? You wouldn't think they would stay in the US if what you said will happen, would you?
Their propaganda machine works so well, you're proving it by bringing up all the usual talking points.
"They offer a good product so they deserve it."
"They would leave if they were forced to reduce their profits."
You know what countries can do? Get together and impose the same kind of rules to all companies no matter where they're established. They can also decide to force companies to pay taxes based on where the revenue came from under the threat that they won't be able to do business in their territory anymore.
It's funny how in a previous conversation you were saying that people should be able to make donations to devs and you never thought "Hey, maybe it's not normal that only 50% of what I pay ends up in the pockets of the people doing the actual work..." and you even suggest that art should be encouraged via tax redistribution. Well guess what, that wouldn't be necessary if multimillionaires and billionaires didn't exist in the first place.
People all around you are struggling and you're defending the 1%, wake the fuck up.
Those are not my points, you made them up. My point is, there are no rules that prevent it from happening. No competition to make it seem fair at least for some other companies who are not Valve.
I have complains about Steam but financial part is hardly one of them. It's not that they deserve the money, it's that most others are being hugely ineffective, which creates this disparity.
It's funny how you suggest that adding any part of those 30% to the pocket of actual devs would solve any problems.
My other points in other threads remain valid. I think you just misunderstood them.
I'm not defending anyone. It's you who's attacking people, for questionable reasons.
What disparity? All these companies generation millions and billions in profits with the boss making hundreds of times what the average employee makes in a year.
It would put the money in the hands of workers instead of in the hands of the elite that already has enough money that the only way it can spend it is by wasting it on millions dollars toys while devs need to camp in their office parking lot.
Your boss must truly love you very much if you believe that they deserve all the profits they generate off your work.
The disparity between a good quality product and useless crap? The disparity between the %% of profits that roughly goes to single employee in different companies? The disparity between 1 yacht and 6 yachts? You choose.
You can put it in their hands right now. Sell your game in your own store and get 100% profits.
Epics 12% and they operate with how many more employees?
So what is valve doing with all this extra money than on Gabe?
Epics are posers at this point, or one could say a fake platform. Remove Fortnite from them and it will shut down immediately, especially at 12%.
Epic tried to pull an Amazon.
Get VC money and subsidize and undercut competition using anticompetitive practices to gain market share before the rug pull where they jack up their margins to the industry standard.
The difference is Amazon actually made a good software experience in the beginning few years and Epic spent literal years with very few feature updates and whining about "unfair market practices" when they were the only ones actually engaging in anti-consumer passes like paying off developers to be Epic-exclusive and buying developers and removing their games from steam.
You realize the others only charge that much since steam set the standard… yeah? All of them can charge less so what’s your point here? You clearly lied in your original comment, and are now making up points to defend it.
I'll wait for you to prove this.
Prove that they are profitable at 30% if they couldn’t go lower at least one or two would be near the red every single year, yet it’s climbing profits….?
But you know there is no physical proof of this, yet you claim it? I’m sorry you got to do a little critical thinking on your own. Most can obviously take atleast down to 25% if not significantly more and still be positive.
You made the initial claim, so it’s up to you to prove it’s unprofitable to be less than 30%, balls in your court if you actually want to discuss this.
No, prove that what you said is correct. It's historical data in your case, about how Steam started the 30% trend, allegedly.
My claim was that 30% was a standard before Steam, not at all about how much less profitable it would be for them if it was different.
Also putting the blame on Steam for others allegedly following its model is not logical if your point is about how obvious it always was that 30% is excessive.
Are any of those other store fronts newer than steam?
If not, why would they have any need or business sense to charge less?
You’re moving goal posts and refusing to accept responsibility for your original claims. That’s not discussing in good faith.
Retail stores.
Because their business is different from steam? Or maybe because they are more experienced in business and could show the world how it's done? Wait, why do we even assume that Steam had such huge influence around the time when other digital stores popped up (some of which also didn't live very long)? The pc gaming was massively considered niche for a very long time, only until recent years. I can't imagine Apple going "oh right, we are creating our own digital store mostly for mobile devices so we need to check how that PC gaming company does their business, to copy their practices".
Everything is fine with them.