Technology

500m is bigger than you think. Also fines escalate.

I didn't read the article, but I presume this is under the DMA which has provisions for increasing fines for repeat offenses - something like 10% of global revenue or something like that. I'm also a bit discouraged by how small the number is, but there is still some hope that it will either increase or get them to change their practices. But it is quite frustrating how slowly it's going.

In fact, chances are that Apple is going breaking the law until the last minute so they can squeeze every penny they can out of this scheme until they can't do it any longer.

People are down voting you like your defending them, but you're not, and you're right. It sounds like a lot of money, but for Apple, it's just an adjustment to the profits they made doing this.

Well, half a billion is still a lot of money so it's great that the union got it so they can spend it on something useful. Half a billion USD is the entire yearly revenue of some fairly large companies in Sweden.

And the fine is not intended to bankrupt Apple, it's intended to punish them and as a show of force. If Apple still refuses to comply or even pay the fine, the fines would obviously escalate and the max fine on this offence is very very high.

Also remember that the EU generally only cares what they do inside the EU, they care about how it affects EU citizens. So it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to issue brutally high fines based on yearly global revenue yet.

Perhaps that's because Steam doesn't seem to be trying very hard to "lock in" developers to their platform. Devs are free to sell their PC games on Gog or Epic or whatever. Steam is popular because it's a good platform. This freedom for developers or customers mostly does not exist on mobile or on consoles, except for the EUs efforts here.

Even their "console" the Steam Deck can, relatively easily, run games from other stores. I'm not saying a 30% cut should be considered fair but they do seem to take a different approach to digital sales than the other large players.

I'd like to see a game developer chiming in but as a user, 30% cut by Steam feels justified.

They have helped me discover and buy many games that I wouldn't have even heard of otherwise. Compare that to Google Play Store which is full of dogshit shovelware and Pay2Win games.

And sometimes I've even bought Steam keys via Fanatical bundles, where I chose which games to buy by looking at their Steam store pages. Steam got nothing from these transactions as far as I know.

This is without getting into other useful stuff like guides and forums hosted by Steam which I can look at whenever I get stuck. Or Steam workshop which allows users to easily mod the games.

Call me a fanboy but I'm tired of this 'what about Steam' comments.

Ask Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Nintendo to improve their stores instead.

The difference is availability of choice. On apple phones, Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation you are locked into a single source of software. On a PC there are myriad of game stores you can choose from. Sometimes you can even buy the software directly from the developer. Usually people are upset when this choice is taken away (for example epic exclusive games). Nobody would bat an eye if a developer offered their game on epic or their own platform with a ~20% discount compared to steam. But it is up to the developers to make their game available on any of the PC game stores.

In conclusion, steam is not a platform holder, they could charge whatever they wanted. If the markup was too high, you could simply choose to buy your games elsewhere. For most people, this 30% is worth it for the features and buyer protection that steam offers compared to other platforms.

It would be more comparable if Apple, Microsoft (Xbox), Nintendo, or Sony allowed anyone to make a third party game launcher but they just keep sucking.

Steam isn’t a monopoly.

The PC is an open platform, you can use any game store or launcher you want - unlike the iPhone, Android (without sideloading), PlayStation, switch, or Xbox.

Steam is not the only means of distribution anywhere, and you can often buy the same game both from Steam and directly.

It's too early to hate it.

(Well, I mean, I want a FreeBSD native Steam client with native Proton and all infrastructure, but I can understand that it's a small percentage, even if not that different from Linux support.)

I agree that the 30% cut is too much. The only reason I give them a pass is because Steam is really good (at least, as a user). But I still want them to lower it.

I'm less mad at Steam and Google because there are clear, simple ways to avoid their cuts.

I have no basis to say whether they're providing a service worth the 30% charge. I'm also less mad at Steam than at Google because they're being less shady about trying to push people into their store too.

Microsoft, Apple, Exxon, Meta, Amazon, JP Morgan or Saudi Aramco are the most powerful corporations in the world. They are empires more powerful than many nations. Their CEOs always travel with armed men. They have the personal phone number of Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

It's healthy to scrutinize them. Steam is a problem, but Valve is nowhere near as powerful.

You get value from Steam for paying that.

What value do you get from Apple for paying the Apple tax? A higher price for a phone that could cost 500€ less?

Thanks, I almost forgot about my experience using S mode. It is fucking awful.

If it was my own I would have just installed Linux.