I really hope that the workers are well compensated.
They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
They’ve been nothing but fair to me as a customer but the cynic in me thinks they’ve got an excessive amount of good will to squander since they dominate the PC gaming scene.
Please don’t become shitty. And please release new non competitive games.
Unfortunately a lot of their money comes from profiting off of CSGO loot box skins from children. A billion dollar industry. So in a way, they are shitty already, in a sense.
When Gabe dies, steam falls
That’s what you can do if you’re not publicly traded. The supposedly “wise” market whenever anything goes wrong always seems to insist on burning down decades of good-will to extract a few bucks.
Gaben said it best when he said “piracy is a service issue, not a price issue.” There is no other company that even comes close to matching Steam’s services, both to consumers and developers. The industry could become a different place when he dies. I don’t see any other CEO continuing to spend money to innovate and expand services rather than offer less and charge more to extract record profits.
I mean this is obvious af
When Netflix had 90% of the shows that you wanted to watch and they weren’t annoying little fucks with account sharing and geo location, everyone was happy to support them
But once paying users feel like they are being taken advantage of, instead of catered to, they leave.
There’s so many cases where pirating is not only cheaper (duh) it’s actually a better product/experience. And when you charge to provide a worse product/experience than what people can get for free, then you can’t be surprised at the outcome
Developers really trying to kill that by having buggy /launchers that run off steam launcher on top
I feel the same, I know that things will likely go downhill if he goes. That’s why I also buy GoG games, I want to be able to download them if things go sour with Steam.
Price has become a big issue lately too.
They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
Provide a decent service then sit back and watch your would-be competition develop increasingly effective footguns?
I also use Steam, but they were one of the OGs at taking a 30% cut from digital software sales. Apple always gets shit for this, but not Valve.
Steam offers a lot more to developers than a storefront to sell your games. The App Store is an extremely minimal offering to developers for the amount of money they demand in exchange.
What do you mean? It’s not like the App Store is all that devs get from Apple. Apple has an app dev kit and loads of APIs into the phone that they maintain.
Sure, I’m aware. But nothing on the level of what Valve offers.
What do they offer?
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Because they got monopoly for controlling the OS too. No one will give a crap about the 30% if the app store and iOS are made by different entities.
Before steam, digital sales of games wasn’t really a thing outside of a few niche examples. The 30% cut was the same percentage that retail stores were taking.
The difference is physical retail had a lot of overhead. Steam just creates a new key and adds it to your account. Yeah, they also have to store the game data and distribution up to the ISP, but that’s really cheap compared to storing physical games at physical locations that only have access to their local buyers. Valve’s profit margins are significantly higher. They could probably take 5% and this would still be true.
Storage and bandwidth definitely weren’t cheap in 2003. Additionally Steam provides features that a brick and mortar store could never even think of providing, including updates, DRM, instant access to global consumers, community features, in-depth data analytics, and the ability to adjust pricing in real time.
While a lot of the work Valve has put in Steam seems both obvious and ubiquitous today, these were features they pioneered for both developers and consumers.
I’d also like to point out that the only digital marketplace I’m aware of that charges less than 30% by default (Epic) is famous for losing billions of dollars in the endeavor.
Storage and bandwidth definitely weren’t cheap in 2003.
To access the same number of people, all around the world, compared to physical stores it’s essentially a rounding error. Rent alone for all the stores would be far more than Valve had to spend, then you need employees to operate the stores and all the other ongoing costs. Storage was not as cheap, and from a consumer point of view it wasn’t cheap, it it’s far cheaper than physical stores around the world.
Additionally Steam provides features that a brick and mortar store could never even think of providing, including updates, DRM, instant access to global consumers, community features, in-depth data analytics, and the ability to adjust pricing in real time.
Not sure how that’s relevant, but yes. I didn’t say they didn’t.
While a lot of the work Valve has put in Steam seems both obvious and ubiquitous today, these were features they pioneered for both developers and consumers.
Again, sure. It doesn’t contradict anything I said so I don’t know why you said it.
I’d also like to point out that the only digital marketplace I’m aware of that charges less than 30% by default (Epic) is famous for losing billions of dollars in the endeavor.
Once again, sure. It doesn’t change anything in my comment.
I don’t know why if anyone says anything that is not just gobbling Valve’s cock with enthusiasm they get people showing up talking about how great they are. Sure, I like them too. It doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to complain. That’s how you end up with companies enshitifying.
It almost feels like bots how frequent it is, but I just think you people have a compulsion to defend them from what isn’t even criticism, like they’re going to praise you for it. Well guess what? They don’t even know you exist.
30% was undercutting the market when Steam did it. Y’all always forget that too
I’ve been on Steam since 2005, and the only thing that sucks about Valve is that their steam sales are shit now. Other than that I’ve had no issues with them. They seem like a decent company.
Flash sales were great but refunding is better.
While they are worse now, part of the problem is that long time users already have many of the games that get big discounts in the newer sales.
Other thing that is questionable is gambling, apparently lot of people get into online casino through CS.
I think the culture surrounding DoTa to a lesser extend is not good too
genre defining design, literal decades ahead of the rest of the industry
Half-Life? What’s that? I’m talking about Team Fortress 2 hats
There’s also the gambling, and the 30% cut that allows them to make $3.5 million per head.
Steam is pushing the industry forward on Linux support though, so they have my support.
Valve is the living proof that you can have great service and still be profitable. Will capitalists learn? No
Why have great service and be profitable when you can have terrible service and be 1.6% more profitable?
Correction: Be just as profitable but cash out on that profit slightly sooner.
More like far less profitable over years, but far more this quarter. And when it inevitably goes south because you’re squeezing too hard? Who cares, on to the next company!
Wonder how much of this comes from the gambling business. They don’t own the secondary market where you can sell skins, but they are the gateway into that world.
I suspect a fair chunk. Steam for gamers and devs is great and all but its underbelly of opening up the world of gambling to kids is real gross. Its insane how valve has been getting away with it for so long.
They do own a big part of the secondary market. For steam marketplace, they get a cut of those sales too.
Like it or hate it, the Steam Marketplace was a pretty fucking brilliant move on their part. Literally just a free money glitch lol
Weird how if you pay the people activly invested in a product things work rather than having to awnser to why line no go up
They brag about overworking their employees so they can hire less. No one thinks they’re a good company, just the only option for most games
Showing the importance of sustainable business models over the throw your entire budget at everything then end up firing hundreds and thousands of employees while giving bonuses to executives because the quarterly earnings weren’t as high approach that lot of publicly traded companies have moved towards.
