In a service business, if you do things right, people think you're doing nothing.

TIL a greek minister of finance is responsible for TF2 hats. Fucking wild.

I'm baffled that I didn't already know that lootboxes were created by the husband of the woman that the Pulp hit Common People was most likely written about.

it doesn’t just do nothing,

Valve is a for profit company, one of their main goals is to make money and they work daily to do that. There are people at Valve who work 8h a day on how to boost profits.

People love to shit on valve working on lootboxes, but I was there to see how it developed. It was there as part of a way of getting money back to the people making stuff, which is why a shitload of the TF2 hats came from the community and steam workshop. The system came from a left wing greek economist, before , you know, he BECAME Minister of Finance for greece (for half a year)

I think you are confusing lootboxes with the items market which was there mainly to compensate the free to play model. If you were there i hope you remember too no DRMs and no third party software launchers to run games.

This is why they have steam OS

They have steam OS because microsoft become one of their competitors

We don't have Steam Greenlight anymore, but otherwise 100% agree.

Deadlock would like a word with you.

Valve is winning because the average gamer doesn't care much about owning his videogames.

"doing nothing"

Global distribution of exabytes of data, handling the entire e-commerce side and offering great toolings with steamworks while requiring onyl 100 dollars upfront is now considered "nothing". Yeah, we should definitely go back to a time when steam wasn't a thing and indie devs were required to have a publisher to even get their games into stores, and those publishers often took 80% of the entire profits. I'm sure indies had a much better time back then when they didn't have to pay steam!

They introduced a feature, the community didn't like it, and they canceled it a few days later because of that feedback. What exactly is the problem? Making a mistake and rectifying it within days is not a bad thing at all.

Users are just more tolerant towards Valve than any other platform because of the cheap games they can buy during a sale

If that was the case, people would be extremely tolerant towards the epic game store which regularly throws out games for free, but they aren't.

It’s funny that they tried to get indie devs paid for their contributions to these games (and therefore incentivizing more great mods) and gamers were like FUCK THAT SHIT! Typical, honestly. So now there’s no legal way to charge for mods and you get to do it only for fun asking people for coffee tips.

Imo this was Bethesda more than valve, anyways, and while it would make both of them too much money doing that it would have gotten regular people paid, too. Which they deserve, by the way.

They run a good service platform and aren't as greedy as they could be, but they're still not safe.

Use them, but no fangirling. They're a business.

Do You have any idea what the hosting infrastructure, steam works, and traffic costs?

Also, valve is giving massive contributions to open source from those 30%

There definitely is some amount of expenditure by valve. I don't know if its 30% worth. For multiplayer games they provide a server/client DDOS protection and traffic optomization service though it is opt in by the developer through an api. The other option for this tends to be a "contact sales" priced product from cloudflare. There is also some of proton's development, some linux graphics driver work, and workshop support though I suspect hosting and content moderation expenditure there is fairly minimal.

Brick and mortar stores take 50% of revenue usually. The profit margin for the manufacturer applies after that

Those studios are paying Valve how much for tailored marketing throughout the game's lifespan?

They spend money on each game uploaded to their store. How could you seriously think they aren’t spending any money?

You’re more making an argument that games are too cheap now.

You don’t think valve has employees and hardware to maintain?

30% is the industry standard though, and Valve's contributions of distribution and discovery infrastructure, its audience, and expanding hardware initiatives are not nothing. If you're not pricing a game to give yourself a healthy margin within the 70% or your development model doesn't make that viable, that's really on you.

Be prepared.

Don’t hate, but don’t trust Valve. Treat your Steam library like you don’t own it, and it could be enshittified at any time, because you don’t, and it could.

In practice, prioritize DRM-free stores when convenient. Or better yet, 1st party game dev stores. Archive any games or saves you actually want to go back to, just in case. Game like your Steam client install could require a subscription at a moment’s notice.

Exactly. And unlike many other companies there isn't even any indication they would want to enshittify anyways. Why would they destroy the foundation of their platform? They have actual paying customers paying the bills, not some force-feed ad slop machine.

That’s a fucking patent?!

I got bad news for you. Gabe is human and barring a miracle in medical science; he will die. He's 63, the tables on Age Cohort death aren't kind after 60. (They're brutal after 70) Only 1/3rd of men reach 80.

This is something we need to be thinking about now. It could easily take 5-10 years to get competitors working.

This is the point everyone tends to gloss over, especially with the case brought against Valve from the Overgrowth dev where it's pretty relevant to their case. Glad to see someone has actually read the friggin' Steam TOS.

That doesn't sound as bad

What do you propose Steam changes instead of 30%?

1. Taxing those outside investors too
2. Taxing Valve as a corporation more, making them less profitable and less attractive to said investors.
3. I'm not even convinced this would be an issue at all really. Remember Valve is not publicly traded. I suspect Gabe would hold on to controlling ownership as long as it was profitable, and remember that taxes are usually on profits.
4. Even if outside investors move in and enshittify, the moment they start doing anticompetitive you hit them with antitrust suits. Not to mention the industry can also be regulated even before all this: a lot of governments are cracking down on lootboxes already.

There have been reports of Valve telling developers they can't sell their game cheaper elsewhere (such as on a platform with a smaller cut than Steam's 30%). But I think that was refuted.

Maybe the difference is effort versus objective reality.

You and OP are concerned with whether or not they became a monopoly maliciously when I think the previous commenter is concerned with whether or not they simply are a monopoly.

In my view they are a monopoly and they have abused that. I'm thinking of their loot boxes and silent support of skin gambling.

We should be mistrustful of institutions with this much power, regardless of if they're actively abusing it.

In practice having a game on Steam is even superior to having a DRM free copy. My DRM free copies of games are on some old hard drive in a drawer. My steam library is right there. Removing and installing games is super straightforward.

Let me ask you this: does it matter? Whether my neighbor buys or just happens upon a bazooka, he has a bazooka, and I don't feel safe.

I do exactly that. I have complementary libraries on GoG and Steam, although Steam is obviously bigger.

The steam lock in is a feature, anyways. I don’t want to chase down updates off dev sites or worse the dev shuts down. Which will happen far far far more often than Steam, anyways.

Nothing lasts forever. Steam included. Yes people may lose games they bought but you lose cars you bought too. You’d lose the game eventually either by the disc breaking or the developer dying. Etc etc etc

Things die. Nothing is forever. This includes software.

Lemme knock out the obvious: Better UI and stronger community / community tools. I think these are a given.

OK. With you, there.

That being said, I do think EGS is going the correct route

...and, you lost me.

I work in UI, outside the game industry. It's plain to me very, very few publishers care about developing good UI or community tools. Epic is no exception. Perhaps that wasn't what you meant, but if it's a venue they intentionally ignore, it fits the OP picture perfectly.

I also think there are other features on which Steam has failed to compete, and an inventive competitor could investigate. Things like better game integration, better curation, promises against censorship to publishers of adult content, or creative uses of AI to improve player experiences, are all options. But I think that between the attempts of Google, Amazon, and Epic, it's seemed that simply throwing money at the game industry without knowledge of what's valuable to gamers, has not worked well.

That being said, I do think EGS is going the correct route by investing in games / unique games and locking them into their platform.

I strongly disagree. I quit consoles because of the exclusivity nonsense, and EGS guaranteed I will never buy anything from them by doing that shit. I won't even redeem free games on their platform via Prime Gaming, just on principle.

You compete by giving devs and publishers a better cut, or convincing them to do deeper sales on your platform. You compete by providing a better service to users. You do not compete by literally not competing.

The EGS app is so poorly built that Heroic, a third party app made by volunteers, runs faster, has a nicer UI, and has more features. EGS are not a serious competitor.

I’d sooner sell my pc than give a penny to egs. I won’t even take their free games. EGS will 109% become the evil monopoly you are all so scared of if it gets a chance at all. Fuck that they already have a weird monopoly on game engines (which is making gaming boring as it is).

yeah its like if you were in a race and you said your opponent cheated because you broke your leg and they didn't

If my neighbor finds a bazooka rather than buy one, he still has a bazooka.

I mean we say Google has a monopoly on search, but there are bing, duckduckgo, kagi, etc. You are thinking absolute monopoly.

monopoly law usually kicks in around 95% market share.

Steam has effective monopoly.

If a game is not released on Steam, it might as well not exist. There are only a handful of exceptions.

And games that do get death threats from Steam fans. Because how dare those developers not release on "the only worthy platform"? Remember the Epic games?

Monopolies are more than just "competition does not exist".

Well, everything in one place doesn't really require a monopoly. The key is interoperability. It would be having a single launcher that can download games from any store. This way the customer can have choice over where to buy games and what launcher to use. It'd something similar to the heroic launcher.

Obviously break you apart so those same shitty competitors can buy you up and make everything worse!

Oh but the stock market will have a chance to go up a bit. Always look on the bright side.

Uh, Microsoft got in trouble for making their browser an unremovable part of the operating system, and aggressively trying to force you to use it as a browser. Not remotely accurate to say the problem was just including a web browser. And in the end, they got barely any punishment for it.

No, m$ got a fist up their arse for anticompetitive behaviour

What's your point?

Are you saying that Microsoft being split up made no sense? If so, what would you suggest instead?

Or are you saying since they "almost" did it to MS, then they could do it to Steam? If so, where do you make the split that effects any change? You could split Valve the game dev company from the Steam platform, but I don't think that makes Steam any less monolithic in their space - they don't get their market share from the games Valve has made.

Isn't there a difference between public and private companies?

I'm not sure how important Steam is.

Sure, we all like video games, but I don't think people are going to die if they start overcharging for them and we have to go outside to buy them in a store again.

I never said it was too big or too important to be broken up. I'm saying I don't see how to split it up that actually solves the problem. I don't think people are scared of Valve the Game Devs, maybe the hardware section but there were tons of other options on the market almost as soon as the Steam Deck took off. It's the store that people take issue with, so how do you separate to make the store not a problem? Regionally? Have Steam NA, Steam EU, Steam Asia, etc. etc.? I suppose that is possible, but I'm unsure if I see how that actually solves the problem (even assuming you can get around people just buying from a different region's Steam).

As for nationalizing it... I just don't have any faith in the US government to not turn it to absolute shit on day one. Unfortunately, at this stage, I trust Valve and it's Billionaire CEO more than I do the government. I hate to just resign myself to trying to make the most of the dystopia we've been given but... :(

"Nationalize it" is easy to say, but I honestly think even Microsoft would do a better job with steam than the US government would.

What is and isn't a Monopoly varies from country to country, and always turns into the same circular debate every time it comes up anyway. That's why I was trying to avoid getting bogged down is "is it or isn't it" and focus on "if it is, then what?" because I'm not sure a lot of people have thought that far ahead. Myself included.

Try releasing your game on a different platform. It might as well not exist.

And the fanboys that do know about your game will give you death threats for not releasing on their favourite platform.

Their policy is not that you aren't allowed to sell your game cheaper on another platform, their policy is that you can't sell Steam keys on other platforms cheaper than you are selling the game on Steam. Basically, you can't use Steam's infrastructure when undercutting "Steam customers". Games that are on Steam go on sale on other platforms when they are not on sale on Steam all the time currently.

Then they would just simply stop giving out free steam keys for off platform purchases. Depends on how many people buy from publisher site because they get to keep their games in a single library, it might end up with the game publishers getting less revenue overall.

Sure let them sell cheaper on gog or epic. But what about the Free steam Keys they get? Those should still be the same price or will steam change it to non Free Keys and instead Charge the 30% they take so that These Keys can be sold at any price any where? Tbh even If the game is 60$ on steam and only 45$ on epic.. I should still buy on steam.. And i suppose most others aswell

That'll be the same problem in steam.
But i agree with you.

Do you know any of the payment methods you used?

Maybe a friend bought you a game with their card at some point?

Or you used your parents' card if you were younger?

For 400+ games I imagine you already thought of those possibilities though

I lost access to my PSN account because they want me to do third-party verification with an authorization app that I apparently had linked to it like a decade ago, but don't know what it was.

Their alternative verification is to verify purchase histories on my PSN account, which is hard to do when the whole problem is I can't access my PSN account.

Maybe it was a debit card?

......yes there is - fucking socials. Make a cool trailer, that they do anyway, and use interns to spam it to gaming groups and just tag the hell out of it.

Exactly, this is the clear sign that Steam is providing actual value to both developers and players. The PC ecosystem has always had the guaranteed threat of an open platform, so you could cut out any middleman. Which is why it's such a hostile platform to predatory middlemen. The fact this isn't being done to Steam demonstrates them as an example of a (relatively) good middleman.

Best example of Steam being left out and still succeeding on PC - Minecraft launched in a time when Steam was already around and just said "nah, we're good" (citing the 30% cut and concerns over monopoly status) and just went it's own way. There are still plenty of games being created on PC without Steam in the mix, itch.io, self publishing. Steam just makes it a lot easier so many people legitimately want to use them, others don't and can do so. And that's how it should be!

The update could occur in game like it did before launchers were common. When you would enter the online/multi-player portion of the game it would inform you to update your game in order to use the online services. The game would then download and install the update with the game open then it would restart.

If you're saying that all games would ship with a launcher because that's the norm then I agree completely lol.

By adding a new version to your download page.

Exactly the same as any software capable of self-update: it connects to servers, checks for updates, downloads and installs them.

Say it with me now - P-A-T-C-H-E-S, like they do via launchers anyway.....

I'd doubt that. Each publisher signs their own terms to Steam, and they likely couldn't all be forced into a new agreement. It would reach to some new games, but it would likely lead many to consider other stores (considering a lot of them use Denuvo, piracy fears are likely high on their part).

If you want the process to be pervasive, you could either lobby on a major level like StopKillingGames, or push more popularity of indie games that tend to be DRM-free by default (oh, and if you think there's a lot of them on Steam, check Itch.io)

I also like the narratives of continuous game support, easy updates, being able to install games any number of times forever, making a fantastic handheld gaming device that can be hooked up to a TV that is easy to update and modify, convenient ways to communicate and play with friends, reviews, and basically everything except for the forums (which should be moderated by the game publishers).

The only complaints I recall people making about steam are losing their account because they forgot their password and valve being thorough in not just giving it to someone or that easy streaming killed physical games. To be honest, the first sucks but isn't valve's fault and the second is just convenience and reliability being more attractive than physical media. I have played and have had continuous access to far more games since steam than prior because I don't have to manage physical media and the benefits outweigh the negatives of not really owning the games. Everything is a tradeoff, and I chose to get rid of old consoles because they were too much work compared to using online games services like steam.

I also did use several of the other ones in the meme and dropped them because they offered only downloading games and weren't even very good at that.

Those sales are on the devs.

ur right, ever since steam came out, games have been getting less expensive

They basically take away most of the profit margin of games created by studios. 30% is a huge cut for a virtual storefront. A single medium studios usually employ more people than steam as a whole.

Quarter machines and Pokémon cards are gambling, too. Parents are shitty. Their kids shouldn’t even be on steam until older and then why do they have credit cards? Parents are crap.

Allowing and Promoting child gambling for example.

They are still way better than the other megacorps but they also have some skelletons in their closet.

The Conspiracy

He also has the financial means to solve a lot of serious problems in the world that could save many lives.

But, you know, why spend that money on humanitarian causes when you can just buy a 6th environment-killing superyacht, because the first 5 weren't enough?

There is no such thing as a good billionaire. Gabe Newell is no exception, even if he's less overtly evil than others.

So because he's nice now we give him the benefit of the doubt? You guys will cry no good billionaires but kiss his ass because you like his platform?

The epitome of give me convenience or give me death

That last one is getting a large salt pit…

My dude. At over 4% market share companies are incentivised to buy out competition and become monopolies because it's more profitable.

No one would be able to scale to serve global demand in any way, shape, or form

Yes. Perfect. Because any and all global companies so far are evil and anti-consumer. Disagree? Name 3.

The problem isn’t market share, it’s enforced market share. Anti-competitive practices. Lobbying. Buying out competition

So yeah, I'm glad we agree, that any company at 4% market share must be stopped from growing, because otherwise all of that happens.