This.
Valve doesn't release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It's great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren't trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that's the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
Invented the loot box y'all love so much. Tried to invent paid mods. Valve is still a Corpo and corpos gonna corpos
Honestly I'll defend TF2 loot boxes til I die. There are valid complaints as far as casual gamers go but as someone who played the game for thousands of hours the cosmetic system added a lot of longevity to the game. It was a fun ecosystem to engage with and compared to modern games where you spend $15-20 on a single cosmetic item it was an absolute bargain. If you got tired of an item you could trade it for something else too.
Idk maybe I just got indoctrinated but I have so many positive memories of that game and interacting with the cosmetic system. These days every game you play is shoving their store front in your face. Every cosmetic is $20 and if you don't buy it now it's lost forever. Don't want to spend money? Ok here's an "event" where you need to play the game 2 hours a day for a week to unlock some meh items and if you don't then fuck you those items are gone forever.
Sorry I'm ranting.
Agreed. It sounds weird saying, but I feel that Valve did these things right or at least fixed them quickly thereafter. I've never felt any sense of pay-to-win or being left out playing TF2. Quite the opposite. I'd get the new items quick enough, and if there was anything in there articular I'd want then there was a robust market willing to make it happen for cheaper than I thought. And "cheaper" referring to in-game items.
I actually agree that loot boxes aren't intrinsically bad.
I mean, I was buying Magic the Gathering cards before anybody got mad at making blind purchases. The entire field is called Gacha because it's modelled on analogue equivalents people don't mind at all.
But that's not what the community will tell you. Loot boxes are THE problem, if you ask this in a different context. Fundamentally predatory.
Unless you bring it up in this, and only this context. When Valve does it it's fine. Never mind that they had and actual gambling problem around their retradeable cosmetic loot box drops. Or that their implementation is indistinguishable from others. Or that they have a pattern of innovating in the monetization space not just with loot boxes but with battlepasses, cosmetics and other stuff people claim to not like when other people do it.
The shocker isn't the actual business practices, it's the realization that you can get so good at PR that you can't just get away with it, but have the exact same people that are out there asking for the government to intervene to stop those actively defend you against the mere suggestion that your business model is your actual business model.
Look, I was out there during the big loot box controversies that there were babies going out with thtat bathwater. I like me some Hearthstone and CCGs and other games that do those things. I like a bunch of free to play things. Got a TON of crap every time I even dared to float that online. UNLESS it comes up in a conversation about Valve. Then I get crap flung in the opposite direction.
I'm not saying you shouldn't like them, I'm saying that brief "maybe I'm indoctrinated" moment of realization should make you take a minute and reassess your relationships with brands and corporations. We are all subject to PR influence.
Don't TF2 loot boxes contain weapons that alter the gameplay?
Playing a touch of devils advocate here but, how are patreon only mods any different than what valve was trying to do? It seems if mod makers wanna get paid for their work they should be able to monetize it in via any avenue that fits their fans abilities.
Uh, paid mods were around in the 90s. Probably earlier but that's what I can testify to.
Invented but never abused. Remember who the abusers are. I don't mind loot boxes in TF2 or CS. I simply don't have to open them or buy them. There's no pay to win there. And with paid mods they said it clearly, they underestimated their audience and returned the money. You think Bethesda has done such a thing or Blizzard?
That 20-30% tax also gives developers access to Valve's massive infrastructure (content delivery ain't easy or cheap) and Steam's audience, and that's something that can't be replicated with exclusivity deals.
Oh, and they KNOW that, too. Valve's entire business model is making other people work for them. Their third party relations talks are less keynotes and more thinly veiled, very pleasant shakedowns.
Not corpos, though. Corpos have deals with all platforms, they're not concerned about positioning on Steam. Valve will go to them, and if they don't their marketing budget will carry them.
No, it's the indies who end up bending over backwards to fit Valve's marching orders. It was contentious for a while, during the awkward period when Steam was figuring out how to crowdsource store placement. Now that they've successfully done so they invest very little and get to tell indies what to spend their budgets on, which they do often and explicitly.
If I had to compare the relationship, it's closest to Youtube and content creators. Have you noticed how every Youtube video now has a little intro with highlights from later on? Like that.
Not services, they are offerning their status. That's different.
You don't go to Valve and get services any more than you do from Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft. Valve isn't looking for content, though. They have all the content. The entire firehose.
To be clear, I'm not saying Valve is worse. But it's at best about the same, and arguably harder to work with on anything but getting out of your way to let you publish. The one thing I begrudge them is taking the social media model of making others work for you for free into game publishing, which I do think is a bit iffy. Maybe I'm just old fashioned there.
Valve's entire business model is giving users what they want. People praise Gaben for a reason. When faced with piracy he didn't go and add Denuvo or something equally stupid. Instead he localized games and provided a better service to users than pirates did.
Trend these days with every company is to blame the customer. If it's Bethesda, then yeah you computer sucks you need to upgrade, optimizations be damned. If it's Epic, then it's exclusive deals with developers who later run to Steam in attempts to get some more money. Blizzard released Warcraft3 reforged in such a sorry state people couldn't play, but they made sure people couldn't use original WC3 game and had to buy reforged.
He literally made online authentication DRM mandatory for the biggest single player PC game of 2004 in an absolutely unprecedented move.
People were furious.
How has everyone forgotten how big of a ragefest it was to force everybody who bought HL2 in a box to connect to Steam? I swear that guy stumbled upon the One Ring or the spear of Longinus or some mass mind control device, because it's absolutely nuts how much people have memory holed all this stuff.
They did the work for global credit card transactions, tax, distribution, forums, cloud saves, multi-player support, anti-cheat, achievements, controller support, friends lists, unlimited game keys, workshop for mod support, add drm, voice chat, and more. All that for a 30% cut.
Yes, we've established they are a first party like any other. For the record, if you manage to get Microsoft/Activision, Sony, Nintendo, EA or Ubisoft to publish your game they'll also throw QA, marketing and localization into the mix.
The difference is you'll sign a specific deal and have a publisher at that point. Valve will tell you what they want you to do, then poof out into the distance and give you a link or at best an API to access all of those things at no extra cost to themselves. Their entire business model is for others (both devs and users) to work for them within their systems. Which is fine. I'm also less hostile to the gig economy than many around here, but even I am not gonna actively cheerlead for it.
I think you're missing the principle. They could still charge for it, they simply won't. Think of it this way, if it was EA in that situation would they give it away for free? Somehow I doubt it because EA does things for profit. This is a potential avenue for profit and which means not asking money for it would go against the goal of EA.
Is it though? The only reason other platforms take 15% is to try to break through valve's market. Once they make it (like Epic) you better trust they're going to take as much as they can.
Plus, it's apparently not easy to be generous, Apple and Google make far more money, where are they being generous? Gaben is a gem
(Google and apple also take 30% of transactions on their store). You get much more for you 30% to valve than 30 or 15% anywhere else.
Yup happened to me, I tried half life since it was free and absolutely loved it, yes and that's why I bought the complete pack (around 8 games iirc) for the 6€ (around 6.5$), and it was an absolute steal imo
Epic, Bethesda, Blizzard and others are not paying for those 30% to Valve. So what's their excuse? Bethesda resold Skyrim enough times to shame anyone. Blizzard remade Warcraft3 and we all know how that went. I for one am happy Valve did this. They gave an old game a new life for at least a short time by giving it for free to keep, added new multiplayer maps and added some servers. Let people have some fun at anniversary instead of being greedy.
Yeah, but it's still more profitable for indie game studios to put their game on steam, since they have a larger market to sell to, also valve doesn't just take the money and goes, they spend it to make really good products that aren't profitable and wouldn't be possible else like the steam deck and proton
People behave as if Valve is holding a gun to indie dev's head and forcing them to pay those 30%. Steam has so many users for a reason. It's not a monopoly on a whim. They offer a huge benefit to their users at no charge and as little annoyance as possible. People who don't want to sell on Steam, don't have to. Easy as that. Sure Valve charges a lot, but they use that money to create a really good quality service that will give them the ability to charge that much without having to resort to timed exclusives and other vile tactics.
Yeah, this is cool and all, but it's like Epic posting a game for free, which they do every week or so. People still complain about Epic being greedy or whatever though. I like the products Valve makes, but this isn't particularly amazing, just fairly nice to have.
Epic paid people for exclusivity in an attempt to force the customer to use its shitty platform. The free games are just bribes to try to get us to use it. And it's still not working very well for them.
Nobody would have complained (well ok, some would have, but few) if they just tried to make a better store than steam and get people to use it that way.
They could still do the free games as a bribe, to get people to check out the store, but the store would actually need to not be garbage. The exclusivity payments really rankled people though.
i love it when the epic games store flashbangs my eyeballs when i claim the free shit they give out. what an amazing marketing strategy
fr even though it's a very petty thing to complain about it just shows how little care they put into their platform
I bought one timed exclusive on Epic (Stranger of Paradise), it left the entire redundant download behind without moving it and devoured 220 GB of my SSD in the process, and I decided I never wanted to use the Epic store again.
I'd love to move to GOG, but then I'd have to go through Lutris, which is currently in the process of crashing constantly for reasons the devs don't fully understand, so RIP to that I guess.
They take nothing if you sell your game via keys on other sites like itch.io
The power of monopoly
Blizzard, Bethesda, Epic and many others don't pay those 30% to Valve. So what's their excuse for not giving free games?
Valve is also not holding a gun to developer's head and forcing them to pay those 30%. Valve takes that money and makes a great service that users want to use. That in turn gives them the right to charge that amount of money.
When you look at all the features from cloud saves, chat and voice communication, simple networking without having to mess with routers, Proton, family sharing, streaming, card collecting, trading, achievements, huge sales, anti-cheat, workshop, communities with forums and bug reporting tools, lax refund policy, etc. When other companies start offering same value instead of forcing your hand with exclusives, then we can talk about monopoly
If only Valve could learn to count to three they'd be the perfect game studio.
It was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on September 4, 2020.
That's what I'm talking about.
Adding a couple of maps to a 25 year old game isn't a remaster. Anyone here play Black Mesa? Now THAT's how you do a remaster.
That's a remake, not a remaster.
Yes, I suppose you are correct.
Blizzard, Bethesda, Epic, EA and many others have more money than Valve. So what's their excuse for not giving free games? Hell EA earned on micro-transactions for FIFA more than GDP of some countries.
Activision Blizzard annual net income for 2022 was $1.513B
In fiscal year 2022, EA posted GAAP net revenue of approximately $7 billion
Epic Games revenue is $5.76 billion according to figures reported in 2021
Valve generated around USD13 billion in total revenue in 2022
Also,
So what’s their excuse for not giving free games?
Did you really ask this after including Epic?
But these comparisons are ridiculous anyway. Neither of these companies are your friends, and trying to understand their behavior in terms of anything other than profit-seeking is only going to lead to you feeling betrayed. Gamers' obsession with defending Steam is so ridiculous that no one ever disputes the idea that Apple and Google are being abusive with their store policies, but calling out Steam for doing the exact same always brings dozens of people out of the woods who think it's a controversial claim.
You're aware that Revenue and Net Revenue is not the same right?
Epic did give free games, though not their own. But in general you are right, none of these are our friends and they are there to do business. The question is from which service do we the users benefit the most and that's why I think including Epic was very important, even though contradictory in context of giving games. None of them tried to compete with Valve by providing a quality of service, instead they forced exclusives, tried public shaming, etc. I'd happily switch to Epic if they provide a better service but they won't and we know for sure the moment they gain traction that percentage they laughed at Valve they are going to start taking as well.
Honest to god I don't remember the last valve game I bought. CSGO 10+ years ago probably.
Since CS2 came out a ton of new people have started playing and a bunch of old school players came back. I am one of them and easily spent $60 on buying skins. Valve understands how to get people to love their games and spend money on something that is free.
Not even close. They get a 30% cut of ALL SALES ON STEAM.
Very few game companies actually make a lot of money from cosmetics and ingame items. Most don't.
It's also stupid to think companies should do things for free. That's not the world we live in. It's an exception
I just did a minimal amount of googling and this is absolutely not true. Micro transactions have outpaced full game sales by almost 3:1. The entire model of free to play games relies on microtransactions. The biggest games in the world right now are f2p games or paid games with f2p models. I dunno where you're getting your info from, ancedotally, I'm sure, and maybe you just don't play games like that... But the rest of the casual game player population absolutely does.
Very few game companies actually make a lot of money from cosmetics and ingame items. Most don't.
The companies doing these full price remasters 100% are the ones making millions from cosmetics.
That first point is not true at all. There are entire games built around the paid cosmetics. League of Legends and everyone who follows that model for example. There are more than a few, but you're right on the second point. I mean it's not nice to call people stupid, but I suppose that's not what we're discussing.
Dead space remake was great, wasnt it?
Best remake was AoE2 imo, the price is completely justified.
I know the documentary and the fact that game is free for now, but I am completelly out of the loop of what changed.
Did Valve upgraded graphics? Added new maps? I mean - for single player of original game? Someone please advise :)
they added a short bonus campaing for single player that was formaly on a demo disc that got lost to times. they added 4 new multiplayer maps they fixed graphic bugs and added widescreen support they dramatically improved controler support
so nothing game changing but nice nontheless
I can't even figure out what game you're all talking about.
There are fixes with the graphics, new maps and there are new multiplayer servers being active right now. They also fixed a lot of things to make the game work and feel good on new hardware with new aspect ratios etc.
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Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It's easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
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