this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2025
1215 points (98.7% liked)
linuxmemes
22686 readers
1100 users here now
Hint: :q!
Sister communities:
Community rules (click to expand)
1. Follow the site-wide rules
- Instance-wide TOS: https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
- Lemmy code of conduct: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/code_of_conduct.html
2. Be civil
- Understand the difference between a joke and an insult.
- Do not harrass or attack users for any reason. This includes using blanket terms, like "every user of thing".
- Don't get baited into back-and-forth insults. We are not animals.
- Leave remarks of "peasantry" to the PCMR community. If you dislike an OS/service/application, attack the thing you dislike, not the individuals who use it. Some people may not have a choice.
- Bigotry will not be tolerated.
- These rules are somewhat loosened when the subject is a public figure. Still, do not attack their person or incite harrassment.
3. Post Linux-related content
- Including Unix and BSD.
- Non-Linux content is acceptable as long as it makes a reference to Linux. For example, the poorly made mockery of
sudoin Windows. - No porn. Even if you watch it on a Linux machine.
4. No recent reposts
- Everybody uses Arch btw, can't quit Vim, <loves/tolerates/hates> systemd, and wants to interject for a moment. You can stop now.
5. π¬π§ Language/ΡΠ·ΡΠΊ/Sprache
- This is primarily an English-speaking community. π¬π§π¦πΊπΊπΈ
- Comments written in other languages are allowed.
- The substance of a post should be comprehensible for people who only speak English.
- Titles and post bodies written in other languages will be allowed, but only as long as the above rule is observed. Β
Please report posts and comments that break these rules!
Important: never execute code or follow advice that you don't understand or can't verify, especially here. The word of the day is credibility. This is a meme community -- even the most helpful comments might just be shitposts that can damage your system. Be aware, be smart, don't remove France.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I have a mixed feeling about Gabe and Valve.
While I am insanely grateful for proton (even if it was strategically important for them, they didn't do it out of kindness of heart), some other stuff disturb me:
Sigh. Here we go again. I'll just copy one of my older comments about that attitude.
Steam is not a parasitic middle man, it is a collection of services that would have to be provisioned and operated by the developer otherwise. The 30% cut pays for:
If the revenue from the cut exceeds the operational costs: it's called profitability, not theft. The world doesn't run on good vibes.
Yeah you're of course right, they are not a charity and shouldn't have to provide their service for free.
I expressed myself too quickly (the rage!). What I meant is the this cut of 30% is fucking predatory, mafia or middle-age money lender style. You get one third of the rewards of my efforts just for delivering my product? And don't talk about promotion because this store is now stuffed with too many games for visibility.
You can argue "but this is it the standard rate of the industry". Well it is predatory everywhere else and I hate Google and Apple as much for it.
A cut of 10% would be more humane. Or whatever to reach a "normal" profitability. But now the discussion becomes complex because we don't have the concrete numbers.
What is sure, is that it is possible without pain to take way less than 30%. This is something EGS got right, even if I dislike them for many other things (Epic and Tim Sweeney).
Your words have lots of sentiments, but present no facts. I know that Wolfire and Sweeney are independently throwing a tantrum, and we all hate taxes, but I don't see public exposΓ©s showing game developers who went hungry because they couldn't afford the 70-30 split.
I'll also remind you that the EGS (12%) is barely profitable, and operated for years at a loss, only sustained by Fortnite (which used dark patterns to extract money from kids, in case you want to see something actually predatory).
I have read your link but they didn't say the EGS is at loss specifically because of the 12% cut nor that the Fortnite money is subsidizing the lower cut.
It could be that the EGS is at loss because creating a new store and client from scratch costs money ?
To be honest here, we don't have the numbers to say exactly how much margin Valve is making. But my guess is the following: if EGS estimated that with a 12% cut they could be profitable if they had enough customers, it makes me think that the cut of valve is way overinflated in regards to their costs.
And yes Fortnite is awfully predatory. But the topic is Valve and Steam there π
you have not read the comment you responded to.
and forgot or ignored that it often is not the dev who gets most of the money at all but publishers like ea and ubisoft. why should customers act in defense of those companies who actively try and make gaming worse for everyone?
an indie dev paying 30% is expensive but steam is really a premium platform for distributing games. it would be nice if it were cheaper but I donβt really understand the outrage here
In a free market, the cut should generally be optimized to gain as much money as possible. They have perhaps calculated that 30% is the correct point for that.
This is a pretty spicy take. Let's consider two possibilities:
Game devs choose to distribute independently, and sell their game for $20. They sell 100,000 copies and make $2 million in revenue, and keep the entire $2 million.
Game devs choose to distribute via Steam, promote it with a 50% off sale, it goes to the Steam front page, sells 500,000 copies at only $10 each, for a total $5 million in revenue. Steam takes $1.5 million and the devs take $3.5 million.
In scenario 2 the devs make 75% more than in scenario 1. Did Valve steal from the game devs?
Obviously Valve and the developer collaborated to steal money from the consumers who wouldn't have bought the game without the promotion.
to make sure: /s
I love Valve for a lot of things but I'll never forget that they spearheaded some of the most predatory microtransactions in the industry (loot boxes and battle passes) and were happy to help Bethesda try to sell mods until players raised a huge stink.
Canβt you just give your kids your steam password ? How would they notice ?
Yes you can workaround it. But this is still a society right they forbid you. And who can say that in 2100 they won't implement a cleanup job that lock all accounts that are over 100 years old ? π€ͺ
I'm not sure about that either - unless you really want your real name on a Steam account, you just change the password and the payment method and you should be fine, right?
You can't change the login username. That's about it. You can change the profile link, profile name, avatar and other cosmetics, and edit payment methods.
I didnβt knew about he claiming to be a libertarian. Rothbard must be turning over in his grave.
Here's the thing - Theoretically we shouldn't give a shit about his political leanings and we don't have to, because he and his company deliver a good service. I can privately think he's another asshole libertarian tech bro whose only guiding principle is "everyone should be able to do what I want, but only some people should have the money to do those things", but it doesn't change anything about Steam or Half-Life 3.
But this is a problem right ?
Because the libertarian view of the world DOES have an impact on Steam: they have so much inertia to fight against hate speech and extreme right, they do nothing against gambling, and so on. All under the pretense "free speech" which is so convenient.
IMO this is the view of the modern libertarian: all the money, none of the accountability.
It is a problem, you're right. We shouldn't have to rely on people with the motivation to do good. Capitalism is failing because without regulation, it motivates people to fuck each other over for an extra dime.
This is unenforceable under US Law
Well I am European π
don't you guys have better consumer protections?
Maybe, maybe not.
Frankly I don't even know if this clause can be enforced in Europa. I wanted to point out that we shouldn't rely on the customer protection laws of each country to address that: this clause shouldn't exist in the first place.
But to be frank, it most likely doesn't come from Valve and rather from the games company themselves.
Not to mention his insane Porsche collection, yeah he's just another billionaire
Valve ruined my favourite game (dota) by flooding the game with ridiculous cosmetics that even change particle effects with no way to disable any of this
There's nothing wrong with having money or expensive hobbies. It's not like he's collecting Senators or buying himself a seat in the Oval Office