Also note that nobody was saying this before Tim Swiney started trying to break into the marlet
Comment on Steam is adding support to show estimated FPS for your hardware before buying a game
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 23 hours agoBut but but the 30% cut is too high it’s not justified and the epic game store takes only 12%!!!!!!111
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
artyom@piefed.social 22 hours ago
Steam is a multi-billion dollar company and Gabe owns like 4 yachts. They can easily afford to lower their commission.
Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 23 hours ago
I agree. We need more kids being exposed to gambling. Steam earning money from ruining children is very important for those neat features. :3 Steam FTW. Amirite g*mers? <333
For real though. This is just long term business strategy. They are not your friend. They can do things things that are good and ghings that are very bad. Stop definding big corporation that doesn’t know or care about your existence. I can’t even discribe how sad it is to be a person that needs to get defensive about a corporation because their service is alright for the most part.
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 23 hours ago
We need more kids being exposed to gambling
I’m honestly tired of debating that point again and again. However, to summarize my stance on this: If parents are unable or unwilling to monitor what their child is playing or spending money on, that is not the problem of steam - or any platform for that matter. It’s also not EAs fault if a child is spending thousands of bucks in ultimate team. If my child stole my credit card and did that, I would refund the money immediately and get his account locked. It’s honestly tiring of hearing people demanding companies to “protect the children” when many parents do fuck all to protect or educate THEIR children.
I can’t even discribe how sad it is to be a person that needs to get defensive about a corporation because their service is alright for the most part.
Saying that a 30% cut is justified for everything steam offers isn’t “defending” steam, it’s just stating my opinion, but yeah whatever, you do you.
artyom@piefed.social 22 hours ago
It’s honestly tiring of hearing people demanding companies to “protect the children” when many parents do fuck all to protect or educate THEIR children.
That’s exactly why they need to do more… Children shouldn’t be forced to suffer because corporations exploit them and their shitty parents.
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 22 hours ago
Disagree. Not because I don’t want corporations to do something, but because the ways they’d need to implement are a net-negative overall.
There’s a huge discussion going on right now about age verification on OS level. That’s exactly the kind of shitty results we get when we have other entities being responsible for child safety than the parents. And that’s not a world I want to live in. I don’t want to have to upload my government ID to any service I want to use and live in a borderline surveillance state because parents aren’t able to pay attention to their children.
Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 hours ago
And I was talking about literal casinos running on steam and not the exploitative games in there. There’s absolutely no reason for steam virtual market (don’t remember the name) to exist (besides it making valve money) and they could crack down on casinos easily but again, that makes them money. Also steam popularised lootboxes and they have this dumb case + key psychological trick in cs to drive more purchases. As for the 30% cut, the indie devs already have it rough. Developing a game takes a lot of effort and time. Taking 30% cut while publishers take another cut on top makes it hard for indies to sustain themselves and so they often close down. Not to mention the insanity of steam actually lowering the cut for really big studios (the more you earn the lower the cut) to keep them on the platform when corporations will do just fine and the indies need the money the most.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
That is a separate and valid issue Steam needs to be called out on, yes.
Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
Like taking a massive cut because they have network effect to their advantage isn’t. I’m mocking them because they mock people pointing out issues with the platform without anything in this thread prompting them to do that.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Well, the closest they have to a decent competitor is GOG. Epic is only good for free games (and supports AI slop).
Cethin@lemmy.zip 23 hours ago
You can agree that this is great without being stupid. 12% would be great for developers. This is great for consumers. They’re different things. It’d be nice for Steam to take less of the developer’s money. I hope you can agree with that.
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 22 hours ago
I’ve had a long-winded discussion about that a few days ago. Yes, 12% would be great for devs, but guess what, 0% would be even better.
Steam takes care of the entire e-commerce and distribution side, which is very expensive. Just look up what publishers used to take back in the day for taking over game distribution, that was like 70%. Not exactly a time you want to go back to as indie dev.
If you think a 12% cut would be viable, idk. However, epic just recently laid off 1000 people so idk how financially successful that company currently is.
artyom@piefed.social 22 hours ago
Laying off employees is not a sign of being unsuccessful. In fact, in many cases it’s the opposite. Also Epic as a storefront is horrific, and Tim is a cunt, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that very few people actually buy from them.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 20 hours ago
Yes, 0% would be better. What’s your point? Valve is charging 30%. That’s worse than 12%, correct? It’s better. Why do people like you always have to defend what a company does all the time?
No one is saying we want to go back to that. Them being better than that does not make them good. Hitler killed a smaller percentage of the population than Genghis Khan, but that doesn’t make Hitler not evil, right?
They make an incredible amount of money. Their employees are extremely generously rewarded. This means the 30% is well over what is required. I can’t give a number of what they need, and neither can you. Notably, the Epic layoff was for Fortnite, because of a reduction in players, not the Epic store team. It has nothing to do with distribution or engine development. Even still, Fortnite was profitable. It was just less profitable.
Why do we have to defend every action Valve takes? Why can’t we criticize them? Why does anyone still have loyalty to any corporation in the modern day? That was a fairy tale that I thought people here were over.
I’m a Linux gamer. I appreciate what they’ve done. I’ve been on Steam for I don’t even know how long at this point. That sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m not going to point out what they do that’s wrong. If anything, it should be the opposite. I don’t want them to become bad, so I need to call out when they’re doing the wrong thing.
realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip 7 hours ago
I’m not defending them. I’m saying that a service has to be financially successful, something that many people on lemmy seemingly forgot after reading too much Marx. Are they making more than they need? Absolutely. But the value they are providing is just worth a great deal to devs and I just don’t think that giving up 30% of your sales is a bad deal for handling the entire distribution. I’ve worked in E-Commerce for over 10 years now and 30% is like the standard fee for this kind of stuff - in many industries, the fees are way higher.
So, COULD they charge less? Very likely. But I don’t really see why. The service they provide is just worth that much. I think it’s a fantasy that companies can suddenly start to charge less just because they already have a lot of money.
Afaik, theyl aid off people across the entire company. The reason was a reduction in fortnite money, but the layoffs were even across the UE development teams.
You can. I just don’t agree with that criticism. Valve does shitty things at times. The fact that they are really opaque when it comes to algorithms and support decisions is shit, the price parity rule, while being standard in the industry, is shit and the lack of control for early access games is pretty shit - we can criticize all that and more.
And yes, you can also criticize the 30% cut. That’s your right. However, I’m just not agreeing with that stance. That isn’t defending a company, even tho you’re trying to frame it as such. That’s just me having a different opinion. And you trying to frame disagreement as “being loyal to a company” is a great way to completely stifle a discussion. Why even argue at that point, just insult me and move on lmao.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
Because it’s pretty fucking obvious that the 12% cut was just Tim Swiney trying to grab market share for EGS without actually putting in the work to develop it.
Remember how it took over 2 years for them to add a cart? Remember how they just laid off 1000 employees? Using Fortnite money to pay for exclusive deals and game givaways instead of actually developing the store hasn’t turned out profitable.
Also, ever notice how nobody was complaining about Steam’s cut before that? And let’s not forget that Steam Greenlight and subsequent opening up of allowing nearly any game onto their platform is what made the indie market more than an extremely small niche. Or the fact that much of the 30% cut is getting reinvested into Linux and FOSS to keep PC gaming an open ecosystem, which benefits everyone, including indie studioa
MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 16 hours ago
As long as Steam can give at least 25.8 percent more sales than Epic, it’s a better deal for developers as well.
(math: (1-0.12)/(1-0.30)=1.2571=1+25.71%)
Cethin@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Only if we assume a sale not made on Steam is a sale lost. If Steam didn’t get the sale and the purchase was made somewhere with a higher return instead, the dev would make more from the sale. Odds are, if Valve didn’t have almost full market control, people would still buy games, they’d just buy them somewhere else.
Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 hours ago
By that logic valve would be justified with even 95% cut if network efect was even stronger. That’s stupid logic that only thinks in terms of working with what you have. Valve already takes a cut and not a hard value. It’s in their very business to increase sales and they shouldn’t be additionally rewarded for such because by increased sales they already get the money.
MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
Fair enough - I was thinking in terms of choice rather than justification. A better question, then, would be: what is a fair percentage given Steam’s services both developer-side and player-side (more satisfied players are also a perk for developers)?
doublah@sopuli.xyz 17 hours ago
Ultimately the EGS has shown 12% is not profitable, a lower cut would be nice for smaller devs but I don’t see why Valve would when every other platform of Steam’s size also takes 30%.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
Citation needed. They’re still operating, while paying games for exclusivity, and giving away games for free (at their own cost). Sure, a lot of this is likely funded by Fortnite, but to say it isn’t profitable when they’re giving away this much money is a big claim. Also, Valve would be significantly more profitable at the same rate, because they have almost total market capture. Even if Epic isn’t profitable (I’ve seen no evidence of this) we can’t extrapolate to say Vlave wouldn’t be.
mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works 6 hours ago
If it needs to be subsidized by Fortnite then it’s by definition not profitable