9point6
@9point6@lemmy.world
- Comment on Tech Companies Apparently Do Not Understand Why We Dislike AI 3 weeks ago:
Potentially related: velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-b…
- Comment on Epic reduce their cut to 0% for the first $1 million in revenue for devs on the Epic Games Store 3 weeks ago:
Surely the sales are an equivalent there? Both ultimately mean the total price goes down and the store’s cut goes down accordingly.
Don’t get me wrong, they’re definitely profiting these days. $11bn is a massive amount of revenue* for a company with the number of staff they do. But Steam are going to have disproportionately high datacenter costs compared to most other companies. As a rough comparison: Watching an hour of netflix at HD quality is about 1GB of transfer or so, Call of Duty is something like a quarter of a terabyte. Someone who downloads call of duty once would have to watch 250h of netflix to cost them the same.
Then remember they’re likely paying their staff very well, I would not be surprised at all if well over half of their revenue just goes to operational costs before any reinvestment.
*Checked the figure was revenue and not profit.
- Comment on Epic reduce their cut to 0% for the first $1 million in revenue for devs on the Epic Games Store 3 weeks ago:
I’d argue it makes more sense for digital distribution, once the sale has been made in a physical store, there’s no ongoing cost for them.
A digital storefront has the ongoing cost of downloads and updates, as well as the distributed storage costs (Steam many copies of games all over the world to mean downloads are quick)
Data transfer costs back in the mid 00s mean that every install of a game like HL2 cost them a dollar or two. If a user ever uninstalled and reinstalled more than a couple of times (a lot more common back then with the limited storage everyone had), couple that with ongoing update transfer costs and most of the profit from a full price sale could be gone. If they never made any profit from the sales, Steam never makes it past its awkward years.
Data transfer is definitely cheaper these days, but then games are bigger and they probably spend a lot more on datacenter space than back in the day
- Comment on Epic reduce their cut to 0% for the first $1 million in revenue for devs on the Epic Games Store 3 weeks ago:
30% has been industry standard across any digital storefront until Epic found out they couldn’t beat steam by just paying for exclusivity deals. Then they decided to go down this race to the bottom strategy.
Steam is good because of that 30%.
Firstly, data transfer and storage isn’t free and is an ongoing cost for Steam even after purchase. How many times can you think that you installed a game, then deleted it and ultimately downloaded it again—Steam doesn’t get any more money, but that costs them. They could have done all the limited number of downloads or transfer speed limiting shit that used to be more common.
The profit they make on top goes straight back into Valve. They are a private company without shareholders to please and pay dividends to. This has allowed them to keep reinvesting into Steam and making it the best experience for the consumer they can—they’ve been rewarded with a load of goodwill and market share following that. You can guarantee that we wouldn’t have proton or the steam deck without the money valve made from steam sales.
Epic doing this is just another attempt to try and tempt developers to choose their store and not list on Steam. They have no interest in actually improving their offering, their only strategy is to try and find ways to put Steam users at a disadvantage and hope that people go “well I guess I’ll go for it on epic if I have to”. They don’t have any problem getting companies to list their games on Epic, this is 100% about manipulating developers to not list on Steam.
GoG is the alternative to Steam, and offers something that benefits consumers to compete with Steam in DRM free games.
Friends don’t let friends reward Epic for anti-consumer business practices.
- Comment on Microsoft teases pay-to-patch plan for Windows Server 2025 4 weeks ago:
FWIW windows server already is priced by the amount of cores you’ll use. Not saying that isn’t a bit silly, but it’s existing fuckery at least.
- Comment on USB 2.0 is 25 years old today — the interface standard that changed the world 4 weeks ago:
Super old school Apple networking IIRC
- Comment on Shenmue beats Doom as the most influential game of all time in BAFTA poll 1 month ago:
Yeah 100%
This was a public poll after all so it smells a bit like fandom bandwagoning
- Comment on The Wipeout-like racer BallisticNG gets Steam Deck Verified 2 months ago:
Wait this game has been around for 7 years and I’m just now finding out about it?!
- Comment on Chinese researchers develop method to revive lithium batteries that significantly extends their lifespan 2 months ago:
This seems like it could be huge from an e-waste perspective, particularly regarding electric car batteries
- Comment on Direct3D to Vulkan translation layer DXVK v2.5.2 brings fixes for Alpha Protocol, The Sims 2, Borderlands 2 and more 5 months ago:
Kinda crazy that Linux can support some older Direct X games better than Windows these days
- Comment on Steam Winter Sale 2024 Has Begun! 5 months ago:
Colorado Santa brings the gift of games, your bank balance is the cookies and whisky
- Comment on Steam Winter Sale 2024 Has Begun! 5 months ago:
Yeah I thought I was having internet problems for a moment there
- Comment on Steam Replay for 2024 is live, includes Steam Deck specific stats 5 months ago:
Oh that explains mine then
Wasn’t sure how I clocked an average of nearly 4 sessions a day
- Comment on FINAL FANTASY VII REBIRTH comes to PC on January 23, 2025 - it's getting optimised for Steam Deck 5 months ago:
Finally! I think I need to put some annual leave in
- Comment on Epic Games update the Unreal Tournament website linking to the free downloads from OldUnreal 5 months ago:
I can hear the facing worlds music in my head
- Comment on Caption this 7 months ago:
Finally a Mac that’s good for gaming
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077 gets AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 with Frame Generation 8 months ago:
I forget where I read it but yes, future cyberpunk and Witcher titles will be built on unreal engine.
They’re not going to keep maintaining the engine if none of their future titles are using it, the engineering cost alone would be very high for no benefit.
- Comment on Cyberpunk 2077 gets AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 3 with Frame Generation 8 months ago:
Interesting they’re still adding stuff like this given they’ve already signalled they’re not adding any new content to the game and abandoning their engine for the next project.
I wonder if something has changed behind the scenes or if they’re just going above and beyond in maintenance support
- Comment on Amazon is bricking primary feature on $160 Echo device after 1 year 8 months ago:
Holy shit even Google doesn’t do this with their screens
- Comment on Final Fantasy faces no "existential risk" despite lower-than-hoped PS5 sales, says FF16 director 9 months ago:
Hey square, you can have a day one sale if you release ff7r2 for PC already
- Comment on Windows is Now Officially Supported on OLED Steam Deck 9 months ago:
Good to have the option, but probably only worth it if you play anti cheat infested games or subscribe to game pass.
- Comment on CD Project devs want to "call out" big problems like homelessness and the wealth gap in Cyberpunk 2077 sequel 10 months ago:
You’d be surprised how many people’s heads that goes over
- Comment on The Steam Summer Sale is due this week and promises "deep discounts", whatever that means 11 months ago:
…I mean it doesn’t even need to promise them; we almost expect it at this point
- Comment on Released my Renoise control scheme 1 year ago:
Well this was something I’d not even considered! Thanks! Gonna have some fun with this at the weekend
- Comment on With a Nintendo Switch 2 on the way, I hope Valve make a Steam Deck 2 1 year ago:
Honestly it’s gotta be something they’re considering after looking at sony branching out to PC and making some cash
I reckon it won’t be as abrupt as Sega, we’ll probably see them do a slow pivot,
- Comment on With a Nintendo Switch 2 on the way, I hope Valve make a Steam Deck 2 1 year ago:
I’m not a religious man, but this would clearly coincide with some kind of rapture
- Comment on With a Nintendo Switch 2 on the way, I hope Valve make a Steam Deck 2 1 year ago:
The key thing here is Nintendo now needs to compete with Valve
Valve don’t have to give a shit about Nintendo though as the steam deck is not essential to their main product
This is an interesting shift in the dynamic where Nintendo often are the ones that don’t need to compete with anyone
- Comment on With a Nintendo Switch 2 on the way, I hope Valve make a Steam Deck 2 1 year ago:
Steam deck 2: episode 2, duh
- Comment on Vanguard takes screenshots of your PC every time you play a game 1 year ago:
Every time you play a game that uses vanguard or every time you play any game?
Both are bad, but one is way worse
- Comment on A Solution To Web Browsing (in Qutebrowser) And Text Input Without Touchscreen Keyboard Or Mouse (piggybacking on Vim keybindings) 1 year ago:
I foresee people using this layout to set high scores on a typing wpm challenge