Valve already did the evil part, they were just so early to the game (pun intended) no one knew how to react or what it meant. They somehow avoided mass criticism, or I wasn't paying good enough attention.
I question a 30% developer fee for using Steam. Loot boxes in CS and TF2 to get and keep kids gambling. Destroying nearly every mod and skin community. I don't think I'm willing to sweep all that under the rug because they made it easier to open a steam deck.
I like Valve believe it or not, but I question a lot of these decisions.
While I won't argue loot boxes, and I dont know enough about mod/skin communities...
The 30% developer fee makes a lot more sense if you consider that steam is much more than a game store. They host forums, guides, achievements, cloud saves, multiple versions of the game at once with beta channel access, screenshots, remote play, extras like Proton support, a friends list that will show you when other people are playing a game (advertising). And the store page has all sorts of stuff like ratings, reviews... a shopping cart and ability to purchase more than 1 game at a time (didn't know that was a feature, but apparently it is). And top of all that, it's just frankly where PC gamers are, so theres a ton of built in marketing.
Not every game benefits from all these things. But it's hardly just a storefront. I would question Gamestop taking a 30% cut. I would question if EGS wanted the same 30% cut as valve gets. Gamers prefer Steam over EGS, and the reason they prefer it isn't just because "it's a nicer store front." It's a whole platform thing.
Technically no-one is being forced but network effects mean that not publishing on steam is essentially suicide for any dev without a huge marketing budget to overcome those network effects. This means that Steam is in a position where they can demand feeds in excess of what they could in a healthy competitive market.
Is there anything preventing a healthy competetive market for game stores on PC? Does Steam/Valve engage in behaviour that limits competition? Alternatives do exist - itch.io, GOG, Epic Game Store, and just putting an .exe file on your website.
If the market is not being artificially suppressed (I don't believe it is), and developer still think it's financially advantageous to pay Steam's fees, doesn't that indicate the fee is "correct"?
Another way to word that, is that the benefit that Steam provides through their distribution/passive marketing service is so large that it justifies the 30% price tag. If it did not, then developers would go find another service. It's basic economics.
Here is where I come in and recommend everyone check out Playnite: https://playnite.link/
When I care about supporting a developer or publisher and they offer their product on their own storefront DRM-free, I will often go there to buy. Or I buy from GoG which takes a smaller cut. Playnite lets me launch my Steam and non-Steam games in a seamless fashion. Steam still does a great job as a game installer/patch manager, and helps me discover new games. But I'm not locked into paying them a 30% fee, which is pretty brutal for some smaller publishers.
Literally people will look down on you if you don't buy an iPhone.
They back off when they find out my line of work, but you hear about bullying and peer pressure in school over bubbles. That does not end when you leave high school.
One VC said that people that buy Android don't have taste and wouldn't work with them. Now they say Android is for poor people. Freedom to sideload or install a custom os be damned.
It's not a high school thing, it's just amplified during that point in life; there is always pressure to conform.
I don't care about whether or not some VC thinks I have class either professionally or personally. Avoid people that jump to conclusions and you'll be better off, regardless of how fancy their personal titles are.
Apple knows this and has curated it. Why do people think that they had specific bubble colours for messaging devices inside/outside Apple ecosystem.
They even did deep, dirty tricks like this: https://uxdesign.cc/how-apple-makes-you-think-green-bubbles-.... Not only that but Apple just love to lean heavily on their own custom functionality rather than coming up with open/reusable technologies. Apple are happy to use Wifi & Bluetooth standards to compete in the market, but not so much standards for chats/group chats (where Android users find things don't mesh as well/they don't have the same functionality as iOS users).
I can't for the life of me find it now, but I remember reading an article a while back on how Google found a way to trick iPhones into accepting Android messages as "blue bubble"/iOS messages by dumping some string onto the end or something. I'm sure it was a HN post but I can't find it, which sucks cause it was pretty funny reading.
What’s your line of work that you need an Android phone?
I find dealing with Android users from iMessage tiring but everyone I know who uses Android also uses WhatsApp and that works just fine cross platform.
according to polygon gamestop's margin on new games was around 25%. So that's not massively different and steam absolutely provides more value for the developer than gamestop.
I don't really get the GS comparisons. GS was from a different time where your options for distribution on console was selling in brick and mortar stores or barely selling at all. they 100% can't justify 25% in 2023 as digital purchases supercede physical, but that's not when these rates were negotiated upon.
Other features steam develops for you with that 30% cut: Multiplayer friends list apis, cloud save apis and space, wide open VR apis (that get turned into Unreal Engine apis, game streaming, voice chat (though it's terrible by today's standards), workshop (modding and UGC) apis storage and management, Free keys to give out on other platforms which actually decreases that 30% cut depending on how much you use that functionality, built in "markets" for in game items, steam remote play apis and functionality, remote play together api (streaming gamepad stuff over networks without needing any crazy configuration or special programs), the new input system which is just incredible and can basically eliminate any work an individual game developer has to do to support powerful input tools and accessibility, free selling games on linux with very little dev work needed to support it and way less demanding bugs from linux users, built in customizable (but purposely bad) DRM if you only care for a minimal implementation, etc
"Steam" is not just a game store. It's like if walmart built an entire industry around maintaining, supporting, and extending anything you sold through them. 30% is a lot, but Valve is the only company out of basically the entire retail industry actually providing value to sellers and buyers alike, rather than just a storefront.
The CS:GO child gambling problem is HUGE though, and unconscionable. I don't know how Gabe feels about that, but I don't care. It should be exceptionally illegal to give a child access to a "gambling like" game that ever touches real money.
They also host the game download and all its updates allowing buyers to (re)download whenever they want.
30% is the standard retail cut if I’m right. So if you sell your game at Walmart, they take 30% too.
Edit: There is actually a way to bypass Steam’s cut - provide by Valve strangely enough - if I’m right. As developer you can mint as many API keys for your games as you like and sell those through other means. Your customers will still download and play through Steam but Steam gets nothing - i.e. you use their infrastructure for free; of course they would get their cut from copies sold via their store.
yea, I don't get how people complain about Valve. Google, Apple, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft all take roughly the same.
The difference is people actually like using Steam. They actually want to be locked in. I'd rather by a game on Steam vs Gog. Consider that. DRM free, but people prefer the lock-in. That's because Valve is nailing it.
Imagine people saying the same about Microsoft, Epic, EA etc.. Nope.
Many games on Steam are DRM free. You have to download the game through Steam... but from Gog you have to download the games from Gog too. One uses their app as a gatekeeper and the other uses a website. KSP is an example just off the top of my head where you can download the game, delete steam and keep playing. Not all games implement Steam DRM.
But also yes. Steam has made the gaming on linux process so much easier. Using steam is the easiest way to game now and I definitely prefer all my games to be there.
They all do. You can argue it's too high but the issue is that they all own those platforms and the hardware you develop on (except Google). Valve, not so much.
>The difference is people actually like using Steam. They actually want to be locked in.
yup, and that's where the danger starts. People like being locked into Apple as well. the consoles all conditioned people to being locked in. I understand it, but don't think it's a good thing.
Microsoft does technically have a lock in with PC, but they have enough historical lawsuits on those issues that they are lax on what is hosted on Windows. The reckoning for Apple/Google is definately coming, though.
No. Valve was never against legit developers using their infrastructure for games sold elsewhere even if Valve dont get any cut. If you have game that sold 1000 copies on Steam you can still generate 10,000 keys for selling elsewhere.
What they clamped down on was developers who built $0.01 game for trading cards farming. Now Valve just have some fair usage rules so developer of game that sold 10 copies on Steam can't request 1,000,000 keys for it.
Disclosure: I am indie game studio co-fouder so Steam keys is something we deal with.
Note that this was after Valve was taken to court and was ordered to pay fines for violating consumer protection laws by not offering refunds.
> Valve must pay a fine of AU$3 million (about £1.6m/US$2.3m/€1.8m) for misleading Steam users in Australia by stating they were not entitled to refunds for faulty games on Steam
The only thing I get mad at Steam about is that the client updates (baseless accusation incoming) WAY too often and/or desperately needs to have some sort of incremental update system. I am, however, not a game developer. But as a consumer it's been very good.
> That, and Steam hasn't really burned many folks, ever.
I think like many new things it got off to a rocky start in 2003 and 2004 (especially with the launch of Half-Life 2). I only started using Steam on 2007 I think and I've never had an issue.
One major plus with Steam is buying a single copy of certain games and having a friend join instantly via remote play.
Also nice to be able to buy some new games and run them on an old laptop, can't do that on my xbox 360 anymore. My library all runs on my latest computer too. At least xbox makes a fair amount of the catalog backwards compatible, it's not a thing on Playstation.
edit: plus I can give friends access to my entire library, providing I'm not using it at the time.
Another fun thing about steam: There's no setting for the game developer to enable/disable the networking, so if a steam game uses steamworks and doesn't have multiplayer through steam, it can just be modded in and works great.
This is fair, but it's an oddly mixed bag on Playstation for legacy reasons.
Free-to-play games can be played online without a subscription, but paid games require a subscription - I imagine as a holdover from pre-Fortnite days and cross-platform play.
I'm a subscriber for the game catalogue and only really play online multiplayers that are F2P anyway, but yeah it doesn't seem at all justifiable. It's a strange decision too - I can't imagine the subset of people who are NOT subscribers for the monthly games and/or catalogue AND are playing games online that are NOT f2p is big enough to be a significant impact to their bottom line. If anything it would be a deterrent from choosing the platform.
Gamestop has a single interaction with the sales process. Once I've bought my game, unless I want to return it, I never have to think about gamestop again. So while the "get the game to the store" costs more, the act of swapping money in exchange for the game is basically 0 work. Gamestop has logistics to deal with as their primary service.
Valve has a perpetual obligation. I might buy the game and then never even download it. Or I might download the game. delete it. download the game again next week. delete it ... etc... And take 1000 screenshots that I want them to host, and upload mods for a game that they have to host and people may download. And this may happen forever (or at least until Valve ceases to be a company).
Fable III isn't even available in the Steam store anymore... but they have a repo hosting the game files. And they still take updates (the package was last updated in july 2023, even though its been off the store for years). According to SteamDB there are 14 people playing it right now. Steam has been supporting a game that they haven't even sold in the past 8 years.
I'm willing to bet that if I ask gamestop for anything regarding support for a game from 8 years ago they'd just laugh at me.
tl;dr - physical distribution has cut and dry limited obligations, but steam has to deal with stuff forever.
>the act of swapping money in exchange for the game is basically 0 work.
you're still treating this as a software service. Remember that for a physical store:
1. you need to maintain the store. you can't have dirt bugs and grime everywhere
2. you need insurance to deal with various inevitable factors. theft, crime within store grounds, destruction of property, etc.
3. buildings break down faster than servers. you need to upkeep that.
4. security. Need to monitor the store in and outside of business hours.
5. yes, support. They manage memberships, pre-orders, process returns in or out of warranty/return period, check inventory for if older used games are around, and can route you to other locations for such product.
Its only cut and dry if you never think what is needed to maintain the norm for you.
That’s not a downside for Steam, and probably totally negates any distribution cost.
Imagine if you had to go to Gamestop every time you launched a game. They would kill for that opportunity. Steam has a captive audience who goes to their store every day.
That's fair. and there are plenty of stories of game devs that do moderate their forums being incredibly toxic themselves.
But point being, Steam is a whole platform. When THPS 1+2's "Upload a custom skate park" broke, I just hit shift+tab and clicked discussions, and bam. theres discussions about it being broken for other people. and I didn't even have to launch the game, I could just go to discussions from the game on steam to see when it was fixed. I didn't have to go googling for everything.
And the beauty of it, is that valve hasn't made all of it a walled garden. It's a nice garden, but they do a pretty good job of not keeping it completely locked down (which is the main reason why proton has been so successful).
So no, Steam won't moderate your forums for you, but they will host the forums and you don't have to have your own/none. But then again, that might be more of a benefit to the customers than to the devs who may not care.
Some example? I don't use Steam, nor play videogames nowadays but I played a lot the original Baldur's Gate back in the day, so I'm somehow curious about this (even simple pointers are appreciated)
Personally, I insta-bought Baldurs Gate 3 when it launched due to having played Baldurs Gate 1 & 2 + the video's of it showing the graphics looking ok.
I've not looked at them for ages as they were very toxic for a few weeks after launch, and I personally have no real desire to go looking again now. Maybe they've magically improved somehow, but I doubt it.
What do you mean, the game is objectively solid and is very much a continuation of the Boulders Gate series. It has flaws, but personally I think it's the best crpg i've played in years (and without nostalgia filters).
I see a thread of people talking about their experience of the game and how aspects of it made them feel. That's exactly what a forum is for, and a very legitimate way to engage with a piece of art.
Particularly for a game with strong sexual representationa and inclusion, it is legitimate to discuss aspects where the inclusion is still lacking. This may be useful for the Devs future plans, or it may change nothing but be useful for other prospective players to understand about the game.
You might not find the thread useful or engaging. I don't find the threads about compatibility with hardware I don't own useful or engaging. Not every thread is for every person.
>Not every game benefits from all these things. But it's hardly just a storefront.
yeah, that's my issue. but it's all or nothing because the only thing that really matters is presence. So you just suck it up or use another store (or distribute independently).
>Gamers prefer Steam over EGS, and the reason they prefer it isn't just because "it's a nicer store front." It's a whole platform thing.
It's really just network effects at the end of the day. We've seen enough instances in other places in tech where the de facto is shit and even actively ruining its product, but people stay.
Sad thing isn't how big it is, it's how hard it is to fail.
When they established a 30% fee they were on the cutting edge of digital stores and doing something very risky. So to make what they made work was great for small developers.
I would argue they still aren't evil (and Apple is, though I am a shareholder) because Steam, the Windows store and Epic can all live together on my PC as competing store / DRM. If a developer doesn't want to give up 30%, they have viable alternatives.
Hacker News has dozens if not hundreds of threads about people complaining about bandwidth costs on their static blog going viral and getting inundated with views. Some games taking up 100+ Gb and getting millions of downloads for week’s can’t be cheap.
This is a thread about steam charging a 30% cut and people asking about what costs they could possibly have?
If Steam didn’t take a cut then they would not be able to pay for bandwidth. And even a 100 mb indie game downloaded a million times is still a lot of bandwidth times that by tens of thousands of games and it’s more than just games, screenshots, saves, mods, forum posts, video trailers, patches, etc.
A one time sale of a 4 dollar game that could support 100 gb worth of mods with being able to delete, download, and reinstall dozens of times has ongoing costs.
Selling on your own website, yes, you should be able to cover sending your own exe 100gb or not with each sale.
Yep. Valve takes that cut and serves up your game (and its patches) on demand FOREVER. No need to fight for shelf space, or bicker with store management on product positioning or any other shit. When a gamer wants your game, they get it, and if they're looking for something that might be like your game, they'll find yours, too.
I also remember reading an article from way back when that said that brick and mortar revenue cuts were at _least_ twice what Steam was taking. Perhaps this memory is totally wrong... with today's Google I'll certainly never be able to find the source of the memory.
most indies don't (and usually shouldn't, unless mobile) target casual gamers, and they can't bet on "stumbling upon a random game" to sell.
That stuff isn't easy but fortunately Valve isn't the only one offering that, and pretty much every other storefront offers lower rates if that's important.
Sure, but when your game is selling in the double digits, that's not something you can bet on. Discoverability is a multiplier and if an indies' is very low, Valve doesn't help there. You gotta pay $100, so I need at least 14 people to "stumble" and buy my game just to pay that back. Then I need 140 people so I can get that $100 back.
If valve wants to earn those 3 dollars, they need to ensure my game can be discovered to begin with. "becsuse there's a lot of people on steam" doesn't cut it these days. That was valuable at one point but I'd say aroind 2014 or so it ceased to be so.
What on earth is this referring to? Steam doesn't inhibit moding at all. Heck, it has built in mod support that's used by games like Oxygen Not Included and Rimworld and it's huge ( https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/ ).
Steam also doesn't bat an eye at mods from outside of the client and there's no shortage of mod managers that work with steam - Vortex, CKAN, r2modman, etc...
I am with you on the loot boxes, not sure I agree on the rest. City skylines as an enormous modding community, on steam, for example.
I am OK with the 30%, because it's not a monopoly. You can use any other store, "sideload", whatever, without restrictions. I think, but I am not sure, that you could actually offer your game cheaper on other channels in parallel. But because people like the convenience of steam (which is probably one if not the best implementation of a software store) that many would pay the premium to have the game on steam.
Well, Source was the last Counter Strike game that allowed people to use custom skins. CS2 enforces sv_pure when playing on official servers, so you can't make up your own skin and use it. It sucks.
Using custom skins on official servers by modifying game files has always been forbidden since CS:GO. CS2 doesn't make it worse. Join a community server if you want to use your own skin you made up.
At one time[1] Valve even tried to ban community servers that offer custom models/skins. Though they doesn't seem to enforce it anymore.
It's worth pointing out that this is for cosmetics. The largescale lootbox outcries have been exclusively about gameplay advantages. Games that only provide cosmetics are usually praised for being fair. For example, Overwatch also has lootboxes - but for cosmetics only - and nobody gives a damn.
And then there's cards, which you earn for free, and can sell for a wallet balance in order to buy games.
> keep kids gambling
I don't believe this is their goal, even though they certainly aren't doing enough to prevent it.
Overwatch *had lootboxes. Now it has a BattlePass you buy, new heros are locked behind buying the BattlePass or grinding the first ~40 levels to get it for free, and also premium cosemtics in a FOMO-style "today's deals" daily rotation store. No lootboxes. I miss OW lootboxes. I'm not a gambler but the surprise/novelty was fun, and once I had most cosemtics I wanted I could also just collect them which was satisfying. I had >500 and double digits of every seasonal loot box at the end of OW1.
Actually they changed the unlock system, you have to win 10 games as the role the locked hero is in to unlock them now. At least that's what I had to do, might be cause I had OW1 since the early days and played a lot of it.
Blizzard had the worst luck. Their loot boxes were fair and most reasonable, but because they also looked so visually appealing, they were used in the thumbnail and header of every major article describing the horrors of loot boxes in general.
Las Vegas had the worst luck. Their casinos were fair and most reasonable, but because they also looked so visually appealing, they were used in the thumbnail and header of every major article describing the horrors of gambling in general.
Honestly I found it crazy that out of all the lootbox systems that existed, Overwatch got the brunt of the outrage. CS to this day has a much more predatory and in pretty much every way worse lootbox system than OW ever did. I don't think I spent a single cent on that game (other than the 40EUR or whatever it was to buy it) and I unlocked most of the things for my main champs through the natural lootbox drops.
It was such a neutral system and I literally never felt any type of FOMO or pressure to buy lootboxes, which can't be said for other games with similar systems.
Not true, the outcries are about the gambling aspect, be it cosmetic or not. When you can buy cosmetics directly (or convert real money to game money) the general consensus is that it’s fine, you know exactly what you get, with loot boxes you don’t (and they are always filled primarily with junk nobody wants to stack the odds against you)
Overwatch was more or less the worst possible implementation of cosmetic loot boxes and it’s great that they’re actually gone.
30% fee is fine? If you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days. That's how Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem were sold for many years.
Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam. They work for that 30% unlike smartphone ecosystems that offer a closed ecosystem and can lock competitors out of their platform.
>f you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days.
you're free to. I will offer Itch.io as a modern alternative: https://itch.io/
almost zero restrictions on games you can upload, and they let you set your own share, even down to 0% if you so please. I think the default is 10%, which seems reasonable.
>Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam
not really. they charge 30% because they can leverage their 90% market share on small devs. In fact, they already relented and offer a lower share if you sell more than like, 25m copies. That suggests that they do need to work to keep AAA stUDIOS from making their own stores (again).
It's all about market dynamics. And I bet many steam users just use it for network effects.
It's not even just loot boxes, but them letting people gamble with the items (which can be worth a lot of money!) on unregulated gambling sites that allow minors. It's insidious stuff.
There’s so many options for distributing PC games that the market clearly sees the 30% as fair. This is an ecosystem where you could sell a game on a website with a payment portal and nothing else…
Plenty of publishers do try ditching Steam for their own storefront. They always come back to steam. Ubisoft is currently doing this with the latest Assassin's Creed game, PC sales are Epic and UPlay store only.
I remember some pushback when the Steam store was launched, with people pointing out (rightfully) that with this you don't really own the games you buy
There is a tendency for people not to see evil where they don’t want to. Lego, for example, is responsible for producing a ridiculous amount of plastic every day. I am expecting to get downvoted just for mentioning it.
They do know what they are doing to the environment themselves, though, despite the public’s blind eye they are making at least some effort to research more biodegradable materials.
30% was more reasonable in 2005-2006 when steam was getting it's first third party games on the platform (and games were cheaper as well, a selling point for digital distribution at the time, which has no longer existed for many years due to greed) and when compute and bandwidth was massively more expensive than it is today. These days the cut should be closer to 5-10% at most.
> Destroying nearly every mod and skin community.
I miss those days so much. When I was a teenager there was always new maps and mods for hl1/hl2 to try out. Now modding in pretty much every game and it's community doesn't compare, most developers won't ever release tooling for their engines and will sue people who reverse engineer their games to make third party tooling. Even 'mod friendly' developers like paradox and bethesda don't like people making changes that affect core gameplay too much and will strip out functionality to prevent people from doing it because they would rather pump out shovelware DLCs to make money.
Valve lucked out by doing all the enshittification in the late 2000s/early 2010s when their reputation was at it's highest. If they had cultivated this same following today and then rug pulled in the way they did in the past they would have killed their business entirely. Imagine if CDPR/A ctiblizzard/EA announced they would never make a game again and would only sell third party games through GOG/Battlenet/Origin, their distribution platform. Their business would be gone in a matter of months.
> These days the cut should be closer to 5-10% at most.
It's interesting to see this randomly thrown out, I'm curious if there's any basis for this? Epic Games currently takes 12% and five years later they're still unable to turn a profit. That's for a store that wrote a brand new launcher that's worse than Steam's and they don't have nearly half the features Steam does.
I believe Humble takes 5% and they're also not doing that well.
5% would hardly even cover the CC fees. Not to mention refunds.
Yeah I think it was publicised a few years ago that Rockstar had a special deal for Grand Theft Auto V at least.
It may have been all developers get reduced fees at certain sales tiers but I don't remember the exact details.
Yeah, facts here. Valve is of course already evil AF. And braindead gamers jump on that Epic hate train and defend the Valve money making machine that steals 30% from devs just because they can. I do not think Epic is great either, owned partially by Tencent ... but at least their competition and lowering devs fees and going to court vs Apple and things like that benefit the actual devs in the end.
What does Valve actually make with all this money? That rake on billions for basically doing nothing and like since HL2 the amount of games they actually developed was very low. Alyx was a niche game for VR only. Maintaining and improving CS and calling it 2.0 is hardly anything considering what they could do. Dota 2 they just bought it. Steam machines failed and it was never that they actually sell hardware with a loss. So seriously where is all this money going?
I can only assume straight into Gabens and other high level execs pockets at Valve.
Don't you see the topic? They developed Steam Deck platform, with paying for FOSS developers and opensourcing/upstreaming. I haven't expected such a great thing done by a private game company.
Well that's all great and all and I like Proton but they only use it for their own game. Its totally tight to Steam and its not recommended to be used with non-Steam games. So this is THE OPPOSITE of doing it the nice way and good open source should be done.
The also did not start from scratch and just used Wine and build upon this and payed the guy who did DXVK ... its hardly eating up billions to come up with something like the Steam Deck and Proton. Steam OS is basically just Arch Linux now so its hardly anything revolutionary from scratch.
Do not get me wrong I like all these things but I stand by what I said. I fail to see where all the money is going. Take a SINGLE AAA game where Valve rakes in 30% of the profits for a few distribution servers and a few forum mods. They have invented a money printing machine and for like 20 years the have been printing money and there is nothing visible for anyone to actually see. They do not even make games. Other game devs do not have billions at their disposal and develop games with high budgets and at a 100x faster pace. I stand by what I said, the money goes straight into Gabens and other exec pockets, the have nothing to show for it. The Index is expensive AF its not that they made a loss with it. They make profits with everything they do, especially the Steam Deck.
Steam controller also failed but its not that they wasted billions on that failed product either. I never tried it, I think the idea was great but the layout was wrong, buttons should not be on the bottom.
You tell me where all the money is going. Like do you really think they spend even more the a tiny tiny fraction of that they made on paying open source devs and deving the Steam Deck? The already had their money printing machine loooooong b4 the Steam Deck was even an idea. WTF did they do with it?
> there is nothing visible for anyone to actually see
> You tell me where all the money is going
> Other game devs ... develop games ... at a 100x faster pace
> Steam controller
> The Index
Steam Controller gave us Steam Input, which works with:
- Steam Controllers
- Xbox 360 controllers
- Xbox One controllers
- Xbox One S controllers
- PS3 Controllers
- PS4 Controllers
- PS5 Controllers
- WiiU Pro Controllers
- Switch Joycons
- Switch Pro controllers
- A bevy of other third party controllers
All with shareable layouts, hosted by Valve.
The Index gave us Steam VR, which supports:
- Valve Index
- Oculus Rift
- Oculus Rift S
- HTC Vive
- HTC Vive Pro
- HTC Vive Cosmos
- Razer OSVR
- Pimax 4K, 5K, 5K Plus, 8K, and 8K Plus
- Dell Visor
- Samsung Odyssey and Odyssey+
- Acer AH101
- HP WMR
- Lenovo Explorer
- HP Reverb
- Varjo VR-1 and VR-2
Along with their support for OpenXR.
Not to mention Remote Play, and the variety of platforms they support with that. Or the hosting for cloud saves.
I'm not saying this costs billions, but I do think you're missing quite a bit of what Valve do when they launch something. There's quite a lot visible for people to actually see and use.
You are deeply ignorant of how much money and effort Valve are pumping into the FOSS Linux ecosystem. The names of their employees as well as their contractors can be found attached to submissions on a wide swath of projects. The project lead behind Proton was an employee of CodeWeavers, essentially the people who made Wine. A partnership! Insinuating that they're all take no give is just ridiculous.
The do increase shareholder value, just in exactly short-term. The problem with publicly traded companies is not as much wanting to increase the value, but how short is the time horizon, when most owners don't have any understanding of the bussiness other than just handful of numbers every quarter.
I was a teenaged boy when I first started playing Counter Strike. Maybe I’m a Luddite but the game is still fun; I feel like you don’t have to gamble or buy 48 cosmetic collectibles to enjoy it.
It's explicitly not aimed at children being rated M / mature and with obvious themes implying as much. Obviously children still play it, but there has to be some level of responsibility on the parents here.
Whether or not children play CS:GO/CS:2 is irrelevant. It is a game where 50% of the time you play as terrorists shooting law enforcement, it's very obviously not aimed at kids.
The only way for kids to gamble in CS at all is to either steal a credit card, which is obviously not Valve's fault, or for them to have a Steam gift card. If anything is to be done about the children, I think Valve should just 1) require a users to have a credit card on file in order to buy lootboxes, and 2) require re-entering the full credit card details if the user makes several purchases in a short period of time, in order to stop kids who, for example, memorized the CVV of a card already on file in Steam.
Keep in mind that uploading a government ID would have issues, seeing as in the US a driver's license is not universal, not to mention IDs all across the globe. Maybe there's an alternative form of ID that would work that I just can't think of, but anyways, I'm against needing to upload a government ID to access anything unless it's specifically for governmental purposes.
Ok but as a society we’ve settled on letting fully grown adults partake in some forms of gambling. Are we really equating loot boxes in a mature rated game to casinos that will empty your kids college fund in the span of 12 hours?
My point is that the "think of the children" angle is redundant and reductive. We simply don't need to go there to have a discussion on the pros and cons of lootboxes.
Gambling is very different from csgo cases and pokemon cards. One of the insidious aspects of gambling is that people can delude themselves that they can actually get rich from it
I'm aware and I'm not going to deal in absolutes because I'm sure there are a few people out there that do think they can make money from csgo skins but it's absolutely nothing compared to actual gambling.
I'm a former gambling addict, it is very very difficult for me to lose the amount of money I have lost at craps or blackjack playing magic the gathering.
I don't think we can classify all variable reward systems as gambling. Even competitive online chess with elo and matchmaking could be classified as gambling.
> Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three elements to be present: consideration (an amount wagered), risk (chance), and a prize.[1] The outcome of the wager is often immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette wheel, or a horse crossing the finish line, but longer time frames are also common, allowing wagers on the outcome of a future sports contest or even an entire sports season.
CS cases ticks all of the boxes. I'm really curious what your definition of gambling is.
Most children who had pokemon cards bought for them likely don't consider the act of buying and opening pokemon card packs to be life altering or ruining events. I also doubt the average person considers buying packs of pokemon cards gambling. So while it fits the literal definition, it's considered different colloquially.
This is very much unlike slot machines and blackjack which can and do take over people's lives.
For me, if there's some good way to gate kids from participating then gambling with loot boxes should be perfectly accepted. Not that it's good game design, but adults can vote with their attention/money
Gambling is literally anything where you pay money to have a chance to win something. That includes all these loot box things in literally any and all of its forms.
As someone who was once addicted to these games, they should absolutely be illegal. We really should not allow corporations to print money with drug dealer methods.
That definition is very reductive. Any competitive tournament with an entree fee is gambling?
Also, the reason I'm against banning such games is because when you look at all the things we find fun, you will be sad to see that a lot of them just boil down to variable reward. That variable reward aspect is what makes it fun.
You're right. Steam also charges an atrociously high % of revenue, and yet people bitch endlessly when they have to use Epic Games Store or other marketplaces EVEN THOUGH we espouse so much about game developers being constantly fucked by big companies.
I question a 30% developer fee for using Steam. Loot boxes in CS and TF2 to get and keep kids gambling. Destroying nearly every mod and skin community. I don't think I'm willing to sweep all that under the rug because they made it easier to open a steam deck.
I like Valve believe it or not, but I question a lot of these decisions.