[artyom]

It's the other way around.

Valve is the company where we spend a lot of money and they deserve it.

The rest is companies that trick people into giving them money (battlepass! lootboxes!) and they don't deserve it.

People often forget that consumers as a whole are the ones holding the power, and the sad part is that rewarding a company with a good product with your money stopped being the business model and it's now the exception.

[xingped]

I don't disagree with most of your statement, but Valve has and continues to make lots of money from loot boxes in both CS and TF2. Just want to point out that they do do stuff like that too.

[Spacemolte]

They also didn't/don't put a stop to the gambling sites, scams and non-scams, done with those lootboxes.

We have an epidemic of addiction to gambling in youth, where the arrow points at lootboxes as the gateway drug..

[mschuster91]

Valve is far from the first, only, or worst actors in this field. Skin lootboxes are not much more than a flex.

If there is one to blame for the gambling epidemic, look at EA and FIFA.

[account42]

Valve is not literally the first but they played a big part in normalizing both lootboxes and micro transactions. Don't rewrite history just because you are a fan.

Not to mention their role in you not owning your games.

[embedding-shape]

> Not to mention their role in you not owning your games.

I do use Steam to "purchase" games, and it irks me that they're still allowed to show "Buy" when in reality you're essentially leasing/renting the game, can't believe it's legal for them (and others) to trick people like this still.

[mschuster91]

A Steam purchase I have more confidence in than a physical game copy to survive. I trust Steam to honor its agreement with me more than I trust in myself and my feline overlords to keep a game CD alive.

In a previous timeline, this has led to me going on ebay to find CDs of a long lost game (EarthSiege 2), which I promptly uploaded to the Internet Archive as the one distributed by the current license-holder at the time had an older, unstable version with bugs and, more importantly, no audio and my own original copy got damaged to hell and beyond...

[1] https://archive.org/details/sierra-earth-siege-2

[jaapz]

What? Valve basically invented making money with skins and lootboxes, it started with TF2 hats. There is an insane amount of money in the CS2 skin market.

[artyom]

And I forgot to mention in-game currency.

I didn't say Valve is perfect. But they're definitely worth the money I spend there. Great service, proper support, regional pricing, and the list goes on. Everything works today. The work they've put on Proton/Linux gaming easily wins my support.

Did they screw up sometimes? Sure. And I'm from the days when Steam didn't exist. I remember the NoSTEAM game versions in shady sites, including Half-Life 2. Steam was hated with a passion back then. They won by ultimately providing great value and service.

[mikepurvis]

I had a rough time with Proton a few years ago and ended up setting up my most recent gaming rig as a Windows 11 machine. In retrospect it was probably unfair to judge it on dime-a-dozen Humble Bundle leftovers from a decade ago when most of the effort is spent on supporting new releases.

But yeah... just this week I was traveling for work and my kid reached out wanting to play a little Deep Rock Galactic with me. I couldn't believe how easy everything was from my Ubuntu 24.04 laptop. Steam, proton, Discord, all of it just worked and I wouldn't even have realised it wasn't running natively if I hadn't noticed the extra proton download in the Steam client.

Very nice work.

[cybercatgurrl]

honestly, older games from humble bundle usually work really really well in my experience. i’d say give the experience a go again if you have the time

[pjmlp]

> The work they've put on Proton/Linux gaming easily wins my support.

Lets not be naive here, this is the money they are saving in Windows licenses for the Steam Deck, and having their own store instead of Windows Store/XBox PC App.

Yet they are doing zero to foster native Linux games.

[wtetzner]

There isn't much they can do to foster native Linux support beyond trying to increase the number of people gaming on Linux. It's a chicken-and-egg problem, and you need to make the platform desirable to developers before they will start developing for it.

[pjmlp]

They can do an Apple/Sony/Google/Nintendo/Xbox move, "Want your game on Steam Deck? Support Linux".

They certainly have a better card deck than Loki Entertainment used to have.

[wtetzner]

This is the chicken-and-egg problem though. If you don't get the Linux/Steam Deck audience large enough first, then that tradeoff won't be worth it to developers.

[embedding-shape]

> Yet they are doing zero to foster native Linux games.

"zero" might be a bit harsh, considering that they do some things at least, compared to others who literally do nothing. Steam the platform has native Linux support, what games are natively available is visible on Store listings, and a bunch of the SDKs (all of them even maybe?) are available natively on Linux too. The situation could have been a lot worse.

[pjmlp]

It will get more worse, with Proton there is no value in e.g. using Vulkan, just use DirectX, and the convinience of modern GPU programming tooling in Visual Studio, HLSL code completion with CoPilot, PIX debugger, and then let Valve have to worry about running it on Linux.

[embedding-shape]

> with Proton there is no value in e.g. using Vulkan

Valve themselves seems to disagree with you here, considering they still have Linux native SDKs available for integration, and are releasing their own games with native Linux support.

I'm guessing if what you say is true, Valve would be the first to move towards that reality you paint, but we haven't seen that yet, I'm doubting we'll ever see that, but the ones who live will see I suppose :)

[pjc50]

I think there's a reasonable argument that the most stable Linux gaming API surface is actually Proton.

None of this is really going to change until we end up with a situation like the EA/Apple Store conflict: a major player unable to sell a game on Windows for some reason.

[ascagnel_]

Also, it's something of a pragmatic choice -- Valve did put major effort into native Linux games around 2013, but the effort fell flat for a number of reasons.

Proton is them trying a different path towards severing or lessening the Windows dependence, in my opinion.

[pjmlp]

That is like saying the most valuable gaming API is Dolphi, MAME, or LinUAE.

[pjc50]

Almost certainly more people playing 80s and 90s games through emulation than on original hardware, so .. yes?

[artyom]

Not naive at all. I'm pretty well aware of the monetary incentives and that they're focusing on their own use case.

But the improvement has been so great (and so downhill in Windows camp) that now Proton is the performance benchmark apparently...

[pjmlp]

Yes, and it has provided enough heat that Microsoft finally decided it was time for the netbook-like reaction, so lets see how long it holds.

[ninjaoxygen]

Totally agree with you there, as much as I love to hate non-transferability, revokable licenses, permanent VAC bans on accounts that got hacked, I still find Steam the most convenient path to "owning" games in one place.

The Linux work done for Steam Deck is fantastic and I do credit their efforts with inspiring others to work on similar projects that extend and complement what Valve achieved. Much of the hard effort did go into Windows games on Linux before Valve looked at it; everything the WINE project, Codeweavers did, gaming via Lutris since 2009, however Valve have definitely been a force multiplier.

Trust is earned and I think Valve are doing pretty well on that front, especially when you look at the differences to other PC stores, Ubisoft, EA, and to some extent Epic. GOG and Itch are very different beasts.

To some extent I miss the time where Steam was totally curated, you had to make an impact to get your game on the platform, back before it was a free-for-all of shovelware and low-effort slop. Occasional controversies aside, at least on Steam the tools / marketing funnel are there to keep the popular games at the forefront of the store whilst also being fairly open to allow devs to publish without being the chosen one.

Is there a danger of doing to games what Spotify has done to music? Maybe, but I reckon the super deep-discount sales have calmed somewhat and are happening later in game's long-tail part of the lifecycle or used as promo for sequels.

There are plenty of publishers that choose to mainly avoid going that route, often the traditional established publishers with console outlets they don't want to cannibalise, for example Sony and Konami.

[artyom]

> Is there a danger of doing to games what Spotify has done to music?

I think such business model ultimately doesn't scale well for games (several million-dollars production budgets sharing minuscule pieces of a ~$20 all-you-can-eat subscription pie).

Microsoft always knew this, they didn't try to win the market, they tried to subvert the business model, probably expecting the industry as a whole moving towards it -- which didn't happen at all, at least not yet.

Simple math would prove this. There's no way acquiring half the good studios in the world and make them release flop after flop was a break-even operation. It's several orders of magnitude behind.

[pjmlp]

Most of the market talks Nintendo, Sony, XBox, Apple Arcade, Android.

Exactly because they aquired half the good studios, they happen to be one of the biggest publishers, people forget some of those studios keep using their own branding instead of anything Microsoft, and it would hurt Steam if Microsoft decides all those studios would pull out of it.

[ascagnel_]

Microsoft moved to a subscription service because they botched the launch of the Xbox One, with users accumulating digital libraries on the PlayStation, and that failure is something that has continued to drag them further and further down.

[Pay08]

Which game of theirs has paid-for currency? I don't think you get more points with Dota Plus.

[firen777]

I feel like a lot of things Valve does, with the exception of loot boxes, are the bare minimum of what a good (not great) companies should do.

So of course every single company look at Valve and decide they should do the complete opposite of everything Valve does except loot boxes.

[alifeinbinary]

I agree that turning CS into a casino wasn’t a tasteful choice on Valve’s part but as someone who has played CS at least once a week for decades I can understand that they needed to find a way to cover server costs somehow. I paid $15 dollars for CS:GO and have clocked 4,500 hours in the game. I don’t gamble but I’d rather those who choose to fund the server costs than Valve charge a monthly subscription to everyone. Skin sales alone would have accomplished this without having to have loot boxes and keys and that’s where I think Valve went overboard with it. Also, for a game that provides so much revenue I expect better anti-cheat and more VAC bans, which are rare.

[account42]

They didn't need to cover server costs for CS 1.6. I wonder why that is? Hint: CS 1.6 wasn't designed from the ground up as a microtransaction vehicle so could have servers run by the community unlike CS:GO where centrally run servers are needed to make microtransactions work, not the other way around.

[bitfilped]

A company choosing to take a loss on a service is not the same as not needing to pay for it, it was getting paid for.

[stevehawk]

people are still buying tf2 loot boxes?

[xingped]

The lootboxes drop as a normal course of gameplay, you buy keys to open them. People still play TF2 so presumably some still open boxes. It's also the base unit of trading for high value items.

[akimbostrawman]

CS lootboxes are the least shitty ones in the entire industry. There is 0% pay to win, if anything the skins are a disadvantage because they usually stand out.

[xingped]

I didn't say that lootboxes were pay to win and most lootboxes in games are not. That doesn't mean it's not still profiting from and enabling gambling and addiction.

[nextlevelwizard]

Maybe hot take in this age, but loot boxes for cosmetics aren't a problem when you can get cosmetics by just playing.

[jakkos]

There's a lot of evidence showing that gambling as a child leads to gambling problems as an adult, and loot boxes are just gambling aimed to a large degree at children.

Valve games are even worse for this because Steam trading allows 3rd party sites to sell cosmetics directly for cash, and some of these cosmetics are worth tens of thousands of dollars. It's just children gambling money but with a thin veneer of video game over the top.

[xingped]

Almost every game that has lootboxes, even only for cosmetics, is super stingy with cosmetics you can earn in-game through normal gameplay.

[nextlevelwizard]

And I see no problem with that. I have never bought a single skin for Counter Strike nor Team Fortress 2 and I have bunch. Well, I used to, but then CS2 came out and all of a sudden my skins and unopened boxes were valued at hundreds of euros and I sold them on steam.

[xingped]

If you think enabling childhood gambling addictions and unregulated gambling systems aren't a problem then I don't know what else to say to you. Lootboxes are gambling, plain and simple.

[nextlevelwizard]

Let’s put age limit on gaming then.

Gamblers will always find a way to gamble. I like getting cosmetics for free even if they are randomized. I don’t think I have ever bought keys to loot boxes, I just don’t see the point.

[rplnt]

That's not the problem. Valve enabling people selling them for real money is.

[cwel]

..and Dota2..

[xingped]

Ah yeah, I forgot about Dota2, sorry. It's just a genre I don't pay any attention to, but you're right.

[blindspot4]

Americans would rather mention TF2, a game with less than 10 thousand concurrent players and probably making a modicum of money, than ever pretend that game exists or has influenced other games.

[maleldil]

Regardless of how many concurrent players it has now, TF2 was massively influential to other FPS games, and it's still held with high regard by the community. It was also one of the first major games to introduce loot boxes.

[DaSHacka]

TF2 has over 30,000 active players right now though..

https://steamdb.info/app/440/charts/

[transcriptase]

25,000 are bots farming drops

[GranPC]

What does that have to do with Americans specifically?

[andrepd]

> The rest is companies that trick people into giving them money (battlepass! lootboxes!) and they don't deserve it.

It's really funny to read this given that Valve largely invented loot boxes!

[unrealhoang]

Maybe not lootboxes but most certainly battlepass.

[Pay08]

Although not in its modern iteration.

[caminante]

And they've done legendary doublespeak while looking the other way!

[account42]

Valve uses battlepasses and lootboxes (i.e. gambling for minors) as much as the worst in the industry. They are far from a good corporation.

Gabe is just better at PR than the competition and gamers are irrationally tribal and will defend whatever they consider to be part of while ignoring all the bad parts.

[dvt]

I'd like to have an honest conversation about this, but imo Valve is no better than the iOS app store: it aggressively rent seeks and has essentially destroyed the shareware model (which was the best way to discover software in the 80s-90s). It has also willingly been complicit in underage gambling via loot boxes for more than a decade now.

I think Gabe Newell is a visionary for building Steam in 2003, way before Jobs had the same idea, but absolutely everyone and their mother hated Steam back then. I remember the memes on IRC and various forums (and I've been on Steam for a very[1] long time, the first or second day it came out I think). Two decades later, props to them and their useful acolytes for gaslighting the entire gaming community. No idea how Gaben is regarded as some sort of Christlike figure these days, but here we are.

Maybe it's just a "lesser of two evils" thing, as companies/platforms like EA and Ubisoft are the absolute scum of the earth.

[1] https://steamcommunity.com/id/dvxirl/

[throw10920]

> it aggressively rent seeks

I don't know about the rest of your claims ("shareware was the best way to discover software" is really a personal opinion), but this is just factually false.

Unlike iOS, where you cannot publish an app unless you pay the 30% cut, there is nothing that prevents you from developing and a Windows/MacOS/Linux game yourself. You can simply choose to not use Steam - but the benefits of developing and publishing with it (myriad SDKs, game servers, networking, social features, trading cards, anti-cheat, achievements, payment methods, reviews, discovery, forums, launchers, updates, CDN, and on and on and on...) are so overwhelming that it is simply worth it for the vast majority of gamedevs.

Fact: Steam is not rent-seeking - the value that they provide is tremendous, and you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

[fc417fc802]

> you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

That's not how it works. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. Plenty of businesses engage in rent seeking without having a captive (by most definitions) audience. All that's required is a very modest barrier (ex network effect, non-zero switching cost, etc) and a sufficiently large audience.

Rent seeking isn't even mutually exclusive with adding value. A business can do both simultaneously by virtue of being able to multitask. Most businesses offer more than a single product or service after all.

[throw10920]

So first off, you start out by lying about my words, so we immediately know you're not operating in good faith.

What I said:

> Steam is not rent-seeking - the value that they provide is tremendous, and you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

That's a compound statement that you cut off to change the substance of. What you quoted:

> you are not forced to use them, which makes them non-rent-seeking by definition.

And now that we've called out your lie, we can move on to the substance, which is also incorrect.

The definition of rent-seeking disagrees with everything that you've said:

"The attempt to profit by manipulating the economic or political environment, especially by the use of subsidies."

https://www.wordnik.com/words/rent%20seeking

Steam is doing none of that.

> Rent seeking isn't even mutually exclusive with adding value.

This is factually incorrect - both according to the dictionary definition of the phrase, and according to the way that it's used casually, which is extraction of value without creation of it.

I'm glad that this is happening in the open - when people have to actively lie to try to push a narrative about Steam, it really shows that they have no legitimate points - every thread where these lies are exposed just (justly) boosts Valve's reputation.

[fc417fc802]

You are not assuming good faith, nor are you interpreting what I wrote in the most plausible manner.

I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second. My objection stands regardless of the presence or absence of the claim about Steam providing value.

Notice that I took no position on whether or not Steam is rent seeking, instead merely disputing the reasoning that you expressed.

However even if I had taken a position to the contrary, I don't see how the definition you quoted would be at odds with that. I think it is fairly reasonably to see a dominant player with network effects as possessing sufficient economic power to meet the criteria you laid out. For that matter it's quite presumptuous on your part to assume that everyone else is on board with the particular definition that you selected there.

And it goes without saying that I disagree with your latter assertion of factual incorrectness. No dictionary disputes the ability of a business to multitask.

Actually interestingly enough if we use your definition then you can rent seek while simultaneously adding value to the same product just so long as you're also engaging in unreasonable market manipulation to increase your profit in the process. Amusingly my working definition had been somewhat more restrictive.

[throw10920]

> I did not misrepresent you. You made two claims and I objected to the second.

I made a single claim with two parts:

1. the value that they provide is tremendous

2. you are not forced to use them

And then my conclusion was: these make them non-rent-seeking by definition.

You intentionally rewrote my argument to change its meaning, you know that you are, and you're continuing to lie about it.

I don't need to argue with you further - I've pointed out that you're fundamentally dishonest to other readers, and that's all I need to do from here on.

[account42]

The real value Steam "provides" are the network effects. That's rent seeking.

[throw10920]

> The real value Steam "provides" are the network effects.

Actual people who play video games disagree with you. Don't speak about things you're ignorant of.

> That's rent seeking.

Factually incorrect. Steam provides services and convenience that developers and players find incredibly useful.

[taneq]

As someone who worked in game dev in 2008, we loved Steam, for the same reason we loved the iOS App Store. We take it for granted these days but the ability to self-publish on a first class platform and receive 70% of the sales revenue literally redefined the indie game dev industry.

Use of the term ‘rent seeking’ is, in my experience, often correlated with a sense of entitlement and a lack of appreciation for what is actually provided. It’s only rent seeking if no additional value is added which is clearly not the case here.

[dylan604]

I'm surprised you haven't been flagged or just a dead comment. Any signals that Apple is not pure evil for taking 30% is not part of the echo chamber group think around here. People never want to admit that it costs money to retail your product no matter where it is. In the physical world, there's manufacturing and delivery costs. Getting shelf space at a retailer takes a lot of negotiating where you have very very little room to bargain. Retailers will even force you to buy back unsold product. Yes, software doesn't have all of that but have their own nuances. A lot of indie game devs don't have time/skill/want to do a lot of what an app store can do. Expecting to get all of that for free because it is software is just not sane. If you are self-hosting all of it, it will not be free as you will be paying for payment processors and a hell of lot more in attracting eyeballs.

[wtetzner]

The problem with Apple is not the 30% cut, it's that you're not allowed to use other app stores or install apps without their store.

[jasonfarnon]

"has essentially destroyed the shareware model (which was the best way to discover software in the 80s-90s)"

funny, I was thinking the same thing with "shareware model" replaced by "warez model".

[Rohansi]

> imo Valve is no better than the iOS app store

You can't buy the top search result position on Steam. That alone sets them far apart for me.

[Pay08]

You can buy the rotating banner at the top.

[Rohansi]

You can't. Check the very bottom of this page: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/visibility

[scubadude]

You can sponsor a promotion; sales on a bunch of games - but it's not "Brought to you by the cool refreshing taste of Pepsi" it's like "Berlin Game Developers".

[Pay08]

I meant the carousel.

[drewwwwww]

you can’t, actually

[a96]

Steam is also cross-platform.

But sadly still essentially all-DRM.

[Rohansi]

Steam as DRM is basically the best case scenario. It is opt-in for developers, meaning there is no DRM at all for some games on Steam. You can download it, back it up, run it without Steam. The games that do use Steam's DRM are trivial to "crack" by replacing a DLL in game folder with a stub (you can find open source ones on GitHub). If Steam had no DRM I think publishers would lean more on other options which are worse for customers.

[chocochunks]

Shareware died before Steam. Steam launched in 2003 and didn't sell any 3rd party games until 2005. Nobody gave a shit about shareware in 2003. Nobody gave a shit about shareware in 2010 when Steam seriously became useful as a place to play more than the Orange Box and Counter-Strike.

I hated Steam when I first encountered it, but it's not a requirement to publish a game on PC/Mac/Linux. Nor is the process to install non-Steam games full of scary warnings like Google Play even on their own platform SteamOS. And they do let publishers give keys to 3rd party stores to sell unlike virtually every other platform. They aren't perfect but they are nowhere near what Apple does with iOS.

[vitaflo]

If you think they aggressively rent seek then you do not know the history of game publishing.

[invalidSyntax]

"destroyed the shareware model". You know that they only sell games, and just have the games that they made in the list too(them just being amazing and popular). It's not some easy task as recovering old systems when there are every type of games imaginable. Even if valve made a option to do that, no one will since other companies don't do anything like that.

[Iron_Ninja5]

> has essentially destroyed the shareware model

Wouldn't the Steam digital demo system be the modern evolution of the shareware model? For free you can access a limited portion of the game to try it and consider eventually buying it.

[eudamoniac]

Steam is just a storefront. They hold no monopoly position or power. It's not comparable to iOS app store. Devs are free to list their game on any other storefront concurrently.

[dvt]

This is the same argument Microsoft used ("we're just an OS, totally not a monopoly"). I think to anyone that spends any time doing any PC gaming, it's obvious that Steam is the only relevant storefront by a country mile.

[fatal94]

Relevance isnt anti competitive. Comparing them to Microsoft who not only monopolized but enforced it via product bundling is not the same at all.

They simply have the best product and won the market.

[fwipsy]

Or did they just get there first, and stayed first due to network effects? Initially, nobody wanted steam. People definitely don't want a second steam - which in practice means sticking to the first one.

[kombine]

They are headed Apple/Microsoft way though with SteamOS and Steam Deck/Machine.

[fc417fc802]

I can see why you might think that but I believe that's actually insurance against Microsoft going the Apple route and hamstringing Steam in the process. They needed a near first class platform that would never be used against them to exist and they needed the switching cost for end users to be near zero. By leveraging pre-existing FOSS projects they managed to avoid the vast majority of the development costs which would otherwise have been prohibitive.

[dvt]

Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc. There’s a lot of precedent here, but most saliently, how you become a monopoly is not really relevant. They absolutely are one. But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments so the Gaben fanboys are here. (Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.)

[crysin]

What’s your solution then to them being a monopoly? How would you meaningfully break them up? While they outperform the sales of Epic and Gog I’m not sure how they’re abusing their position or how they’re keeping others from entering?

[throw10920]

> Could say the same thing about AT&T, Bell Labs, etc.

No, you cannot. AT&T/Bell Labs was a monopoly - they physically controlled distribution networks that made it so you had to use them.

Valve does not. There is nothing that prevents you from simply selling your game without Steam.

And even if there wasn't, claims that Valve is a monopoly are factually false - there are many other storefronts that exist, and many games are published on more than one storefront at once. And, Steam does not gate an OS or platform like Microsoft and iOS do.

> But I’m being already aggressively downvoted with no counter arguments

Every one of your arguments is being countered (such as the claim that "relevance is anticompetitive" which isn't even false, it's nonsensical). Including this one.

> Defending a deca-billionaire is hard work, after all.

...and there's the emotional manipulation. It's pretty clear you're just a propagandist who has a grudge against Steam (maybe you work for Epic?), given that you're going up and down the thread with emotional non-arguments that try to redefine words, pull at peoples' emotions (like the billionaire comment), or just flat-out lie.

[fatal94]

You're being downvoted because you're pushing punishing a company for having a better product. They do not engage in anticompetitive practices, there is no enforced barrier to entry in the market nor do they gate entry like the companies you have listed. They are only a monopoly because they have the best product.

[eudamoniac]

That a really silly comparison. An OS is a big deal, you can't just switch off. Steam is a video game store. You can install shit from anywhere. People stick to steam because it's good. It's not morally wrong to have the best product on the market.

[dvt]

If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam (because they're a monopoly). Again, MS used all these cute arguments, and they don't really work. There's a reason Valve is always playing very nicely with regulators (especially w.r.t. the gambling stuff). They don't really want to rock the boat, but a benevolent monopoly is still a monopoly and I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized.

[eudamoniac]

Again, it is not wrong to make the best product. It behooves any manufacturer to sell to distributors with largest reach, especially if it is a non-exclusive agreement, and this is perfectly normal market activity. You seem unaware of the legal definition of monopoly; Valve is nowhere near it. The made up internet definition, having a majority of sales in a market, is just what happens when the product is good. Actually it would be a bit of a market failure for the best product to not have the most sales.

Also please don't point to the failure of Epic or other stores; they're just bad products. Epic store didn't even have a shopping cart for years. No one competent is competing, and that's not Valve's problem.

[throw10920]

> If you want the audience as an indie developer, it would behoove you to launch on Steam

Correct, because they're a huge distribution channel, and literally anyone who has ever tangentially touched business knows this and accepts that it is fair to pay for this.

> (because they're a monopoly)

Factually incorrect. Nobody forces you to use Steam. You can create and launch and sell a Windows or Mac or Linux game without ever touching steam. You can self-publish and run your own game servers and CDN, or you can use the Epic Games Store, or you can use GOG, Humble Bundle, Xbox, Origin, Itch, or any of a dozen others.

> Again, MS used all these cute arguments

This is extremely dishonest. Microsoft controlled an operating system, only one of which can run at a time. If you are running Windows, you're not running Linux. And Microsoft entered into distribution deals with OEMs to pre-install Windows, leading to massive default-choice effects. Neither of these are true for Steam - you can install and run every single platform I listed above at the same time, and I've never seen a computer come pre-installed with Steam ever.

> I do think that a 30% cut for running a distribution platform is pretty predatory, especially as bandwidth has been commoditized

So, you have no idea what Steam actually does.

Steam is, in addition to being one of the largest digital distribution platforms in the US (if not the world) - which is by itself worth paying a 30% cut for, a SDK and networking provider that gives you a social network, input (gamepad/keyboard/mouse) library, achievements, digital trading cards, update system and CDN, real-time voice comms, product key redemption, license tracking, DRM, anti-cheat, user forums, and many other things.

If you only criticize things that you actually understand, you'll end up looking a lot less foolish, and undercutting your own points as a result.

[mriet]

And yet, Escape from Tarkov is not on Steam, which would seem 5o contradict what you're saying.

[esseph]

> And yet, Escape from Tarkov is not on Steam, which would seem 5o contradict what you're saying.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3932890/Escape_from_Tarko...

[gnabgib]

Hey - your bot is failing (presumably you read replies)

[atomicnumber3]

What? You can literally just download an exe from any website and run it.

If you're complaining that Valve owns a big list of games and a ton of eyeballs, and not being on that list means those eyeballs don't see you when they look at that list, idk what to tell you because they seem to have earned that part of their business pretty fairly.

[limagnolia]

GOG is pretty good too. I just wish they had better native Linux support.

[ricardobayes]

Yes, true. Same thing with most software companies - they forget 100% of their value logs off at 5pm.

If you're a software CEO reading this, your company value doesn't come from your customers, clients or contracts. It's the people doing the work.

[toilet]

VALVe are the original lootbox hawkers