Technology

hideshow 29 child comments

parent

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 83 points 11 months ago (8 children)

I should note that 30% is incredibly standard in the industry, and Valve offers a LOT more for that 30% than literally any other digital publisher. Physical publishers take substantially more, and the only digital store that offers less is EGS, which is simultaneously absolute dogshite and also has been trying very, very hard to astroturd the '30%' thing for ages.

Nintendo, Sony, and Apple all take 30%. I think MS does as well, but don't quote me on that one.

hideshow 8 child comments

parent

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 25 points 11 months ago (2 children)

don't forget google. that applies to all paid apps, in app purchases and donations on the play store, not only for games. google also forbids you from showing any other donation option on your website if you link to it from your app.

hideshow 2 child comments

parent

[–] Amir@lemmy.ml 6 points 11 months ago

Can confirm; my app was removed from the Play Store due to a donation link to my PayPal. Absolutely insane.

parent

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

I'm going to be honest, I have no idea how I forgot google. They also definitely take 30%.

parent

[–] anzo@programming.dev 8 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Fwiw, GOG has no DRM for their titles (its own niche space, not competition). Not sure if they charge 30% too, but even in such case they're giving you more because of the lack of DRM.

Steam is quite virtuous, they gave us Proton. But is far from being based.

hideshow 3 child comments

parent

[–] strongarm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 11 months ago (1 child)

GoG also sold the modern hitman games which have DRM.

There are also many games on Steam that are DRM free, you may need to use the Steam Client to download them (but possibly also Steam CMD) but then you can copy the files off as a backup and run them without Steam

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] Inkstainthebat@pawb.social 3 points 11 months ago

Can confirm. Serious Sam Classics are copy and paste-easy to share

parent

[–] ysjet@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

GOG has no DRM, but they also don't offer the same kind of services, like workshop, updates, cloud sync, etc.

Not trying to say they're worse or anything, I love GOG, but it's really kind of comparing apples to oranges here.

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/over-5-000-games-released-on-steam-this-year-didnt-make-enough-money-to-recover-the-usd100-fee-to-put-a-game-on-valves-store-research-estimates/

parent

[+] brachiosaurus@mander.xyz -6 points 11 months ago

"Over 5,000 games released on Steam this year didn't make enough money to recover the $100 fee to put a game on Valve's store, research estimates"

parent

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 24 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (9 children)

It's fucking wild. Like, I love Steam, don't get me wrong, but holy shit just suck less (edit: than other stores do) and charge less (edit: of devs) and you could gobble up a lot of that market share. But none of them do.

hideshow 9 child comments

parent

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 12 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

Notably Epic charges less than 30% (something like 12% IIRC) to try to get more of that market. They even give away games. But their app is still inferior so it gets less use.

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] Vespair@lemmy.zip 3 points 11 months ago

Because Epic doesn't care about end users and won't add necessary end user features like reviews.

It's cool that Epic wants to pay developers more, but the way they disregard the consumer makes the platform non-viable

parent

[–] underscores@lemmy.zip 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

company: "I want what steam is making and more" shareholders: "brilliant"

parent

hideshow 1 child comment

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 19 points 11 months ago

"I want what steam is making but I'm not willing to improve service OR charge less!"

parent

[–] BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works -4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Most other competitors charge less than steam, but steam has a clause which prevents devs from putting their games cheaper elsewhere. This is the real big shitty move made by valve, otherwise they do mostly everything right. I hope someone challenges this clause in a court of law someday, it looks very monopolistic to me

hideshow 4 child comments

parent

[–] LupertEverett@lemmy.world 23 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Except that is a thing only for selling steam keys outside steam. There are no price parity clauses.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

Also here is a gamedev saying that they'll sell their game for a cheaper price on EGS: https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/

If what you saying was actually the case I am 120% sure Tim Sweeney would be all over it lol.

Lastly, there was ALREADY a case like that (Valve vs. Wolfire). The courts couldn't find anything regarding Wolfire's claims and then dismissed the case.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-11-22-judge-dismisses-wolfires-antitrust-lawsuit-against-valve

hideshow 3 child comments

parent

[–] BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Ho ok, my bad, I completely misunderstood the issue then. It seems reasonable to impose a price equivalence on steam key

hideshow 2 child comments

parent

[–] LupertEverett@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

No worries! And indeed!

parent

load more comments (1 reply)

[–] CosmoNova@lemmy.world 6 points 11 months ago

You‘re getting downvotes for no reason. Also anyone who ever had to contact Steam support felt how criminally understaffed they are so it makes sense they make tons of money per employee I guess.

parent

[–] WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 months ago (7 children)

Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.

that's a bullshit metric only useful to incite hatred. why the fuck do you want to say that valve is "this many times worse than facebook!"? it is obviously false.

only thing this proves is that they have relatively few employees. which also probably means that most of them do real work instead of being overloaded with managers

hideshow 7 child comments

parent

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (6 children)

The numbers just show that they are 8x as efficient. I only referenced Facebook because they're the next closest company for comparison.

I never said they were worse than Facebook. That's your assumption, reading what you want, not what's actually being said.

hideshow 6 child comments

parent

[–] CatsPajamas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 11 months ago (5 children)

Their efficiency is largely due to their flat organizing structure. They have no real hierarchy to speak of.

hideshow 5 child comments

parent

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Which is also one of the reasons so few new things get done, and why they (until now) haven't been able to count to 3.

To get anything done you either have to be able to do it entirely by yourself which is unlikely, or get enough others organized and on board to make it happen.

hideshow 4 child comments

parent

[–] CatsPajamas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 11 months ago (3 children)

What? Valve released CS2 like last year? They do stuff all the time. They have like three games they're actively maintaining while making HL3 and three new pieces of tech? This is a wild, unfounded take and feels ideologically bound.

hideshow 3 child comments

parent

[–] halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world -1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That was 2023, and one of very few things made not to specifically promote their hardware or as a cheap spinoff of existing IP. And define "actively maintaining", because general bug fixes for decade old multi-player games and managing item marketplaces doesn't require much manpower.

Going further back there's Aperture Desk Job which was a tech demo for the Steam Deck in 2022. Then an extended cut version of Artifact originally meant as a sequel in 2021, which is a Dota 2 card game, but still remains unfinished, so effectively abandoned. Then Half Life: Alyx in 2020 which 90% of gamers can't play because it's VR only, and clearly made to further promote their VR hardware. Dota Warlords in 2020 which was originally a community game mode. The original Artifact in 2018, which had abandoned iOS and Android ports. The Lab in 2016 which was made to promote the launch of the HTC Vive. A zombie CS spinoff in 2014, Dota 2 in 2013, CS:Go in 2012, Portal 2 in 2011, and Left 4 Dead 2 in 2009.

If you remove the spinoff and niche stuff from the list you get game releases in 2023, 2020 (arguable since it's VR only and thus inherently niche), 2013, 2012, 2011, 2009.

That's a pretty big gap of not much for the last decade game-wise. Its been previously documented and published that Valve has issues getting games developed because of the flat organization structure. Articles like this.

hideshow 2 child comments

parent

[–] Carrot@lemmy.today 3 points 11 months ago

You are also missing the huge advances they've made in their contributions to FOSS, like proton, FEX, arch, etc. Steam has done an insane amount of legwork to get Linux gaming off the ground. They are the one company that made migrating off of Windows and onto Linux a valid option for me, and a bunch of other folks. Linux was ~0.89% of their userbase in 2020, and since their contributions to these FOSS projects, it has gone up to 3.05%. That's crazy, considering it had been at or below that 0.89% since 2016.