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Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney supports the $900 million lawsuit against Valve, arguing Steam is "the only major store still holding onto payment ties and 30% junk fee" [refer to in-app purchases] (finance.yahoo.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (18 children)

WTF is this comments section here? I don't give a rat's fuck (if that is a thing), about what Tim Sweeney thinks about Valve, or if Valve is a good company or not.

Charging 30% of revenue for a digital store is clearly nit justifiable and Valve makes insane amount of profits just by having a near monopoly on PC game sales. They don't need that much and it's still just digital feudalism regardless if who does it.

You guys are just stuck in the good guy/ bad guy mentality and honestly, it's kind of embarrassing to get this defensive over a company.

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Having a 21 year old Steam account and having bought quite some games makes it hard to stay subjective about this for me. I don't disagree with you but I see Valve as the best monopoly if I could choose. And I don't see Epic performing the same services while tryharding tremendously to be the monoply themselves by giving away free games.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago* (2 children)

    agreed, i feel like Valve is using their monopolization for good then bad, look at Valve's competitors using their monopolization stance for bad.
    and i feel like Valve has monopoly cause they do less mistakes then their competitors(compare Steam with like Epic Games and GOG)
    am not defending valve here,am not saying Valve is a saint.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    as long as they avoid enshittification that hurts the consumer they may continue to get away with it.

    I think it's worth discussing though.

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago* (5 children)

    What about game devs though? They are clearly hurt already by the insane fees.

    Just think about it. When you buy a game for 10€ on steam, steam get's a flat 3.33€ just for giving you a "buy game" button. The gamedeev get's maybe half of what you payed (Taxes, engine fees etc.).

    Don't you think, that there is something kind of fucked up about that?

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    if that was all they got the money for, and the devs were indeed hurt to a significant degree by it, a competitor with a lower fee (say, epic, with their 8%) would have outgrown them years ago, since steam doesn't do exclusivity deals.

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  • [–] -3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    That's not how this stuff works. Gamers decide, what stores succeed, not game devs.

    Also Valve has policies, that say that you can't offer your game for cheaper elsewhere, which means, that gamers can never notice the difference between a 30% cut or an 8% cut.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    okay, so all a storefront has to do is build a better system and take, say, 20%. that would pull in both sellers and buyers. why isn't the other storefronts building competitors? epic has infinite money but all they seem to use it on is bribes. gog offers standalone installers and online community systems, but not both at the same time. itch is held together by duct tape and dreams.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    That's disingenuous. They do a lot more than that.

    Discovery for one. Hosting the game so that downloads are fast and paying for the server and network infrastructure for that. Handling payment processing from all around the world.

    That all has a cost. And any developer can just drop the installer on their own website and pay all of these things themselves.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    it's not really hurting the devs. if anything it hurts consumers, but even that's a stretch considering the service both sides are getting.

    holy hell can't you see the difference between EGS and steam? one works reliably. the other is all over the place. to me that's worth 30%

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    if it’s not justifiable, then the game devs can go elsewere.

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  • [–] -2 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    That's not how the network effect works. If Deva go elsewhere, nobody buys their game. Most people will never even know of the games outside of steam.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    you could try answering, but conceding works just as well

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