Valve is an online store first and foremost. Apples and oranges. The rest are playing catchup, as they've seen gabe get rich and fat, and they want in on that.
this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2024
2 points (100.0% liked)
PC Gaming
10712 readers
622 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
they've seen gabe get rich and fat
Hey, that's not true! Gabe's lost a lot of weight in recent times.
Well, they don't develop any games. You don't require a lot of people to run a store.
"Their" last game, Counter Strike Global Offensive, is 12 years old, and was developed by a contractor: Hidden Path Entertainment. Ony then Valve took over to maintain it. And anyone familiar with the current situation around the game (CS2) knows how much "development" is going on there.
Half Life Alyx is far more recent
You legitimately don't need a lot of employees to make a good product or have a successful company.
I genuinely believe a lot of the bloat in modern companies comes from hiring people just to hire them, not because they add any significant value to either the company or customers.
I want to add to this that valve is also very clearly an anomaly in todays business environment. They are not striving for infinite growth but methodical, strategic steady growth.
That in my mind is how you grow a company, maximising returns for investors is a good idea only for the investors, it deviates the company from the objective which is providing a solution to a problem. It seems to me that Valve despite all the criticism it receives for the high fee on the sales of copies is doing a terrific job on resolving that problem. Also, extending the market to Linux is not a monetary driven decision at all, but it buys back the fidelity of many customers which gain a new feature without any repercussion on stock prices, which are non existent since there aren’t any investors to obey to. The hope is that Gabe will continue on this way and when the problem of passing the baton will present itself, it will be dealt with the future of the company and the industry at large in mind.
It seems to me that Valve despite all the criticism it receives for the high fee on the sales of copies is doing a terrific job on resolving that problem.
The only issue I have with this is that Valve seems to be the only company that gets this critique, yet they seem to provide way more services for said 30% fee.
Apple started charging 30% on everything over two decades ago with iTunes, which continued into their app store in 2008. They only recently started a "small business program" that is application based, reportedly unresponsive to the users, and by default still charges 30% to app developers making under $1m in revenue. So, instead of making it based on how much you earn, they force you to apply and ignore you, effectively still making it a 30% base rate. IMO, sort of predatory since they don't really advertise the program. I feel like if it mattered to them, they would automatically apply the rate to >$1m revenue, instead of making it per-app (or dev account) application based and letting users sit in limbo wondering if they were accepted or not.
Google takes 30% as well, also having introduced a 15% on the first million of revenue for subscription based payments, so if I understand correctly, it's not even individual sales getting that lowered rate. Oh, but don't worry, in case you were worried music streaming services can go as low as 10% rates, so if you have a datacenter that you can stream licensed music to app users over well hey, you're in luck little guy!
Microsoft actually moved down from 30% entirely to 12%, it looks like. They don't really offer much, so good on them for that. Know your worth, am I right? But it's only for PC sales, which seems kind of odd considering the hassle it can be to apply and develop for the Xbox. So, not as good, but still alright. Meanwhile, Sony and Nintendo... (30%). Hm, odd that it never seems to be raised as an issue for the consoles, oh well.
All of these were pushed by Epic who was mad they couldn't make more money off their mobile game, except Microsoft which I think just followed suit. But from the backend when you look at what each of these services offer for their costs... It's a bit laughable that Valve is the one getting critiqued for this point when they offer at least double the amount of services to the publisher/developer. In short, these fees cover the cost of a bunch of background junk as well as to generate some revenue for the store selling it, but don't offer much else in terms of support for the users or the developers. Meanwhile the Steam Overlay can completely change your controller scheme, use community templates, access to per-game notes, all of which can be transparently overlaid on your game if you want, and the Steam Workshop for internal modding/community content, in addition to whatever other peripheral things like cloud saving, in-home/remote streaming and remote play together, the recently added recording feature, and generating as many Steam keys as the dev wants for certain purposes.
I just do a double take everytime I see it not being directed at the companies that actually do seem to be abusing their fees and don't offer nearly as much feature presence. Like Valve seems to be attempting to innovate, even if they are just taking ideas from things like Moonlight, and Parsec. They didn't lock it down either, you can jank it up by playing Non-Steam games or emulated games via Remote Play Together with your friends. Ever wanted to relive the days of DoubleDash? Did Slippi not exist in this timeline and you wanted to play Smash Melee with a friend?
Like, there's things to complain about for Valve. But is the 30% for what they offer really unreasonable, especially when compared to current competitors? I personally don't think so. If Epic wants to start making their launcher as fully fledged as Steam is then we can talk. Until then, when I see this argument presented I have a hard time reading it as anything but "big Valve bad" with the subtle implication that Epic is the saving grace of the gaming industry. Otherwise, Epic is able to offer 12% because they don't host nearly as much for the user, and have had to actively rely on Valve for things like community support, VR support, and don't have basic things like repair game installations, or re-installing a game in its folder (you know, to prevent having to redownload 90+gb every time their launcher breaks the game). It's also hard to see them as a good guy when they also have had shady practices, such as not paying out devs per claim during the "Free Claim" giveaways, but rather only upon when the user actually downloads the game. In addition to that, they just throw tons of money at you to make it exclusive, then they ghost you and good luck getting any actual support from them if you need something.
Tl;Dr hypocrisy of picking what 30% fees are okay and which are screwing over game developers, I look at it from the perspective of received services for said fee.
P.S. to OP of comment, I am merely responding to you, I know your comment isn't saying that Valve or any of these companies are at fault for it. Franky, I don't think 30% is an issue if the fee that's taken has fair returns for it, and I think this whole fandango is only an "issue" at all because of mad old Tim Sweeny.
I meant terrific in a positive way, if that’s the issue. I’m still learning English, if I expressed myself in the wrong manner I hope the message gets across. I’m saying that Valve is doing a good job providing extensive services to developers, since it means less of a burden for developers in programming and implementing features. A launcher isn’t only a place to make available for download your product, as Sweeney seems to understand it.
Oh no at all! As I said I was merely responding :)
Don't need that many employees to run a store, programmers/IT and marketing and you're good to go. Employees wouldn't count contractors either so they probably have a lot more "employees" than that.
Not only that, Valve has done a TON of work to outsource as much of the process of running Steam off to the users and developers. Self-publishing, a minimum of manual moderation, automated greenlight processes, automated ratings, database tags, controller configs...
Their entire business model is to make money with as little effort as possible. I've been saying for ages that people vastly underestimate how ruthlessly profitable their business is. We didn't have the numbers, but we roughly knew this is what was going on.
Gabe owns six yachts, people should always keep that in mind when praising him, he's not the friend of the average Joe, he just realized there's profit to be made by not pissing people off, but he's still making enough profit from us to be a billionaire while the majority of people live paycheck to paycheck.
Holy shit Gabe Newell is a billionaire (it's just at the second paragraph). This does change my view of him and steam. So uncool.
The dude's the CEO of the most successful online gaming platform ever. Yeah, he's gonna be a billionaire.
He was a billionaire before valve even existed.
Where did you hear that?
He early joined Microsoft and probably had some stock but he left by 1996 so I hardly doubt that made him a real billionaire, (especially given the time).
Afaik his family was always very well off
He was a paperboy and a telegram messenger before college.
That doesn't scream old money boy.
Aren't you confusing him with someone else?
That doesn’t mean he wasn’t well off? Just as an example, there’s a media figure here in Brazil that has a whole ass “self made man” myth is surrounding him because at some point he was selling baubles in the street or other odd jobs like that. And it is indeed true that he did that, but his family owned a media network. So.
Oh and I don’t mean “well off” in the more “old money” sense, you are right, I’m not saying that he was billionaire level due to his family. I see why it seemed like that from what you were replying to, my bad. But I’m fairly sure I’ve read about his parent for the first time this year, and they had fairly comfortable money, to the point that him opening valve wasn’t a real financial risk for instance.
I’ll try to look for where I’ve read that, I didn’t pick it up immediately because I don’t have a pc at hand till Monday and searching for stuff on the phone is annoying. It’s not impossible that I’m mixing up with someone else, but in fairly sure that isn’t the case.
You can't just move the burden of proof on to others like this. You're just spreading misinformation, even if you ultimately turn out to be right what you're doing is unproductive and harmful.
I didn’t propose to move the burden of proof? I’m just explaining I won’t be able to verify easily before Monday.
I’m unsure if I miscommunicated something, but the I’m confused by the harshness of the reply?
The issue is that you're constantly asserting your statement without evidence and when people are offering up contradictory ideas you're asking them to present evidence ("that doesn't mean that he's NOT from a billionaire family") which is shifting the burden of proof. You made the claim, you have to prove it, if people put out other explanations also without evidence then they still don't have the burden of proof since the point under debate is the claim that you made. As the person making the claim you must prove it.
It's not meant to be harsh since this is a very low stakes conversation and topic but what you're doing willingly or unwillingly is exactly how misinformation spreads on more important topics, so it's important that you be aware and correct your behavior.
I don’t understand what you mean by “constantly”, I made one comment here and clarified when questioned. I prepended my comment with “as far as I know” is exactly because I wasn’t 100% sure on it.
And I only made the “that doesn’t mean he wasn’t” because they literally aren’t exclusionary conditions, and I cited an example as to why I’m stating that that wouldn’t necessarily contradicts my previous comment.
And I also immediately clarified that I messed up and didn’t mean “well off” in the billionaire sense. The example I had in mind wasn’t also a billionaire, but he was still from a rich family.
I’ve made a bunch of conditionals for my statement exactly so that is didn’t pass as you are describing, and made it clear that while I was remembering something about Gaben but I could be misremembering the specifics, which is why I mentioned I would be looking it up later, I just don’t want to do an extensive search on a cellphone. Which is just making me more confused as to your replies to me. Did you read my second comment fully? Are you mixing me up with someone else?
"a bunch of conditionals for my statements" are also known as weasel words. You don't seem interested in learning from this experience.
How were they weasel words? Honestly.
I’ve commented about something I remember but that I wasn’t completely sure on. I’ve further clarified what I meant and specified the context of it. I also mentioned I intend to verify the information but just can’t right now (I’ll be able to later today, as I mentioned).
I still don’t get why are you so aggro on me. Are you sure you are not mixing me with someone else? I still don’t get what you meant by “constantly”.
people should always keep that in mind when praising him
Why?? Good for him, stop being so envious. It's thanks to Valve I started to buy games instead of pirate them anyway. Good prices and good practices.
A billionaire from a game industry is not the same as a billionaire from a real state company or a bank. Games are not a basic need.
Nah, a billionaire is a billionaire. There's still people being exploited to get that much money. I don't completely disagree, though - at least Gaben didn't make Valve completely evil and yeah, it's better than fucking up the property market for generations of people.
Billionaires shouldn't exist. The government should regulate all these stores and force a max of 5%. They are clearly colluding and aren't competing in good faith.
This is having a negative impact on the industry, a lot of indie studios would have an easier time surviving if they weren't bled dry by what essentially is a soft monopoly.
Microsoft, Nintendo, Sony and Steam are all guilty yet you would never defend any of the other ones. Steam spends a lot of money convincing everyone Gaben is just a really cool dude and not your average billionaire.
Steam spends a lot of money convincing everyone Gaben is just a really cool dude and not your average billionaire.
Or maybe he is a really cool dude...
Gaben owns 6 yatchs and spends between 70 million and 100 million a year maintaining them. He's in the same club as Bezos and the rest.
Stop it with the fucking yatchs already, seriously. Just look at the differences between Vale and the other companys you mention. If you can't see any, you are just a troll.
You can't say anything bad about Valve other than "they make a lot of money". It gets boring.
Billionaires exist because you and me and people like us overpay for stuff, they accumulate wealth by making sure we don't. Gabe's wealth comes from the surplus generated by Valve, if they make that much surplus then they could lower their cut by a fucking lot and so could publishers that also enrich multimillionaire and billionaires.
There are no good rich people.