Also too many mouths to feed. When you’ve got so many people (including admin) to keep paying, then you can’t “afford” to make a cute little experiment. You’ve got to go huge production, latest fads, cutting edge, and super broad appeal.
What kind of identity can a game like that even hope to have?
Nah modern game development is fantastic. Y’all just dont remember getting 2 good titles a year and the rest being garbage. There are more great games out there than ever before.
I actually agree. If you don’t just focus on the tippy-top AAA/AAAA live service / gambling simulators / hi-fi vapid adventure, then there are some incredible games coming out all the time.
Arguably, the “triple-I” Indies and AA mid studios have taken over the culture/price-range/innovation niche vacated by the big studios climbing over each other to impress shareholders.
Name a year that only had two AAA games come out that were any good.
Now, we just have great access to a bunch of lower budget indie games that put gameplay over graphics, so they can take more risks and some of those games are fantastic. But there hasn’t been “just two” good games a year in the past 30 years.
You are totally right. We are living in a golden age of not only video games, but entertainment in general, thanks to ridiculously powerful computers and the internet. People with video game nostalgia remember how those old games made them feel, because the games were new and exciting and they were young. But video games (and board games) have done nothing but improve over the years as developers figure what works and what doesn’t.
Nowadays there is just of ton of…everything. We are spoiled for choice. There are so many excellent games at every price point, and also tons of crap, and yes, too much shovelware and too many rehashed franchise games. But here’s the thing: these things aren’t mutually exclusive. We have all of it, all at once, and reviews and advice are everywhere. If someone is tired of rehashed AAA franchise games, they can spend the rest of their lives playing clever indie games and they’ll still barely scratch the surface of what’s available.
I contend that the next great Deus Ex game will not come out of Ubi, and it won’t be under the name Deus Ex, but it will be a new kind of immersive sim made with love by developers who grew up on the originals.
I contend this for a lot of the classic franchises tbh
I won’t say no to cheaper games. The 30% cut was settled upon in the days where physical copies were the norm and Steam was still under heavy development. Given how established Steam and digital distribution in general is, it’s not really fair to developers to dedicate almost a third of the price of the game to a hosting platform. Yes, exposure is important, but that’s a service provided passively due to the fact of being the largest platform. Reducing Steam’s cut hurts no one except maybe Gabe’s ability to buy another yacht (and even then, not likely). Even if customers don’t see lower prices if Steam were to reduce their cut, it’d be great to see the actual developers getting more money from the games they put all the effort into making.
They being the largest platform because the consumer wanted their service, not out of obligation. Epic provides cheaper cut for the developer and is steadily building up their library. But why don’t users flock there? Heck, they even have some actual exclusive titles there. EA and Ubisoft too got their own store, and they too got a few exclusive title. So why does steam is still being chosen? Maybe there is other value provided besides hosting, like, idk, remote play? Controller remap? Family sharing? Opening linux gaming market? Social feature? Forum? Modding?
Momentum. Steam was among the first on the scene and provided the best experience. Thankfully Steam has kept the momentum going instead of enshittification (thanks to being a privately held company), but almost a third of the price of the game is still ridiculous if you consider the effort that goes into making a game vs maintaining a mature platform.
I mean, did the competitor even make an announcement to have at least feature parity with steam? Last time I heard, GOG doesn’t have regional pricing, Epic is not supporting linux just because, and EA/Ubisoft is just a glorified ad
The end of my post is where I address this. Publishers have the option to use their bigger cut to reduce prices, but even if they don’t, money is moving closer to the people actually making the games possible instead of a platform provider. There are also a lot of indie developers. It’s not just all greedy publishers.
I’ll reiterate here that I think it would be funny to see steam actually lowering their cut to 20-10% or something and the mass migrations of developers from other competing stores to steam, and finally making the other store even more insignificant. That’s what they want isn’t it? And even more funny when after the changes are applied there is no difference in price because after all, publishers get more money for free, why should they lower their profit? If anything, when the policy is reversed/back to when it was, we will only see an increase in game price lol.
The thing is when people put games on Steam they account for the fee that they take. So in a sort of way the lawsuit is right, Valve are effectively causing players to get overcharged for games.
But if I put the same game on both Steam and GoG And make the gog one 20% cheaper, I still get more sales on the Steam page. If I only have it on GOG people actually complain even when you point out that it’s cheaper that way.
So Valve are causing players to get overcharged but players are forcing publishers to put their games on Steam. So players are causing players to get overcharged, so what can you do?
Alright, I don’t have the data nor time to research it now. But just try to check the pricing on EGS when a game was exclusive there AND after the exclusive deals run out AND the game is then sold on steam. Did the price increase? Or if that feels flawed (which I get it, maybe the dev has no intensive to change the price), try to get the average cost of those exclusive AAA games from other stores and compare it with average AAA games on steam. See how different it is.
yes you’re right this is a lawsuit about too much profit and it will directly set a precedent where companies aren’t allowed to have too much profit.
Pretty smart, as a leftist maybe I’ll sue every corporation for being privately owned, this is a whole new avenue for systemic change. You opened my eyes
I talk about wealth then I talk about income, compare both, then I compare wealth to net worth (which is how you measure wealth)
If you have enough wealth, it’s used to get money as your wealth is used as collateral, you don’t need to be rich to do that, you just need to own stuff that is paid for. I know people who only own a house that isn’t worth a fortune, the got a mortgage on it when the rates were down to 1% to invest it at a higher interest rate, their not rich, they just have wealth that can be used as collateral to get money.
I saw some stats the other day that if you remove the top 1000 incomes in the united states the average drops to around 35k. So that average of 75k is bullshit.
I think that is the main point of the lawsuit, if developers sell their game on Steam they can’t sell it cheaper somewhere else. If Value gets 30% the developer has to raise the price a bit to compensate and they have to raise it everywhere. Outside of sales I don’t think most games that are not on Steam are much cheaper elsewhere, so not sure how this plays out.
If you have a point to make about why Valves is not abusing it’s monopoly position make it. Otherwise no one wants to hear your dumb ‘but the free market is always right’ statement.
As far as I know, this only applies to Steam keys: developers are allowed to generate Steam keys for free to sell on their website (Valve does not get 30% of these sales either) with the restriction being they cannot be cheaper than the price on Steam
I don’t think there’s ever actually been any proof that Valve disallows selling games for cheaper elsewhere as long as you’re not selling those freely generated Steam keys
This suit seems to just be vaguely, “30% is too high”, along with requiring that DLC for a game bought on Steam also be bought on Steam, it was the Wolfire case back in 2021 that alleged they’re not allowed to sell their game for cheaper on other platforms
According to Shotbolt, the developer and digital distribution company is “shutting out” all competition in the PC gaming market as it “forces” game publishers to sign off on price parity obligations - supposedly preventing them from going on to offer lower prices on other platforms.
This is true and public knowledge though as I said (details seen here in the “Steam Key Rules and Guidelines” section), if anything Valve is giving devs a lot of leeway by allowing them to do that at all, not only are they giving up their 30% cut but are also then distributing and committing to updating those copies of the game for free
That’s exactly what they’re trying to say. It could have been cheaper if Valve didn’t have pricing clauses that doesn’t allow developers to price things cheaper elsewhere.
Which is deceptive, at best. Steam doesn’t have pricing clauses for developers’ games. The devs are free to sell their games anywhere they want, at whatever prices they want. But Steam does have pricing clauses for Steam keys. Basically, what allows you to register a game to your Steam account.
You can sell your game for whatever price you want, as long as it’s not the Steam version of the game. They don’t want you giving away Steam keys for cheaper than you can often buy them on Steam. And this makes sense; Steam has a vested interest in protecting their own game keys, and encouraging players to shop on a storefront that they know is reputable; Lots of steam key resellers are notoriously shady, for instance.
Basically, the dev can go sell it cheaper on GoG, or Epic, or their own storefront if they want. As long as they’re not selling Steam keys, they’re fine. But players like having games registered to their Steam accounts, because it puts everything in one place. So devs may feel shoehorned into selling Steam keys (which would invoke that pricing clause) instead of selling a separate version that isn’t registered to Steam. But that doesn’t mean Steam is preventing publishers from selling elsewhere, or controlling the prices on those third party sites. It just means Steam has market pull, and publishers know the game will sell better if it’s offered as a Steam key.
The only thing that doesn’t sit right with me is developers stating Steam threatened to delist the game when they expressed wanting to sell elsewhere. I haven’t seen any proof except just the statements, but it would be weird for a developer to lie about that stuff. If anyone has any more sources on that, it would be appreciated
The one example I can think of is the Remnant games, at least for Remnant 2 on release it was cheaper on Epic Store than on Steam, by like 10 USD if I recall correctly
PS5 game on sale did cost 2 EUR less than the regular price on Steam. I don’t think Steam overcharges me. It’s not like the game is cheaper somewhere else on PC either: …epicgames.com/…/banishers-ghosts-of-new-eden-f9e… (50 EUR)
Yes, but they sue Steam that has competitors selling games for the same price instead of literal monopolies. Even Apple was forced to open up to other app stores.
if you think a 30% cut doesn’t reflect on the cost a player is paying, you’re out of your mind. This is business 101.
Isn’t business 101 charging as much as possible and not passing on savings to customers, and trying to capture as much high paying consumers as possible before being forced to start capturing price sensitive consumers with discounts?
Price of games that didn’t release on Steam seem to reflect that. Even games released by platform owners like Sony or Nintendo first party exclusives and the beloved Blizzard. Isn’t that pricing strategy business 101 as opposed to this belief that savings pass onto consumers? Lowering price right away doesn’t seem like good price maximizing strategy when goal would be to increase retail price consumers are willing to pay over time.
As far as I know, they do - for Steam keys. If you’re selling your game through other stores, not just a Steam key, there aren’t any demands placed upon you. The OC might’ve been talking about that.
I’ve bought most of games through other sites because the games would be discounted lower and sooner than Steam. So it’s more personal experience than theory in my case.
Humble bundles on the even more extreme end of like 8 games sometimes being cheaper than a single title has ever been discounted.
Huh, interesting… You know, I’ve never really wondered about Humble Bundle specifically, but you’re right, they seem to be selling your run-of-the-mill Steam keys, or at least you can activate them effortlessly in Steam. Maybe it’s a case of Steam themselves handing out keys (instead of the publishers) to increase user retention? I honestly don’t know, this is all just speculation.
I actually didn’t click on your link at first, because I assumed it would just show other stores where you could purchase the whole game instead of a key, so I’m sorry that you had to clarify that.
Isthereanydeals is a great resource. I always make sure to look up a game there before buying to check what the lowest price it was ever sold was.
That link was for helldivers 2 which is only available on steam on pc. From what I understand the keys are actually provided by the devs/publishers and steam doesn’t get a cut of key sales.
No it doesn’t. The price parity thing is only if you are selling the game on Steam platform, i.e. selling a steam key, it’s essentially a way to allow publishers to sell the game on their own website, without paying the 30% to steam, but don’t allow them to undercut steam entirely while still taking advantage of their platform.
Games on GoG, itch, Epic store, etc, can have any price they want, as long as they don’t give away a steam key valve doesn’t care what price you sell your game elsewhere.
This is one of the most annoying fake news out there, Valve are going above and beyond what any other store is doing, and they get bad rep from people who have never read their policy, published a game there, or talked to anyone who has.
They do prevent you from linking to your own store within your Steam game though. Even though they don't provide a complete solution for things like microtransactions and DLC.
How it works on Steam:
User makes an in-app purchase using the steam wallet integration
Steam processes the payment taking 30% and gives you a reference number for that transaction
You query that transaction every time the player logs in to see if they've refunded it or not. That transaction doesn't actually contain any information about what they bought though.
You then maintain a separate purchasing server whose whole job it is is to keep a record of what the player purchased in reference to that transaction number.
For that Valve wants 30% of in-app/DLC purchases. At that point it's stripe and nothing more. Unlike standalone DLC Or expansions, these unlock purchases don't come with serving any additional content in the form of downloads.
If you make your own service to handle these transactions (with only a 3-4% transaction rate) Valve will prevent you from linking to it, or mentioning it anywhere on your page, forums or within the game itself. You need to direct players elsewhere and then mention it. Even for cross-platform games where having Steam maintain a transaction list for a portion of the users is just a needless additional layer.
I know how Valve’s publisher API works, others are similar in case you didn’t know. But that is only true for games that need online validation of some sort, DLCs for offline games don’t need to implement this.
Valve is hosting the game, providing the storefront and bringing in a lot of customers. If you didn’t think those 30% were worth it you would not have put your game on steam.
Plus all of this is irrelevant to the point that Valve doesn’t enforce price parity.
For the base game, which I think 30% is still more, I think it certainly makes sense.
Because they're providing a complete solution.
For in-app purchases or unlock purchases, whether or not the purchase is in-app, the solution isn't complete, and not worth the 30% they charge on those transactions. It would be trivial for every transaction to have a custom field where you could store an array of what was purchased in in that purchase and have it returned when the transaction was checked. Boom, complete solution. Specifically for in-app purchases if they wanted to take 5% since all they're doing is the job of Stripe and nothing more, then I'd consider that fair.
How is Lemmy so anti corporate, but bends over backwards to defend steam as an immaculate corporation. I love steam, and 90% of my game purchases or from their store. 5% are from stores that let me redeem steam keys.
I think their market position should have some scrutiny.
I feel like any other major company with Steam’s marketshare would be far less consumer friendly than steam.
Steam funnels a lot of money into Linux, and Linux is very popular on Lemmy. If you use Linux, you are benefiting from Steam’s success.
Steam is just nice to use, and has good deals. It’s nice to have my games in one place, and I don’t know if any other storefront with as many nice user benefiting features as steam.
I agree with all these things. But I dont understand the hail corporate mentality of being upset or knee jerk defending steam. I’m curious to see where the suit goes and evaluate if I should consider joining a class action suit as I learn more.
I think theres also the secondary unstated factor some of us have, that being that Steam is working as a solid buffer against more malignant groups. The fact that Steam is for a lack of a better term incorruptible is frankly very useful, especially with groups like the Saudis and China investing a lot of money and influence into gaming recently. Better a flawed but ultimately decent corporation than whatever the fuck the Saudis or China would replace it with.
They’re not immaculate. They used to outright deny people the right to refund their games, but they turned that around after a massive lawsuit from a government agency. Good change! I support that. But they’re not behaving in an anti-competitive manner. What, are they supposed to intentionally make themselves worse in the hopes that other stores pop up? That’s not how any of this works.
Mainly because Steam actually provides a really good quality service. Most corporations over time charge more while getting worse on quality. People can sell their games for cheaper on Epic which only has a 12% fee, but Epic’s service is much worse.
Yup. If Steam wasn’t around I’d have the joy of choosing between Epic, Origin, GOG (actually not bad but no official Linux client can be annoying), or GFWL (which would probably still be around in this situation)
We’ll let their position have some scrutiny when the PC marketplace has some actual decent competition, I’d rather not shoot the PC gaming sphere in the foot just because Lemmy hates corporations.
“Charges 30% fee” “That’s too high! You’re ripping us off”
“Charges 10% fee” “That’s too low! No other platforms could hope to compete against you with that!”
This is nothing but people bitching about nothing for the price gouging. I will give merit to the anti competitive nature if game makers aren’t allowed to have their games listed for less at other stores. As far as add on game packages locking you in goes…that might be a technical minefield to ensure compatibility.
Maybe this is an initiative by competing platforms? Epic? Ubisoft?
Stir some shit, hope to get valve in legal issues so that they’re legally forced to become less competitive and therefore creating a chance for these other platforms?
All those large online action/claim sites are commercial in underlying nature. When you saw all the small farmers protest in Germany it was primarily driven as an action by about 5 large farming conglomerates because they are the ones getting ~85% of the grant money that was being cut. The whole point of the cut was to not funnel money that was supposed to go to small farmers to large megacorps after all. Who in turn instrumentalized the small farmers to protest it.
Probably what’s going on here, too. You can bet somewhere deep deep down, this is something Tim Sweeney cooked up.
Yes, if Valve limited the price games could have in other stores that would be anti-competitive, but that’s not the case. Their price parity clause is just for selling steam keys.
This lawsuit being funded by a Epic Games shell company would not be surprising in the least. They have done so much and stooped so low to try to not have to actually do work and create a good platform.
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