Same here. Loved the setting and style, and the story and characters were admirably close to (the good) 3rd-person bioware stuff.
I don’t usually pay full price for games, but I was thinking of buying Greedfall 2 near release to support what they do. This puts a real taint on things.
I quite enjoy the amount of details going into games like this, same with Baldur’s Gate 3 being so insanely detailed. It really shows the passion of the developers for the games they’re working on.
There are so many more alternative and simpler role-playing games out there that are more straight to the point, like Elder Scrolls.
I like detail but I’m not the play fallout on survival mode kind and this game was very much a survival mode type. I like medieval games but that one was a bit much for me. Baldur’s Gate I skipped just cause I can’t with turn based fighting in. 2024
Well like I said, there are a lot of alternative games out there that are suited to a more casual crowd. It’s good that developers still make games like Kingdom Come and Baldur’s Gate to provide for players looking for more depth, immersive and engaging content.
Also, turn-based games are timeless, just like many other genres that have been around for 30+ years. I know a bunch of people that would never touched these kind of games and got completely hooked on BG3 anyway. Even myself that was never really into these kind of RPGs and tried Divinity games before, BG3 was absolutely stellar. It’s one of those games that set a new standard many others could learn from these days.
I believe it is accurate to say rtwp gameplay came before turn based and that turn based RPGs aren’t even that old in the grand scheme of video games. I know it’s not for everyone but for me personally if it isn’t turn based im way less interested. I’m too old for twitch based gameplay and rtwp feels tedious
Thai article reminded me to buy (and hopefully beat) KCD before KCDII comes out in Feb 2025.
On the Xbox store, the DLC bundle (no game) was normally $20, but 75% off so it was only $5. The game+DLC bundle was normally $40, but it was 90% off so it was only $4. Easy choice, even if I already had the game and no DLC
It’s such a great game. I will say though, the woman’s lot DLC that gets started when you ask Theresa about the story is a bit of a slog… it’s an alright story but I’d definitely make a save before starting it if you’re not a fan of its flow and tediousness lol
I wonder what will happen with Choice. Without it I’ll be down to a VPN and one other subscription (Peacock for wrestling for the curious). My VPN (PIA, you curious people) was bought out by a Chinese company if I remember correctly, and just recently announced a price increase. It wasn’t a whole lot, but it’s not a direction I enjoy, so I’m already rethinking that.
I digress, I know Humble of old already died, but it will be a sad day to see it gone for good.
Yeah, doesn't bode well. Turned into your typical greedy company with the IGN buyout, as much as they could within the limits of keeping old charirty values.
If you know your way around a Linux terminal, or can follow simple terminal instructions, I always recommend folks host their own OpenVPN server. $5/month for a digital ocean instance and now I never have to worry about some provider hiking my VPN prices or snooping on my traffic.
I was already planning on moving over to Linux, and can get around enough. This is amazing info, as I’ve moved more into self hosting and didn’t even realize that was an option. Definitely something to look into once I find a permanent residence. Thank you!
You are awesome friend! It won’t be anytime soon. We lost our place to a fire and are getting by in motels for now. Everyone survived and a lot more than expected was salvageable, so we keep moving forward.
At some point I’ll throw my old parts together into a Linux server. I was just hosting everything on my main rig, which obviously is not ideal. I’ve seen a bit of discussion on both sides of docker, do you have any input one way or the other?
Ah, I’ve generally run my VPN primary exit node in a public cloud infrastructure host like Digital Ocean or AWS in order to provide a separate public IP from the rest of my stuff, and not give out my home IP to public Wi-Fi and such.
I like docker, as long as you use a good orchestration tool it’s a good way to declaratively define what should be running on your server, using a compose file or similar. There are a lot of benefits to the overhead of learning it, including running multiple instances of the same service on one machine without conflicts, and the ability to force your hosted apps to store all of their data in nice neat packages you can easily back up with something like Duplicity or Volumerize.
I actually run my containers on a small kubernetes cluster using VMs running k3s atop Proxmox, with persistence handled by a hyperconverged ceph cluster. All probably very overkill but it’s fun to play with and performs incredibly. Most folks can get away with a single server running containers with simple docker compose.
Humble used to be an event that celebrated and showcased indie developers while at the same time raising many millions for charities. Then IGN bought it and rapidly enshittified it into a bog-standard, for-profit corporate enterprise like any other, and I’ll never forgive them for it.
Do they even give any of the profits to charity any more? If they do, I bet they only keep it around to take advantage of the tax writeoffs.
Humble bundle does still give to charity. The default they give is usually extremely low but on bundles you can adjust the sliders though they’ve now hidden it underneath the purchase button.
That’s more than keeping the lights on money, as the old humble was doing that just fine without any mandatory amount. Even taking into account taht they want to pay off their fresh purchase, IGN is gouging.
It doesnt help either that the charity slider is always set to a minimum now. It used to be evenly weighted, but now it’s weighted about 45%/45% IGN and the vendor, with maybe 10% to the charity by defualt. You have to click through a hidden menu to fix it.
And they made it such a pain in the ass when you adjust the sliders to maximize the charitable donation and then the cut for the content provider. Like, let me just put in amounts so I can max out the charity donation, minimize the payment to Humble, and give the rest to the content provider.
humble games is a game publisher, only connected to humble bundle through corporate ownership. most games in humble bundles aren’t published by humble games, and most games published by humble games don’t end up in humble bundles
Humble Bundle was cool when it was an occasional event focused on charity and indie devs. Once it became something that was going pretty much all the time it quickly lost any interest I had.
To be honest with you, my reply was supposed to be to the comment saying that humble has gotten worse overall since IGN bought them. Didn’t realize my mistake until now.
80 world-class engineers sounds like more than enough people. It’s not like Valve struggle to acquire talent and are thus forced to have teams and teams of juniors who are masters at building tech debt.
Valve will likely be hiring and retaining the kinds of engineers who love a good refactor and appreciate the time and space to do that rather than some product manager pressuring for the next shiny shit they wanted yesterday.
And Steam is their money printing machine that keeps them free to do whatever they want. It’s no surprise their team have stayed invested in continuing to build out the best gaming platform of all time.
80 talented, passionate, and healthily paid engineers > 800 junior, sleep deprived, and struggling to buy groceries “coders”.
Also explains why Steam is still a 32-bit binary and didn’t get ARM port on any platform.
I think the point is that with this kind of upkeep costs it’s hard to argue that Steam sales cut is fair, especially given near-monopoly in PC gaming space.
At this point, their cut is just about mathematically fair, given how little value customers get from buying games most other places and how much value they get from Steam. Then that money got funneled back into decoupling PC gaming from Microsoft and making probably the only mass produced handheld gaming system that’s open enough to let you opt out of their ecosystem. I’d be really curious as to how many games on Steam even have ARM builds, because I’ll bet it’s a very low number, and that would likely make the juice not worth the squeeze.
Their cut is mathematically fair but the inputs for this formula are mostly pain tolerance levels of consumers and producers. I meant fair for having a monopoly. Either you’re a utility or need to be broken up so that actual competition can take place.
Steam Deck and Proton killed Linux gaming because nobody bothers to do native ports. While I don’t agree with that approach it kinda works but it’s not that Valve does this because they like Linux. They’re scared of losing their monopoly in case Windows changes too much.
There are ARM native games on Mac (Disco Elysium for example) and Steam has no issues with them. Not having ARM client though means that you’re running a dynamically recompiling web browser through a translation layer resulting in terrible performance.
Pain tolerance levels? The biggest pain points I have with Steam are that it’s not universally DRM-free (which is why I shop GOG first) and that their multiplayer servers go down for 15 minutes during maintenance windows once or twice per week. Native Linux ports were not going to become more common prior to Proton; they were on the fast track to becoming less common, especially given how many more games are now released every year, and Proton has the added benefit of adding Linux support to games where it was just never going to feasibly happen otherwise.
While I don’t agree with that approach it kinda works but it’s not that Valve does this because they like Linux. They’re scared of losing their monopoly in case Windows changes too much.
It’s both. That fear of losing their market position is exactly how a functioning market is supposed to work. Competition is supposed to come in and outdo Valve. EA looked like they were interested for a little while back when they launched Origin, but they changed their minds. Epic says they’re interested now, but they only want sellers and not customers. It’s not a monopoly, legally, when they attained their market position by just being better than everyone else.
There are ARM native games on Mac (Disco Elysium for example) and Steam has no issues with them.
And I wonder how many more there are out there. Because if that number is low enough, it may just not be worth it to bother. I’d imagine it’s a nightmare to have to support Apple through all of their standards that they dictate at their business partners. Valve went through the trouble of making a Vulkan->Metal translation layer, since Apple refused to support open standards, and then Apple retired x64 on their machines shortly afterward.
Pain tolerance to prices, how good the support is, how snappy the app is etc. Within the space of game marketplaces they’re average and that’s because every one of them kind of sucks. If Epic was first to monopolize PC game marketplaces people would be defending them like they defend Valve now because they want all of their games in one place.
Linux gaming was stable before Proton. It was never big but mainstream titles were getting released. These days there’s nothing. Titles could be broken at any moment by a developer and nobody will have any responsibility to fix it. I very much doubt that a for profit company does anything because they “like” something like Linux. They’re there to make money, period.
I’m not saying Valve should port their games to ARM or update them, it’s up to them and they don’t seem to be interested in developing games all that much these days. My point wad that plenty of games run via Rosetta2 fine. Steam doesn’t run fine because essentially it’s a web browser and that’s where you can say that 80 developers might not be enough to support this money printing machine.
Pain tolerance to prices? We’re talking about the platform whose name is frequently coupled with the word “sale”. Given the complete lack of ideas out of Epic in the year 2024, I don’t have much confidence that they’d have risen to be a dominant market leader in the first place.
Linux gaming was stable before Proton. It was never big but mainstream titles were getting released.
Stable, but not many titles. Mainstream titles were getting released because Valve was either greasing the wheels or because those partners thought Steam Machines were going to be a bigger deal. When they weren’t a bigger deal, those mainstream titles dried up fast. The Witcher 3 and Street Fighter V both announced Linux ports and cancelled them when the writing was on the wall for Steam Machines. Both now work in Proton.
I very much doubt that a for profit company does anything because they “like” something like Linux. They’re there to make money, period.
I was told, to my face, by a Valve employee between the launch of Steam Machines and the release of Proton, that a lot of engineers at Valve “are enamored with Linux” before he gave me a look indicating that he couldn’t say more. But also, yes, the pursuit of making money leads to all sorts of wonderful new things, like simultaneously porting more than half of the history of PC gaming to a different operating system.
I’m not saying Valve should port their games to ARM or update them, it’s up to them and they don’t seem to be interested in developing games all that much these days. My point wad that plenty of games run via Rosetta2 fine. Steam doesn’t run fine because essentially it’s a web browser and that’s where you can say that 80 developers might not be enough to support this money printing machine.
But if there aren’t many games ported to ARM, and if the number of games running via Rosetta “fine” isn’t high enough, then the number of customers you’re benefiting by making a native ARM build of Steam is very low, and throwing more developers at the problem only makes that math worse. I think you should have a better Steam on Mac. I also know that Apple is actively hostile to gaming on Mac, so I get it if Valve isn’t super interested.
If Epic was first to monopolize PC game marketplaces people would be defending them like they defend Valve now because they want all of their games in one place.
No, people accept Steam because of the proven track record, values of their leadership, their hardware and the work they do with Linux.
The only reason you don’t see the price as a pain point is that you refuse to see that about 50% of that goes to companies that make billions in profit while people like you and me can’t afford rent.
Valve is not your landlord. They made a good place to buy video games. And come on, now; it’s 30% at most to Valve (which is less than brick and mortar before it) and then some more to the government.
There isn’t always a publisher. Sometimes the publisher owns them outright, and the devs will only see a salary in either case. There are only a handful of publishers that are worth more than a billion dollars and therefore run by billionaires, and they account for very few game releases in a given year on Steam these days. There’s a lot of nuance to this. And quite frankly, if a game I want to play comes from a billionaire’s company, I’m going to buy the game, they’re going to get some of my money, and I won’t feel bad about that.
If you sold something for $10 that hundreds of thousands of people wanted enough to buy it, you’d be a multimillionaire too. The only way you fund a development team with a handful of people working there is with multiple millions of dollars.
It’s irrelevant, is what it is. When you make something a whole bunch of people want to pay money for, you get to buy yourself nice things. I find a yacht to be a pretty wasteful use of money, but when I handed over thousands of dollars for hundreds of Steam games, it’s because we were both getting something good out of that transaction.
I’m not in an adversarial relationship with the people who sell me video games for fun. Every time you buy a video game from an indie dev on their own web site, that too is money you could have used to buy food for someone who’s starving.
When I buy from an indie dev directly the money goes to the person accomplishing the work to make the product I’m buying, not a bunch of rich guys that have so much money they don’t know what to do with it.
So what happens when that indie dev sells multiple millions of copies and has more money than they know what to do with? The game is just free for everyone else once it reaches a critical mass? Your definition is so arbitrary. Rich people get rich by selling things people want.
Because the same games sell for more elsewhere (also, funnily enough, we’re seeing tons of info on Valve because they’re getting sued for including a non compete clause in their contract to prevent games from being sold for less elsewhere), that’s an issue for the market as a whole and doesn’t apply to video games only. You’re paying too much for your food, for your gas, for your housing, for your clothes, for every fucking thing!
Profit shares for distributors will need to be regulated and wealth tax will need to be applied.
That’s my fucking point, the whole distribution chain needs to be regulated to stop distributors pocketing so much of our money when they’re accomplishing barely any of the actual work. It’s not a Valve problem, it’s a capitalism problem!
So you think grocery chains are making record profit every year without it impacting your wallet or something?
Valve gets a 30% cut, take a game, reduce that cut to 10% and figure out the price. Price stays the same? Alright, that just means more money going to the devs, which are the people like you and me, instead of Gabe, which is a billionaire.
Apply that in all sectors and we end up richer, billionaires end up poorer. The 1% would finally stop owning 63% of all wealth… But I guess you would rather defend their right to make as much profit as they want while you can only afford a 10$ game every six months.
Ok, so you can’t do basic calculations then, the education system truly failed you, no wonder you complain that you’re poor but can’t understand who made you so.
What calculations? Lmao.
You refuse to prove what you’re saying. Show us how every online storefront has different full sale pricing for the same games.
There are no calculations needed. You simple look at the price for the same games on different stores. But you’re somehow unable to do that?
This is completely incorrect. Their contract states that you can’t sell Steam keys for less elsewhere, which is entirely fair in my opinion. If your game is on multiple platforms or storefronts, you can sell it for whatever price you want there. The fact is that nobody does; they list it for the same everywhere and pocket the difference if someone buys on EGS.
I disagree with your definition of “killed Linux gaming.” It killed native Linux development perhaps. But using Linux for gaming is more viable than ever thanks to Valve. They single handedly boosted Linux gaming, if anything.
And they also offer more than the competition. For a while there games on EGS were just telling people to get support on steam forums because epic had nothing for supporting games they sold. Steam has forums, screenshot storage, achievements, remote play, friends lists, a shopping cart (🙄) and is adding new features like clips. I’m not using steam because it’s a monopoly, I’m using it because it’s a better platform.
Killed Linux gaming? I hard disagree with that. Yes developers may not do Native ports as often anymore but I would much rather have the ability to play games that are not considered a native Port because the ocean is so much vaster. If anything proton in the steam deck put Linux on the map, prior to the deck AAA titles you would never see running on Linux you barely saw AA titles on it. However with the introduction of the steam deck in proton we now have companies moving closer to at least making sure their game is compatible with the deck which is one step closer to allowing it to be Linux compatible. It allows you to take your windows games and for the most part just be able to play it without having to have the studio spend as much for it as they would with a native port, because that’s the number one thing that holds them back from making a native Port the lack of market share. I would not have switched off of Windows if this was not the case because that was basically the only thing that was holding me on Windows still was the lack of decent gaming support
Let’s take Elden Ring for example, it plays beautifully I haven’t had a single problem playing it. They weren’t going to release a Linux branch but they made sure it was steamdeck compatible, which meant that it was proton compatible which then allows me to play this amazing game on my Debian 12, a game that otherwise would not have worked because none of the other translation layers function with it. I notice zero difference in performance it plays flawlessly, but I would not have been able to play this game otherwise. It might as well be a native Port because I’ve had zero issues with functionality.
The Factorio development blog has a piece on developing Linux-native. Basically there’s ONE GUY who works on the LInux-native version, and it’s a lot more challenging than people think – from managing and linking dependencies, to working around GNOME’s monumentally stupid decision to expect client-side decorations from all apps. It’s simply more worthwhile to ensure that a game works well on WIne/Proton.
It’s actually pretty easy to argue it’s fair once you look at everything. Steam offers a shit ton of resources for that 30%, including hosting, distribution, patching, workshop, etc. And that’s not even getting into the fact that the dev can get all of that AND get steam keys that they can distribute themselves (meaning valve doesn’t get a cut of that) that still utilizes the same infra.
I wish I could find it, but I recently saw a video of Thor (@piratesoftware, does his own game dev and used to work for Blizzard) talking about this and going into even more detail than I can remember at the moment.
Competition isn’t possible? EGS is an active competitor that only takes 12% and they still can’t get fucking anywhere because their store fucking sucks. GoG exists and also takes 30%, their store/launcher are ok, but they don’t offer nearly as much for that 30%, but they make up for that with drm free games. There are other minor players out there, so competition is definitely possible, but not one of them offers a comparable product.
The only way steam would lower their cut is if someone came along and made a game store that actually offered a significant portion of the services steam offered and was about as good but also had a lower cut of sales. But good luck finding someone who can do all of that and also takes less than 30%.
You don’t seem to understand what a monopoly is. Having some small competition that’s not ever going to threaten you because you can leverage your dominant position is also a case of a monopoly.
Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it. How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on? This is why they need to be broken up or brought to order via regulations. Companies are not your friends.
Epic poured billions of Fortnite money with little to show for it.
Yes, Into fortnite, not EGS. The eggs spent all their money on timed exclusives instead of a better product, and that’s why they failed to make a steam competitor.
Oh, I know. I got exactly 1 free game from EGS, which I promptly bought on stream myself once I realized that EGS had no offline mode (so the game I had been playing refused to launch during an Internet outage).
And that’s one of the many reasons EGS isn’t able to get a significant market share, because as I said initially, EGS fucking sucks. If they spent half as much on improving the store as they do for timed exclusives and trying to lure people in with free games, they might actually get somewhere.
How is anyone going to compete with a platform that most gamers have all of their games on?
They could offer their games DRM-free, guarantee that their multiplayer games have LAN or provide servers and/or at least provide that information clearly to the consumer, write an open source drop-in replacement for Steam Input and Workshop, guarantee more uptime on their matchmaking/friends servers, retain old versions of games that they distribute, and allow for user-customized or open source clients to fit all sorts of UI preferences, off the top of my head.
GOG mandates that all games must be DRM-free, so when I shop there, I know what I’m getting. Valve has tags that tell me if a game supports LAN, but developers aren’t required to report that, so I can’t tell if a multiplayer game I’m buying is built to last if the developer didn’t think to list it; if they were required to, that would be different. People lean on Steam Input and Workshop because those features are made easy for them, but using them means you don’t get those benefits outside of Steam, so there should be an open, third party alternative that developers can easily switch to if they’re familiar with developing for Steam; a company running a non-Steam store has an incentive to develop this. Matchmaking and friends servers, as they exist today, are frequently provided by the storefront, so when Steam servers go down for maintenance and I’m in the middle of an online match of Skullgirls, we get disconnected, and we have to wait until they come back up; there are ways to increase uptime and prevent this interruption, but Valve hasn’t improved the situation in at least 15 years.
If EGS mandated those things it would be as successful as GOG. Which is irrelevant compared to Steam. Steam didn’t become successful because of tags. It’s because they were first.
GOG succeeds in one key area that gives me a reason to shop there. Steam succeeds in other areas. Epic succeeds in none. If GOG wants to supplant Steam, they need to be good in that key area and the areas that I value from Steam. If Epic wants to supplant Steam, they need to give a single shit about what their customers want.
Honestly, even those are pretty overkill to make a competing storefront. All you’d have to do is to offer lower prices and/or take a smaller percentage while matching at least a fraction of Steam’s functionality (unlike Epic) or actively working to screw over customers (also unlike Epic). If a store sold games consistantly 5% cheaper than Steam, even without controller options, good support, a built-in forum, explicit Linux support, ect., I’m confident it would be reasonably successful. Just look at Humble and Fanatical. While they do (mostly) sell Steam keys, their prices are arguably what made them a success, not the features you get after redeaming the Steam keys.
Even beside that, the ideas you provided are all pretty minor. If you’re willing to throw more significant amounts of money at the platform, like many before have, you can go a lot further than that even. For example, seeing as Steam’s discovery algorithm is one of the bigger benifits Steam provides, you could one-up them by providing off-platform marketing for games launching on your platform. This would be a way to bring devlopers and players alike to use your platform without screwing over either. Similarly, you could take a page out of Epic’s book and do giveaways regularly. Alternatively, you could use a less generous system such as “buy anything and get x game free” or “every $10 spent gives you a chance to win x game bundle” to make it more sustainable, and/or allow you to market specific underperforming games. It isn’t that hard to come up with ideas that would allow a competitor to do well. You just have to do that rather than putting all your resources into trying to take games away from players, and harvest their data.
Success is not illegal. Valve isn’t buying up smaller competing storefronts, or paying off developers for exclusivity, or burying competition in legal fees and prepared 80-page lawsuits. The only thing holding back real competition is the competing platforms being dogshit.
I was excited for the EGS when it was announced. Then it turned out to be a garbage platform with the shady exclusivity deals that turned Steam into an ad platform for games that had been poached by Epic. Valve responded to it with the Steam Deck and Proton.
At some point you’re so entrenched in the market you don’t have to do anything anymore. I was quite surprised that Valve somehow evaded EU Digital Markets Act gatekeeper criteria.
Ok but you made a claim that they were leveraging their market position to maintain a monopoly. So please describe how they are doing that in any way shape or form.
Just because someone claims something to sue a company does not mean it’s true. You gotta go through the whole court process and prove it.
It says Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to so-called price parity obligations, preventing titles being sold at cheaper prices on rival platforms
I’ve never seen any publisher claim this, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But it sure doesn’t sound like that has anything to do with being a monopoly. Epic, GoG, Ubisoft, etc. could all do the exact same thing.
Anyway, thanks for the link. I was not the one to downvote you on your last comment. You did what I asked.
Because you’re intentionally ignoring the fact that every time you buy a game you’re paying more than you really need to, therefore you’re keeping less of your wealth than you should.
What exactly is your point? The comment you linked to has me saying I am poor, and the comment your replying to says the same thing. Ten bucks for one full video game in six months is not being overcharged. A pair of jeans is more than ten bucks.
If you’re arguing that the only good game is a free game, I’m not going to agree with you. I will happily pirate “AAA” games, but indie games I’ll pay for.
Highschool freshman edge bs is annoying as hell. You’re not as smart as you think you are.
It is being overcharged when they game should be 7$ instead.
That applies everywhere. You pay 100$ to do your grocery, 30$ goes to the store owner, you’re here defending the store owner while you’re trying to choose between eating and paying rent.
Find me a game that costs less than 10$ to make then! It’s the logic you’re coming up with!
Do you think you’re the only one purchasing the game? On a 10$ game you’ve got about 5$ going to the devs, 2$ to the publisher, 3$ to Steam. It’s 5$ per copy they the devs need to cover development costs, the rest goes to companies unrelated to the actual development and they’re the companies that make the most profit in the end because the cost to provide their service is the lowest.
I’m using the example that you provided, the exact same calculation applies to any game sold on Steam because it’s %! “How is 5$ enough?” I don’t know, you tell me, you’re the one who brought up the 10$ game in the first place, how do YOU expect the devs to make a living if they only got 5$ from the 10$ you paid? Because that’s the reality they have to deal with!
70$ game? Same thing, about 30 to 35$ is taken by Valve and the publisher, that’s overhead you’re paying for and it’s the part of the revenue that leads to the most profit for the people who get it, the rest of the revenues goes to the people who actually have spendings to cover and their P/E ratio is the worst of the three parties involved.
Heck, Vampire Survivors has always sold for less than 10$, the 50% left for the dev was enough for him to make a living off it and cover his development cost, so I guess it’s actually possible for some indie games, right?
Man, either you’re an idiot or you’re just trolling.
Someday, when you actually interact with people in real life, in person, and don’t rely on your parents for everything you’ll see how stupid your entire “argument” is.
You’ve also never made anything, so you really have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Says the guy who complains about being poor to the guy who’s got his shit in order. Guess who of the two doesn’t understand how the world works and is getting exploited the most 🤔
Blame the game not the player, it’s not like they are doing some next level weird shit like all the competition does. This rigged economic system allowed this situation.
Ok, so then handle all of that yourself at cost. Which will lead to the death of your studio faster?
Seriously though, a $15 game selling just 100k copies is still $1m to you (before taxes) and has no upkeep. You do all that steam does yourself, you’re going to drown in operations costs and upkeep time.
I agree with you but at the same time I feel like I should point out that this is the China fallacy, where there's a billion people in China and if you could just tap into even 0.3% of their market you would make bank.
While it's technically true, the fallacy behind it overshadows the difficulty of acquiring that percentage of the market. The grand majority of games released never become cash positive, and over 50% of games on steam alone never make more than $4,000.
This is not an issue with distribution, it's an issue with marketing and market fit, and accompanied by the base fact of that if you're the kind of person who is good at making games, it would be a rarity for you to also be the kind of person that's good at marketing the games you made.
Those are two entirely different wheelhouses that function best with two entirely different personality types, and that's not covering all of the different disciplines that you need to make a game or run a game making company in the first place.
Use Steams competitors then if you don’t want to pay Steams cut. If you’re getting less overall from them, that tells you all you need to know about the validity of Steams fees
Ah fair. My reading comprehension also failed there because I thought you were the same person the person you responded to was responding to was (Person I thought you were - Person you responded to - you - me: if that makes what I said make more sense). I guess my response though is that discoverability is going to be an issue for any new game regardless of whether someone chooses to put their game on Steam or not (and I’d argue that not putting their game on Steam would negatively impact their discoverability, hence another point in favour of Steams cut)
edit: (I actively hate Epic though, so consider taking their money as losing the possibility of ever getting mine. I am NOT for console exclusive bs on the PC marketplace, and Epic is actively trying to make that a thing. So if you except money from epic to go exclusive on their store, I’m only ever going to pirate your game, if I can even be bothered to play it at all)
After that well-informed take, listen to an actual indie developer talk about why the 30% is worth it: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gwoAmifo9r0 (it’s a separate but similar lawsuit by a “waaahmbulance-chaser” law firm in the UK)
Enjoy accelerating late stage capitalism while pretending you’re against it because you’re incapable of seeing things outside of black and white thinking
Damn dude that link fuckin DESTROYS every braindead “b-b-but STEAMS MONOPOLY!!!” arguement I’ve seen uttered by idiots who want to bring late stage capitalism to the PC marketplace just so they can pretend they stood up to a company
insider-gaming.com
Aktywne