What extra value do you actually need? Hell, I use a third party launcher so I don’t have to deal with the other ones and their bloat and can just launch my games.
Also, that 30% bought Gaben six yachts so let’s stop pretending that they need 30% in order to develop the extras you talked about…
You can have a monopoly without abusing it, you’re still in a monopolistic position and in a position where you can start abusing it and people are left without an alternative.
All your games are on Steam and stuck there, tomorrow they decide to start charging users a monthly fee for online services, what then? You purchased multiplayer games telling yourself the purchase price was all you would need to pay but now you need to pay every month to play those games all because Valve can do whatever they want since they don’t have any real competition.
So yes, monopolies are a problem because they open the door to abuse even if it doesn’t happen at the moment.
That’s like saying that Walmart doesn’t have a monopoly in your little town because there’s this one other store that stays open even though most clients don’t go anymore.
Hell, the first sign that a monopoly exist is that independents that said they wouldn’t deal with the company with the monopoly start to do it because they realise that their sales aren’t up to par because customers won’t buy from them unless their product is available in the bigger store.
It’s not that people didn’t want to play their games (otherwise they wouldn’t sell on Steam either), it’s that people didn’t want to play them unless they were available on a specific launcher and that means Steam is in a monopolistic position.
Let’s reverse the roles for a second: EGS is the big player and Steam is just getting started. EGS suddenly starts paying all publishers to only publish on their platform. Does that sound like competition to you? You don’t break a monopoly by using tools used by monopolies.
You’re so close to figuring it out yet you pass right by it…
Also, Steam can have all the extras you mentioned while also making Gaben a billionaire so they do in fact get a huge surplus by charging 30% and found absolutely afford to give you all those extras with a smaller cut
Not to rain on your parade but Gabe Newell collects yachts so if you’re against multi billion dollar mega corps then your option is itch.io and buying from indie devs directly and that’s pretty much it.
Like for many other people, Valve single player experiences were one of my favorite of all time growing up. I considered both Half-Life and Portal to be masterpieces. It’s true they’ve always been distracted with multiplayer games as well, things like Counter-Strike or Team Fortress and I did play them for sure, because I...
AAA Chinese game, not surprising that it would be so popular but a majority must be Chinese player as it didn’t get that much coverage in the rest of the world as far as I understand from everyone’s reaction…
For sure, I wasn’t criticizing, just pointing out that it’s probably the reason why there’s so many players yet barely anyone in this thread had heard about it
Well it aims for the planet you want to go to, goes in a straight line and makes sure you don’t hit that planet by slowing down when getting close to it, if something gets in the way it doesn’t course correct though
A Warhammer 40,000 space marine is not just your usual sci-fi super soldier. They are hulking behemoths, 10 feet tall (and about 10 feet wide too). They don’t move like people, they move like freight trains. They have the physical bearing of an industrial freezer unit and the emotional intelligence of a crocodile. They do not...
Keep in mind that the products that exist already don’t have the OS developer behind them, Microsoft could do exactly like Steam and have a gaming ready UI based on the Xbox UI and plain old Windows 11 running in the background (tweaked to better fit the portable PC setup).
Considering that Xbox sell less and less, that the Xbox is basically a locked down PC at this point, that people go crazy for portable PCs and that they can actually replace a console… I mean, it would make a lot of sense. They already have a hardware division as well so…
It’s their choice to take a cut big enough that they’re making that kind of profit, no one is forcing them, it’s all greed, stop acting like they wouldn’t be able to lower it.
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.
There’s a cost to producing things. All the overhead you’re being charged that ends up enriching investors and bosses that have so much money they wouldn’t be able to spend it if they tried? That’s money you could keep in your pocket.
Have you ever thought that maybe you evaluate that some things are worth a certain amount just because that’s what you’re used to seeing them sold for so in reality you just underestimate what your money is worth and how much you should be able to purchase with it? Because that’s exactly what’s happening, especially with digital goods, there’s no supply vs demand relationship here, there’s no rarity.
If bread sells for 5$ for long enough you’ll think you’re getting your money’s worth by getting it on sale for 4.50$ without realizing that it cost 2$ to make it, transport it and put it on the shelves and there’s still 2.50$ going to the grocery store owner. You were paying that bread 3$ a couple of years ago and at the time it cost 1.75$ to make, transport and store, but you’re ignoring all that because what’s important is that right now it’s 50¢ less than full price so you’re getting your money’s worth. Most of the surplus is going to a company that’s just making record profit year after year after year, but that record profit comes from somewhere. It went up 100% in a couple of years while the people who made, transported and put the bread on the shelves have seen their salary increase by 10% and you’ve seen what you spend on grocery increase by 66%, but hey, you’re getting your money’s worth and the price is fair because that’s what people accept to be paying, right?
Yes there’s something immoral about it, it’s a choice they they consciously make to make us spend more than necessary on the products they have to sell so they can accumulate more wealth and we can accumulate less wealth.
Or simply say "I guess 30% is more than we need, let’s cut that to 10% and see how that goes.
If billionaires didn’t exist we wouldn’t need to subsidize anyone, the majority of the world’s issues are related to the fact that a minority keeps a majority of wealth to themselves and just try to acquire more and more.
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.
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.
“when the pandemic struck”… The pandemic that was caused by poor people hunting wild animals to sell their meat to make a living? Gosh darn, I wonder what we could have done to make it so these people wouldn’t have to resort to that to make a living… Oh well 🤷
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?
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.
Incredible how you look at the comment history of all these people and all of them have comments about not having enough money or being angry at rich people, but all critical thinking goes out the window when it’s for a hobby they like, suddenly whatever they’re told to spend is perfectly OK!
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$, the 50% left for the dev was enough for him to make a living off it and cover his development cost, so I guess it’s actually possible for some indie games, right?
Man, either you’re an idiot or you’re just trolling.
Valve gets a 30% cut, take a game, reduce that cut to 10% and figure out the price. Price stays the same? Alright, that just means more money going to the devs, which are the people like you and me, instead of Gabe, which is a billionaire.
Apply that in all sectors and we end up richer, billionaires end up poorer. The 1% would finally stop owning 63% of all wealth… But I guess you would rather defend their right to make as much profit as they want while you can only afford a 10$ 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.
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 🤔
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