And yet we’re still waiting for hl3
Comment on Payment Processors Are Pressuring Major Gaming Vendors to Pull LGBTQ+ and NSFW Titles
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoSteam can 100% enter any market they want, especially something entirely digital like online payment processing. That’s pretty closely related to what they do already. They just have to have a reason to want to do so.
Steam makes a reported $3.5 million per employee from commissions alone. Possibly as much at $19 million per head across the board. To put that into perspective, Facebook, one of the most profitable companies on the planet, averages a net income of $780,000 per employee, and Apple at $476,000 per employee.
pcgamer.com/…/valves-reported-profit-per-head-fro…
Steam may not be as large as those companies, but they’re so effectively streamlined. So much of their profits come from existing systems that only need minimal maintenance as opposed to needing to constantly develop new products. It is a well-oiled money printing machine at this point. And nothing they do is based on any sort of speculation bubble threatening to burst at any point.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s almost surely a result of how Valve works internally for approving projects. They operate with a flat management structure. With no bosses or managers, the employees themselves choose which projects to work on. The philosophy is that Valve only hires the best, and they should operate at their best doing what they enjoy instead of simply being told what to do.
Every employee at Valve is given the freedom to join whatever project they choose, or to create a new one. They are encouraged to work on what they feel if the most important project to the company and what will have the highest direct impact on their customers.
If the Valve employees wanted to make Half Life 3, they would. At this point the joke is that Valve simply can’t count to three. Half Life 1 and 2, them Episode 1 and Episode 2, Portal 1 and Portal 2, Team Fortress and Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike 2. Several of these have had other interim releases, especially Counter-Strike, but those were always based on the previous game and not a totally new game from scratch, much like the Half Life Episodes.
p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
This is BS. Whatever payment processor they develop will need to interact with all of the major credit card processors: VISA, MasterCard, Discover, and American Express. All credit and debit cards use these four brands as the backing network. There is no way around it.
Nobody is going to add a new credit card brand, not even Steam. Amazon doesn’t do it. Twitter doesn’t do it. Ebay doesn’t do it. Nobody does. If they did, they would face immediate retribution from the VMDA empire. Their payments would cease, and Steam would collapse overnight.