That’s how taxes work, yes, and I consider them valuable. There’s a lot of work in actually deciding what work needs to be done, finding the people to do it, negotiating prices, things like that. So yes, I do think “the Lord” is adding a lot of value and making the whole operation possible in a way that probably wouldn’t work if you had everybody just trying to agree on how to spend the money and split the costs.
I will also point out Valve provides not just the platforms, but also some libraries for game development, including a networking library with NAT punchthrough (which is why on steam you can right-click a friend and join them, even on small indie games, without the game devs hosting their own servers for that) and a library for input handling (though less mandatory, but if used it makes input remapping in steam better integrated).
Another thing to note is that the value provided can be experienced more directly - if you want to try a great website/store that, to my understanding, doesn’t take any cut while providing hosting, try playing some games from itch. Depending on your gaming habits you might not notice much of a difference, and more of your money would go to the devs, but you might sorely miss some features like cloud saves, steam networking, steam input, proton, automatic delta/incremental updates.
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Okay.
So, host a game on your own website, with its own patching process, payment systems, and forum. See how long it takes you, and how many sales you get out of it.
Once you do that, you may start to realize where that 30% is going. Sure, once you have the game and are playing it, you can say, “gee, it’s weird that Valve took a 30% cut of this work”. But it’s like seeing a long list of credits at the end of a movie when you were only aware of the signature voice of the lead actor.
jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
It’s not like this, because most (not all) of those credits actually worked on the movie, itself. Their labor went into the thing that was produced in the end. I’m not arguing there’s no cost to distribution. It’s just not value-adding and so it ends up being extractive imo.
I’m also not trying to claim there’s no productive work involved with maintaining a distribution platform, or that they aren’t necessary. That’s one of the issues, they are necessary, and there is one big player, and anyone who wants to sell their good is beholden to them. Valve still has a feudal-lord-like position in relation to the people who actually make the games, themselves.
Katana314@lemmy.world 3 days ago
If you’ve ever watched those credits, you’d know that’s not true. Credits don’t just go to people who assembled lighting rigs or held the boom mic - they also go to the offices that negotiated with local governments to arrange on-sight shooting, or production studios that fronted funding, or people who provided QA and support for the animation software the CGI studio is using. Much of it becomes distantly disconnected, and that’s exactly what the relation to Steam becomes.
You’re also perhaps being disingenuous about the “one big player” thing. It is possible, and achievable for individuals to write their own launcher. I teased it as being more work than an indie dev often wants, but it’s still doable. Factorio and Minecraft famously did this a long time ago AND got initially popular as a result. Many Asian games run their own Windows launcher. As a result, they collect 100% of revenue, but forfeit some Steam exposure. Notably, some large publishers can cut better deals with Steam based on that popularity; “We don’t need you, but we both gain a bit more from working together”.
Some indies have even learned about this the reverse way, in seeing that merely because Steam is popular, publishing there doesn’t necessarily cover advertising for them; and even a good game can fade into obscurity. There’s some pretty heavy misconceptions relating Steam alone to a game’s level of success.
On the other hand, people have tried to argue Epic, Origin, and others failed because they “weren’t as popular as Steam”, but they’re also generally not as good a product as Steam - not just due to poorer programming, but choosing to not even offer certain core features like reviews.
jwiggler@sh.itjust.works 3 days ago
But these are value-adding things too, wouldn’t you say? They end up being integral to the making of the thing itself. Different from distribution which is just, as I see it, granting access to a market that you control so the good can be sold.
I’m definitely not being disingenuous – I’m not a Valve-hater out here trying to convince people they’re evil. I use Steam and would rather use it than any other platform. It’s simply better. But that’s not really relevant to what I’m saying, besides it’s implication that it makes Steam more attractive to potential buyers of games. In relation to me, these platforms aren’t a product at all. They’re marketplaces devs have to pay a tax to access. As you note, it’s possible to bypass them – but I’d wager that makes things much much harder for the dev. I’d guess Factorio and Minecraft are exceptions to the rule.
But yeah, you do have a point that are others out there. I’d consider them extractive, too. As I see it, theyre less so a service and moreso based on ownership and control of infrastructure that probably should be common property.