It’s fucking wild. Like, I love Steam, don’t get me wrong, but holy shit just suck less and charge less and you could gobble up a lot of that market share. But none of them do.
Comment on Valve Announces New Steam Machine, Steam Controller & Steam Frame
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 day agoThat’s because they make an insane amount of money by taking 30% of every sale on their platform, which nearly everyone uses because they’re a near monopoly and the alternatives are terrible. Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Notably Epic charges less than 30% to try to get more of that market. They even give away games. But their app is still inferior so it gets less use.
Vespair@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
Because Epic doesn’t care about end users and won’t add necessary end user features like reviews.
It’s cool that Epic wants to pay developers more, but the way they disregard the consumer makes the platform non-viable
underscores@lemmy.zip 1 day ago
company: “I want what steam is making and more” shareholders: “brilliant”
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 day ago
“I want what steam is making but I’m not willing to improve service OR charge less!”
BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Most other competitors charge less than steam, but steam has a clause which prevents devs from putting their games cheaper elsewhere. This is the real big shitty move made by valve, otherwise they do mostly everything right. I hope someone challenges this clause in a court of law someday, it looks very monopolistic to me
LupertEverett@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Except that is a thing only for selling steam keys outside steam. There are no price parity clauses.
partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
Also here is a gamedev saying that they’ll sell their game for a cheaper price on EGS: twitter.com/…/1700066610302603405
store.epicgames.com/…/heard-of-the-story-ff3758
store.steampowered.com/app/…/Heard_of_the_Story/
If what you saying was actually the case I am 120% sure Tim Sweeney would be all over it lol.
Lastly, there was ALREADY a case like that (Valve vs. Wolfire). The courts couldn’t find anything regarding Wolfire’s claims and then dismissed the case.
BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Ho ok, my bad, I completely misunderstood the issue then. It seems reasonable to impose a price equivalence on steam key
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Around $3.5 Million per employee, nearly 5x the next highest company, which is Facebook at around $780,000 per employee.
that’s a bullshit metric only useful to incite hatred. why the fuck do you want to say that valve is “this many times worse than facebook!”? it is obviously false.
only thing this proves is that they have relatively few employees. which also probably means that most of them do real work instead of being overloaded with managers
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The numbers just show that they are 8x as efficient. I only referenced Facebook because they’re the next closest company for comparison.
I never said they were worse than Facebook. That’s your assumption, reading what you want, not what’s actually being said.
CatsPajamas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
Their efficiency is largely due to their flat organizing structure. They have no real hierarchy to speak of.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Which is also one of the reasons so few new things get done, and why they (until now) haven’t been able to count to 3.
To get anything done you either have to be able to do it entirely by yourself which is unlikely, or get enough others organized and on board to make it happen.
CosmoNova@lemmy.world 1 day ago
You‘re getting downvotes for no reason. Also anyone who ever had to contact Steam support felt how criminally understaffed they are so it makes sense they make tons of money per employee I guess.
Lfrith@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
As if normal for companies to say you know what we are getting enough profits lets not monetize things even more.
ysjet@lemmy.world 1 day ago
I should note that 30% is incredibly standard in the industry, and Valve offers a LOT more for that 30% than literally any other digital publisher. Physical publishers take substantially more, and the only digital store that offers less is EGS, which is simultaneously absolute dogshite and also has been trying very, very hard to astroturd the ‘30%’ thing for ages.
Nintendo, Sony, and Apple all take 30%. I think MS does as well, but don’t quote me on that one.
WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
don’t forget google. that applies to all paid apps, in app purchases and donations on the play store, not only for games. google also forbids you from showing any other donation option on your website if you link to it from your app.
Amir@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
Can confirm; my app was removed from the Play Store due to a donation link to my PayPal. Absolutely insane.
ysjet@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
I’m going to be honest, I have no idea how I forgot google. They also definitely take 30%.
anzo@programming.dev 1 day ago
Fwiw, GOG has no DRM for their titles (its own niche space, not competition). Not sure if they charge 30% too, but even in such case they’re giving you more because of the lack of DRM.
Steam is quite virtuous, they gave us Proton. But is far from being based.
ysjet@lemmy.world 21 hours ago
GOG has no DRM, but they also don’t offer the same kind of services, like workshop, updates, cloud sync, etc.
Not trying to say they’re worse or anything, I love GOG, but it’s really kind of comparing apples to oranges here.
strongarm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
GoG also sold the modern hitman games which have DRM.
There are also many games on Steam that are DRM free, you may need to use the Steam Client to download them (but possibly also Steam CMD) but then you can copy the files off as a backup and run them without Steam
Inkstainthebat@pawb.social 1 day ago
Can confirm. Serious Sam Classics are copy and paste-easy to share
brachiosaurus@mander.xyz 1 day ago
gamesradar.com/…/over-5-000-games-released-on-ste…
“Over 5,000 games released on Steam this year didn’t make enough money to recover the $100 fee to put a game on Valve’s store, research estimates”