You mean the game devs they provide CDN at no additional costs, networking features a dev environment that is far more comfortable than any competitor and various additional revenue streams (such as trading cards and items)?
Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs
firadin@lemmy.world 2 months agoBecause they don’t pay any of their actual workforce: the game devs they steal 30% from for every game sold.
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Azzu@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It’s still stealing if the profit is this extremely high. Of course a successful business includes providing a useful product. But if you make so much more money per employee than any other company, that means the amount you’re charging is disproportional. They could change Steam fees to 5% and still be extremely profitable. They choose not to because of greed.
This is not me condemning them by the way, I think their greed and what they do with the money available to them is still mostly better than what other people do, but it’s still greed.
LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 2 months ago
So am I stealing from my employer because I earn more than the cost of my bills?
Azzu@lemm.ee 2 months ago
If the amount of money massively outweighs your bills, then I would say yes. Also if your “bills” are extreme luxury, then even without that. We really need to stop with this massive wealth inequality. Our economy works on transactions. If the profit margin on any transaction (including labor) is exorbitantly high, then something is going wrong.
Azzu@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Who said anything about costs/bills? I’m talking about excessive wealth extraction. If a group of people gets massively wealthy by taking lots of money from other people, one should think if they really need all that money.
freeman@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
How much is the profit? 30% is revenue not profit.
Why is money per employee a useful metric? One would expect most costs of a store like steam to be in hardware and network not in labor.
Azzu@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Exactly. The question is how much is really necessary to operate that service. We as a species really need to stop thinking about constant growth and more and more wealth, and that includes growth and wealth that is “reasonable” compared to other extremely greedy people. Right now it looks like Steam is growing to infinity and making more and more money. They’re the same like everyone else trying to make more and more money. Of course they’re more ethical and they return value for that money, but they’re still part of the same system of infinite growth that is not sustainable.
This infinite growth is happening because they extract more value than they require. If they extracted as much value as they require to sustain their business, they wouldn’t grow. But of course constant growth is what is what everyone expects and thus no one sees a problem with it.
I see it as stealing.
denshirenji@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It isn’t 30% profit. It’s a 30% charge. Servers, broadband connections, etc… are expensive. Those numbers may be pulled out of someone’s ass, so I don’t know their veracity, but 30% might not be too much.
firadin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is a thread about how Valve makes over 8 billion dollars despite basically all their revenue coming from an in-game store that sells other people’s content. Of course its too much.
systemglitch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“steal” lol.
balder1991@lemmy.world 2 months ago
As if people are forced to publish there.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
They can even list there and sell Steam keys on their website and not pay any of that to Valve, with the only stipulation that Steam keys cannot be sold for less than on Steam itself.
So basically:
- You don’t need to publish there
- But if you do, you can still publish elsewhere
- And you can sell Steam keys directly with no cut to Valve
You only pay the 30% cut for sales made through Steam.
That’s incredibly reasonable.
Grimy@lemmy.world 2 months ago
There aren’t many option and all of them except one are predatory. Regulation that would limit the amount taken would be a real boon to the industry. Steam, Epic, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all guilty of this. The government should step in but they don’t because of lobbying and donations.
No one defends Microsoft when it comes to this. Gaben gets a free pass because he pretends to be a cool guy when he’s just another billionaire essentially robbing his workforce and customers.
sep@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Steam is the only store putting the cusromer first. The refund policy is top notch. Heck just making proton, giving gamers the choise of os, is the best thing for gamers since computers was invented!
BigSadDad@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This thread contains a lot of great bangers. But let’s play devil’s advocate for just a minute.
Let me know when you build a global distribution platform with 5-9 uptime, credit card processing, full compliance with all of the various laws in all the countries you serve and also provide a cdn for my game for free.
I’ll be waiting. You better pull through on this, you owe the community your labor
firadin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Me: “Rent seeking is an illegitimate practice, landlords steal money from laborers by extorting them for a necessary good!”
You: “Oh yeah? Why don’t you just buy your own land and build your own apartment building?”
You’re a dumbass.
BigSadDad@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Lmao, thanks for demonstrating my point for me better than I ever could.
firadin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
What point? That you’re a corporate bootlicker?
BaroqueInMind@lemmy.one 2 months ago
How is Valve supposed to make money without charging devs for using their enormous platform? I’m genuinely curious what ideas you have. Disregard everyone’s non-sequiturs here, please.
firadin@lemmy.world 2 months ago
By charging 3% instead of 30%? Do you really think their servers cost $8.5b? Does the work to distribute a game and process payment equal 30% of the labor required to make a game?
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Taking a different and hopefully more productive stance than the other guy, I just want to explore people’s thoughts.
People already have built these alternatives. Itch.io, EGS, Humble Store, Microsoft Store, GOG. These platforms exist, but they struggle to achieve the full market dominance that Steam has as the “default” platform, meaning Devs are borderline forced to accept the 30% cut if they have any hope of making sales.
As shown by Steam’s huge profits, they certainly take a higher cut than they have to, and they can definitely stomach a smaller cut
BigSadDad@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’ve made a comment before in the past when dealing with game publishing. All of the things Steam provides, including worldwide distribution to a lot of regions EGS, MS store, etc don’t sell in because of a variety of laws, Steam just does better.
You pay less because you get less. I’m selling a product. The last thing I’m going to cheap out in is sales. I’m not going to see great sales from the EGS because A)Nobody uses it and B) the shopping experience is terrible. I don’t have access to the same makers and (hearsay) the actual process of getting your game distributed is a pain. I wouldn’t know, I don’t sell on EGS.
Further, we were having a conversation about a problem that doesn’t exist. You’re more than welcome to use Steam and other storefronts.
Hell, you can handle all of the sales yourself AND put it on steam. Most people will buy it on steam simply because that’s where all of the customers are.
Asking Steam to lower their prices because that’s where you’d make the most money is a mind bender.
It’s like trying to sell your hand made Combs. The gas station on the corner is happy to take only 20% of the profit. They’re all over the place and accessible. But you really want to sell it at the boutique shops because they have more comb-seeking customers. But then when they ask for 30% of sales, you balk and tell them that’s too high and they should lower their cut to that of the gas station.
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 2 months ago
You pay less because you get less. I’m selling a product. The last thing I’m going to cheap out in is sales. I’m not going to see great sales from the EGS because A)Nobody uses it
That’s exactly it, Devs have to accept Steam’s cut because it’s essentially the only place you can sell things. It makes logical sense, but do you not see why this is a disadvantageous position for the Devs to be put in?
It’s like trying to sell your hand made Combs. The gas station on the corner is happy to take only 20% of the profit. They’re all over the place and accessible. But you really want to sell it at the boutique shops because they have more comb-seeking customers.
This would be a fine analogy, if there weren’t a single digit amount of storefronts. Steam and EGS are more equivalent to supermarkets. Sure the odd person is going to go to speciality stores on occasion, but the vast majority of sales are done through supermarkets. Steam is a supermarket competing against speciality stores. The only other real supermarket in town is EGS and as you’ve discussed, it’s such a dumpster fire no one shops there.
I’m not disagreeing that Steam deserves its position, it does for sure. But we live in a world where it has no meaningful competition, and one of the ways it exercises its position is by maintaining their 30% cut. A cut which was established by stores that had to manage the logistics for real physical copies of the games.
My point is that there isn’t a reason that Steam has such a high cut, other than it wants more money, and has the market saturation to command more money
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 months ago
If you don’t want a publisher to take a cut: self-publish. Evwry publisher takes a cut. Valve just takes 10% more than everyone else, while also providing more than anyone else to those devs.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Valve is not a publisher they are a store. The percentage they take is in line with every other digital store, except itch.io Also compared to brick and mortar stores that percentage is low.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 months ago
Valve is both a publisher and developer.
Steam is a store.
A publisher is merely any individual or business that makes others’ works available for sale. Valve does this through Steam.
SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Okay Valve is also a publisher but how many games have they published from outside developers? The only one I can think of is Garry’s mod and a Portal spin-offs. So it’s virtually impossible to get your game published by Valve the publisher. The person above said that Valve takes a 30% cut, they were obviously referring to the store fee. But then you replied “don’t work with a publisher then” Which doesn’t make sense since Valve only publishes their own games.
rdri@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Valve just takes 10% more than everyone else
What do you mean? 30% is used by almost every digital store.
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 months ago
Since when? Valve’s 30% has always been contentious because everyone else had only been 15-20%. It’s the main thing Tim Sweeny constantly whines about.
explore_broaden@midwest.social 2 months ago
I prefer not to buy games on steam, and when a game is available from another channel (for example Factorio is available on the devs’ website) I will buy it there. And yet, most games are only on steam, so the devs really don’t seem to care about trying to avoid that 30% cut when they can.
Tier1BuildABear@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Tell me you know nothing about the gaming industry without telling me lol
GiveMemes@jlai.lu 2 months ago
You mean the game devs that they take 30% from in a contract the devs agree to in order to list their game on the largest PC gaming store?
Besides that, steam has an incredibly low financial requirement to start selling your games on their platform. $100 usd per game (at least in the US) and you get it back if your game sells enough copies (100 maybe? I forget tbh.) It’s a great platform for indie devs which is why we’ve seen indie PC gaming boom so much in the past decade or so especially.
systemglitch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well said.