Comment on Here’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 2 months agoYou 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)?
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.
WereCat@lemmy.world 2 months ago
lol
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.
LunarLoony@lemmy.sdf.org 1 month ago
But where do you draw the line? Don’t get me wrong, I am against the idea of, as you say, “excessive wealth extraction”. But what classes as excessive? If I ran an independent shop making cards, and I had an 80% profit margin, is that stealing?
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.
denshirenji@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Do they bank 8 billion dollars or does 8 billion dollars make its way from our hands to theirs. There is a difference. How much of that 8 billion goes to managing infrastructure.
In fact:
1000002026
1000002025
Source: www.statista.com/…/steam-game-sales-revenue/
To be clear, I agree that the way our model works is broken. Wall street and infinite profit gains can only work so long until the system collapses, and Steam is a part of this. Some of the statements made here are just not factual and I feel the need to be pedantic, because I don’t believe that spreading misinformation will help anything. Attack CEO pay disparity or something useful and true.