Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It’s easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
That 20-30% tax also gives developers access to Valve’s massive infrastructure (content delivery ain’t easy or cheap) and Steam’s audience, and that’s something that can’t be replicated with exclusivity deals.
I think you’re missing the principle. They could still charge for it, they simply won’t. Think of it this way, if it was EA in that situation would they give it away for free? Somehow I doubt it because EA does things for profit. This is a potential avenue for profit and which means not asking money for it would go against the goal of EA.
Is it though? The only reason other platforms take 15% is to try to break through valve’s market. Once they make it (like Epic) you better trust they’re going to take as much as they can.
Plus, it’s apparently not easy to be generous, Apple and Google make far more money, where are they being generous? Gaben is a gem
(Google and apple also take 30% of transactions on their store). You get much more for you 30% to valve than 30 or 15% anywhere else.
Yup happened to me, I tried half life since it was free and absolutely loved it, yes and that’s why I bought the complete pack (around 8 games iirc) for the 6€ (around 6.5$), and it was an absolute steal imo
Epic, Bethesda, Blizzard and others are not paying for those 30% to Valve. So what’s their excuse? Bethesda resold Skyrim enough times to shame anyone. Blizzard remade Warcraft3 and we all know how that went. I for one am happy Valve did this. They gave an old game a new life for at least a short time by giving it for free to keep, added new multiplayer maps and added some servers. Let people have some fun at anniversary instead of being greedy.
Yeah, but it’s still more profitable for indie game studios to put their game on steam, since they have a larger market to sell to, also valve doesn’t just take the money and goes, they spend it to make really good products that aren’t profitable and wouldn’t be possible else like the steam deck and proton
People behave as if Valve is holding a gun to indie dev’s head and forcing them to pay those 30%. Steam has so many users for a reason. It’s not a monopoly on a whim. They offer a huge benefit to their users at no charge and as little annoyance as possible. People who don’t want to sell on Steam, don’t have to. Easy as that. Sure Valve charges a lot, but they use that money to create a really good quality service that will give them the ability to charge that much without having to resort to timed exclusives and other vile tactics.
On the other hand they pay for all the liabilitys, server capacitys and everything regarding the store and let everyone put their games up i think its fair. Also steam is trusted by almost everyone to always be available and never loose your games. And it does advertising for the games as well.
Yeah, this is cool and all, but it’s like Epic posting a game for free, which they do every week or so. People still complain about Epic being greedy or whatever though. I like the products Valve makes, but this isn’t particularly amazing, just fairly nice to have.
Epic paid people for exclusivity in an attempt to force the customer to use its shitty platform. The free games are just bribes to try to get us to use it. And it’s still not working very well for them.
Nobody would have complained (well ok, some would have, but few) if they just tried to make a better store than steam and get people to use it that way.
They could still do the free games as a bribe, to get people to check out the store, but the store would actually need to not be garbage. The exclusivity payments really rankled people though.
I bought one timed exclusive on Epic (Stranger of Paradise), it left the entire redundant download behind without moving it and devoured 220 GB of my SSD in the process, and I decided I never wanted to use the Epic store again.
I’d love to move to GOG, but then I’d have to go through Lutris, which is currently in the process of crashing constantly for reasons the devs don’t fully understand, so RIP to that I guess.
Valve doesn’t release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It’s great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren’t trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that’s the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
Honestly I’ll defend TF2 loot boxes til I die. There are valid complaints as far as casual gamers go but as someone who played the game for thousands of hours the cosmetic system added a lot of longevity to the game. It was a fun ecosystem to engage with and compared to modern games where you spend $15-20 on a single cosmetic item it was an absolute bargain. If you got tired of an item you could trade it for something else too.
Idk maybe I just got indoctrinated but I have so many positive memories of that game and interacting with the cosmetic system. These days every game you play is shoving their store front in your face. Every cosmetic is $20 and if you don’t buy it now it’s lost forever. Don’t want to spend money? Ok here’s an “event” where you need to play the game 2 hours a day for a week to unlock some meh items and if you don’t then fuck you those items are gone forever.
Agreed. It sounds weird saying, but I feel that Valve did these things right or at least fixed them quickly thereafter. I’ve never felt any sense of pay-to-win or being left out playing TF2. Quite the opposite. I’d get the new items quick enough, and if there was anything in there articular I’d want then there was a robust market willing to make it happen for cheaper than I thought. And “cheaper” referring to in-game items.
I actually agree that loot boxes aren’t intrinsically bad.
I mean, I was buying Magic the Gathering cards before anybody got mad at making blind purchases. The entire field is called Gacha because it’s modelled on analogue equivalents people don’t mind at all.
But that’s not what the community will tell you. Loot boxes are THE problem, if you ask this in a different context. Fundamentally predatory.
Unless you bring it up in this, and only this context. When Valve does it it’s fine. Never mind that they had and actual gambling problem around their retradeable cosmetic loot box drops. Or that their implementation is indistinguishable from others. Or that they have a pattern of innovating in the monetization space not just with loot boxes but with battlepasses, cosmetics and other stuff people claim to not like when other people do it.
The shocker isn’t the actual business practices, it’s the realization that you can get so good at PR that you can’t just get away with it, but have the exact same people that are out there asking for the government to intervene to stop those actively defend you against the mere suggestion that your business model is your actual business model.
Look, I was out there during the big loot box controversies that there were babies going out with thtat bathwater. I like me some Hearthstone and CCGs and other games that do those things. I like a bunch of free to play things. Got a TON of crap every time I even dared to float that online. UNLESS it comes up in a conversation about Valve. Then I get crap flung in the opposite direction.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t like them, I’m saying that brief “maybe I’m indoctrinated” moment of realization should make you take a minute and reassess your relationships with brands and corporations. We are all subject to PR influence.
The “hated industry standards” are in many cases directly copied from the Valve implementations that predate them, so… yeah.
I mean, I haven’t played CS2 yet, and definitely haven’t played CS:GO in a while, but I may need you to point me at the timecode in this video where the superior free-range loot boxes are way better than in, say, Call of Duty, because I’m not sure I caught it the first time.
And again, I’m not against these on principle. I think unboxing videos are a bit weird and I don’t see the appeal of opening tons of boxes in one sitting in real life, either… but this is the exact same implementation being criticized elsewhere.
Blizzard, Bethesda, Epic and many others don’t pay those 30% to Valve. So what’s their excuse for not giving free games?
Valve is also not holding a gun to developer’s head and forcing them to pay those 30%. Valve takes that money and makes a great service that users want to use. That in turn gives them the right to charge that amount of money.
When you look at all the features from cloud saves, chat and voice communication, simple networking without having to mess with routers, Proton, family sharing, streaming, card collecting, trading, achievements, huge sales, anti-cheat, workshop, communities with forums and bug reporting tools, lax refund policy, etc. When other companies start offering same value instead of forcing your hand with exclusives, then we can talk about monopoly
Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It’s easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
That 20-30% tax also gives developers access to Valve’s massive infrastructure (content delivery ain’t easy or cheap) and Steam’s audience, and that’s something that can’t be replicated with exclusivity deals.
I think you’re missing the principle. They could still charge for it, they simply won’t. Think of it this way, if it was EA in that situation would they give it away for free? Somehow I doubt it because EA does things for profit. This is a potential avenue for profit and which means not asking money for it would go against the goal of EA.
30% is the industry standard.
Doesn’t change that it’s a lot lol they’re also basically “the industry”
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Is it though? The only reason other platforms take 15% is to try to break through valve’s market. Once they make it (like Epic) you better trust they’re going to take as much as they can.
Plus, it’s apparently not easy to be generous, Apple and Google make far more money, where are they being generous? Gaben is a gem
(Google and apple also take 30% of transactions on their store). You get much more for you 30% to valve than 30 or 15% anywhere else.
Well it’s easier even to want more money, cooperations giving something away for free that could have earned them money is not that common.
It is when it gets people on your platform, and more likely to spend money on other things on the platform. It’s called a loss leader.
Yup happened to me, I tried half life since it was free and absolutely loved it, yes and that’s why I bought the complete pack (around 8 games iirc) for the 6€ (around 6.5$), and it was an absolute steal imo
Epic, Bethesda, Blizzard and others are not paying for those 30% to Valve. So what’s their excuse? Bethesda resold Skyrim enough times to shame anyone. Blizzard remade Warcraft3 and we all know how that went. I for one am happy Valve did this. They gave an old game a new life for at least a short time by giving it for free to keep, added new multiplayer maps and added some servers. Let people have some fun at anniversary instead of being greedy.
Yeah, but it’s still more profitable for indie game studios to put their game on steam, since they have a larger market to sell to, also valve doesn’t just take the money and goes, they spend it to make really good products that aren’t profitable and wouldn’t be possible else like the steam deck and proton
People behave as if Valve is holding a gun to indie dev’s head and forcing them to pay those 30%. Steam has so many users for a reason. It’s not a monopoly on a whim. They offer a huge benefit to their users at no charge and as little annoyance as possible. People who don’t want to sell on Steam, don’t have to. Easy as that. Sure Valve charges a lot, but they use that money to create a really good quality service that will give them the ability to charge that much without having to resort to timed exclusives and other vile tactics.
They take nothing if you sell your game via keys on other sites like itch.io
Exactly. It’s not like Valve is forcing people to sell their games on Steam. People simply like using Steam. End of story.
On the other hand they pay for all the liabilitys, server capacitys and everything regarding the store and let everyone put their games up i think its fair. Also steam is trusted by almost everyone to always be available and never loose your games. And it does advertising for the games as well.
Yeah, this is cool and all, but it’s like Epic posting a game for free, which they do every week or so. People still complain about Epic being greedy or whatever though. I like the products Valve makes, but this isn’t particularly amazing, just fairly nice to have.
Epic paid people for exclusivity in an attempt to force the customer to use its shitty platform. The free games are just bribes to try to get us to use it. And it’s still not working very well for them.
Nobody would have complained (well ok, some would have, but few) if they just tried to make a better store than steam and get people to use it that way.
They could still do the free games as a bribe, to get people to check out the store, but the store would actually need to not be garbage. The exclusivity payments really rankled people though.
i love it when the epic games store flashbangs my eyeballs when i claim the free shit they give out. what an amazing marketing strategy
fr even though it’s a very petty thing to complain about it just shows how little care they put into their platform
I bought one timed exclusive on Epic (Stranger of Paradise), it left the entire redundant download behind without moving it and devoured 220 GB of my SSD in the process, and I decided I never wanted to use the Epic store again.
I’d love to move to GOG, but then I’d have to go through Lutris, which is currently in the process of crashing constantly for reasons the devs don’t fully understand, so RIP to that I guess.
This.
Valve doesn’t release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It’s great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren’t trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that’s the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
Invented the loot box y’all love so much. Tried to invent paid mods. Valve is still a Corpo and corpos gonna corpos
Honestly I’ll defend TF2 loot boxes til I die. There are valid complaints as far as casual gamers go but as someone who played the game for thousands of hours the cosmetic system added a lot of longevity to the game. It was a fun ecosystem to engage with and compared to modern games where you spend $15-20 on a single cosmetic item it was an absolute bargain. If you got tired of an item you could trade it for something else too.
Idk maybe I just got indoctrinated but I have so many positive memories of that game and interacting with the cosmetic system. These days every game you play is shoving their store front in your face. Every cosmetic is $20 and if you don’t buy it now it’s lost forever. Don’t want to spend money? Ok here’s an “event” where you need to play the game 2 hours a day for a week to unlock some meh items and if you don’t then fuck you those items are gone forever.
Sorry I’m ranting.
Agreed. It sounds weird saying, but I feel that Valve did these things right or at least fixed them quickly thereafter. I’ve never felt any sense of pay-to-win or being left out playing TF2. Quite the opposite. I’d get the new items quick enough, and if there was anything in there articular I’d want then there was a robust market willing to make it happen for cheaper than I thought. And “cheaper” referring to in-game items.
I actually agree that loot boxes aren’t intrinsically bad.
I mean, I was buying Magic the Gathering cards before anybody got mad at making blind purchases. The entire field is called Gacha because it’s modelled on analogue equivalents people don’t mind at all.
But that’s not what the community will tell you. Loot boxes are THE problem, if you ask this in a different context. Fundamentally predatory.
Unless you bring it up in this, and only this context. When Valve does it it’s fine. Never mind that they had and actual gambling problem around their retradeable cosmetic loot box drops. Or that their implementation is indistinguishable from others. Or that they have a pattern of innovating in the monetization space not just with loot boxes but with battlepasses, cosmetics and other stuff people claim to not like when other people do it.
The shocker isn’t the actual business practices, it’s the realization that you can get so good at PR that you can’t just get away with it, but have the exact same people that are out there asking for the government to intervene to stop those actively defend you against the mere suggestion that your business model is your actual business model.
Look, I was out there during the big loot box controversies that there were babies going out with thtat bathwater. I like me some Hearthstone and CCGs and other games that do those things. I like a bunch of free to play things. Got a TON of crap every time I even dared to float that online. UNLESS it comes up in a conversation about Valve. Then I get crap flung in the opposite direction.
I’m not saying you shouldn’t like them, I’m saying that brief “maybe I’m indoctrinated” moment of realization should make you take a minute and reassess your relationships with brands and corporations. We are all subject to PR influence.
Your argument rests on the claim that Valve’s implementation of these practices is indistinguishable from hated industry standards, but I disagree.
The “hated industry standards” are in many cases directly copied from the Valve implementations that predate them, so… yeah.
I mean, I haven’t played CS2 yet, and definitely haven’t played CS:GO in a while, but I may need you to point me at the timecode in this video where the superior free-range loot boxes are way better than in, say, Call of Duty, because I’m not sure I caught it the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJGY6RGPCnY
And again, I’m not against these on principle. I think unboxing videos are a bit weird and I don’t see the appeal of opening tons of boxes in one sitting in real life, either… but this is the exact same implementation being criticized elsewhere.
The power of monopoly
Blizzard, Bethesda, Epic and many others don’t pay those 30% to Valve. So what’s their excuse for not giving free games?
Valve is also not holding a gun to developer’s head and forcing them to pay those 30%. Valve takes that money and makes a great service that users want to use. That in turn gives them the right to charge that amount of money.
When you look at all the features from cloud saves, chat and voice communication, simple networking without having to mess with routers, Proton, family sharing, streaming, card collecting, trading, achievements, huge sales, anti-cheat, workshop, communities with forums and bug reporting tools, lax refund policy, etc. When other companies start offering same value instead of forcing your hand with exclusives, then we can talk about monopoly