this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
897 points (97.6% liked)

Games

38929 readers
700 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Inspired by true events from this morning

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 40 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Yes, their cut is 30% which is a lot, but they are pretty much the only big platform out there. Epic games has been trying to get in the game but so far they are not close. Their cut is 15%.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (2 children)

I want to note that you'd need about $143 in gross sales to meet the threshold of $100 in net profit.

On the surface that sounds like a lot. But, they're providing a service without any guarantee of any income. Epic can only compete because they've few users and are willing to operate at a near loss in attempt to garner market share.

This will be a difficult one for others to understand as a "good deal". Gamers are usually correct when they pull out their pitchforks. This should not be one of those times.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (3 children)

While I'm no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve's market dominance in PC game sales isn't a good thing for developers or consumers.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

Competition in capitalism is always better than a lack thereof. But, we've not busted monopolies in a significant way since Ma Bell. And, even if we were, at 75% of the global market share they'd not warrant any action yet.

There's going to be a dominant organization because late stage capitalism sucks. And, I'd rather it be Valve than some alternative trying to fuck me over at every opportunity.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

The thing is, steam's market dominance is one of user choice rather than anticompetitive strategies or lack of alternatives. Steam doesn't do exclusives, they don't charge you for external sales, they don't even prevent you from selling steam keys outside the platform, or users from launching non steam games in the client. The only real restriction is that access to steam services requires a license in the active steam account. Even valve-produced devices like the steam deck can install from other stores.

Sure, dominance is bad in an abstract theoretical way and it'd be nice if Gog, itch.io, etc were more competitive, but Steam is dominant because consumers actively choose it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yeah! Other publishers should open their own stores and compete!

.....

Oh wait no fuck oh god oh what have we done

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Epic can only compete because they've few users and are willing to operate at a near loss

Bullshit. Epic's loses are in paying for exclusives and giving away games while ruining their PR.

Steam could operate at 15% if they wanted to. But... why would they do that?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Neither is publicly traded. Neither of us know the numbers.

Does Steam make money on hosting indie games?

How does one research such a question?

I don't need answers. I had them before I made my second post above.

Good luck to you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

https://sell.amazon.com/pricing#referral-fees

I guess, according to you, it costs more to host files than it does to ship you a physical USB.

Maybe all these apps stores need to look into physical delivery in order to bring their costs down.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

Isn’t it free up to a certain amount?

Also aren’t you able to create steam keys for free and resell them wherever you want and they won’t take a cut off those?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago

Steam only charges that for larger developers though iirc