this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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Can you imagine Battle.net beating Steam, then the primary online digital distribution platform ending up being owned by Activision?
I get the icks just thinking about it.
The worst part is it's not that far fetched, we're actually pretty lucky that valve isn't massively predatory and we didn't end up with bobby kotick instead of gaben
The reason Valve is not massively predatory is because they aren't publicly traded and remain a private company.
We got lucky.
This is true, but it's not the only factor. Staying private allows a company to not be predatory, but it definitely does not guarantee it - it simply allows the executives to choose. It's the combination of Valve being private and Gaben always staying true to his values despite his incredible wealth that gave us Steam in its current form.
I've known plenty of private companies that were as shitty as a public one, or more. Quality executives are vanishingly rare, particularly at this level of company value.
I'm incredibly wary of what will happen if/when he retires or dies. I hope they have some sort of iron clad succession plan in place.
Public companies can choose that too, they're just mostly run by horrible people.
The entire gambling lootboxes were massively popularized by Valve, turning Team Fortress 2 from pay2play to predatory gambling.
TF2 is not and has never been pay for anything except cosmetics.
I come from a time where we all lost our shit over horse armor being sold. Your comment just reminds me they have normalized things. They won.
I've never understood what's so bad about letting people pay for virtual cosmetics. You can still play 100% of the game.
Well... No. Those cosmetics are part of the game. You should be able to unlock them through gameplay.
They are part of the game, but they do not change the play of the game.
Aesthetics are part of the game. Vibe is a big part.
In a perfect world, things like FOMO and group pressure would not exist. People would understand that skins are just useless pixels. We do not live in that world. Yes there are a handful of people who are not affected by the psychological effects of this and if you are one of them lucky you. The truth is, most people are affected, most people feel bad to be the only one with no knife skin, with default armor ( "Default" being an insult in online games with a very young audience) and most people do love the "look" and feel a real need to buy cosmetics.
There is a reason game developers hire psychologists. That's why all lootboxes have sparkles and sound effects and even look like slot machines although what is in your box is long decided. It is because it works for most people's brains as stimulating. That's why some people make a living out of videos where they open loot boxes because even watching someone else open them makes our brain chemistry go WROOOOOM.
It is way less of a choice for most people than you think it is. I remember one FPS game has a quest where you need to open a loot box ingame and others can watch you do it, to animate them to buy loot boxes. These businesses have no shame to invent constantly new ways of making you enter the shop. Like making food rot ingame so you will have to buy a fridge from the shop (Fallout 76).
MTX and loot boxes are part of the core of many games. When they finally got rid of loot boxes in Mordor: Shadow of War , they had to redo the whole economy of the game, because it was to the core made in a way to encourage you to buy war chests for better Orcs.
You CAN live without ever eating cake, but if everyone eats cake, all other food looks bland and boring and you constatnly are shown ads for cake, shiny cake, tasty cake, colorful cake, cake that you can only buy until and cake that only 100 people can buy and all your friends are having cake right now and telling you how good it is.... there is a point where it doesn't matter that the cake is a ~~lie~~ scam, you will want cake too.
Loot box and that gambling business aside, wouldn't the FOMO argument also apply to the video game itself? If everyone around you is playing this game, you'll be pressured into purchasing it yourself as well.
That was absolutely a thing when I was a kid with playstation and N64, the difference being it was only a couple games at most per year to have such an effect, and you only had to buy the game. You didn't feel the need to spend $1000 over the next couple years buying each new cosmetic that all your friends have for $10-20 a pop.
You also got the value of, you know, playing and enjoying that game. If you spend $60 on a game you play for the next month, that's far more value than getting 3-6 skins at one every week or 2 and basically never using it again after you get the next one and honestly not really adding any actual value or fun overall to the time you do spend playing the game.
I mean you are right to some degree, but considering there's way worse stuff to get riled up about, I think we mostly have our priorities straight, and I have no issues with that.
... and they could put an end to the black market for skins and the gambling at anytime, but refuse to do so. This would get rid of the account stealing mostly too.
Not to mention that Valve had to be forced to follow consumer laws in some countries by expensive lawsuits.
It was also Valve who started the "you do not own your games" shite, by forcing the connection of licences to an account and a gaming client, which got rid of the ability to resell your games or to have at least the game's installer offline available.
I'll never get why Valve always gets a pass. Would it be worse if Steam was owned by Epic / Tencent / Activision ...., no doubt, but that doesn't make it great.
If someone want to give praise I would point to GOG. Not perfect but at least I own my licence to the point that I can install my games from an installer I have archived on my HDD (no deleting the game, no forced updates, no adding MTX at a later time, no taking away licenced music), I can go to earlier versions of Early Access games if they change it for the worse and more.
And valve tried to push the paid mods shit, too bad people forget too quickly. Not saying valve is straight up bad, but they aren't your friends either
Why are you against mod creators getting paid for their work? Some mods are amazing and definitely deserve some money.
The store shouldn't get a cut though. But if that's what you mean, let's call that out specifically.
Modding has always been motivated by passion, not everything needs to be connected to money in this world, the capitalistic idea that only money can motivate people to do things sucks.
You don't pay people because it's the only motivator. You pay people because you need money to survive in this world. If we don't, then the only people who can afford to spend time making mods are those who are already have their basic needs taken care of through other means.
I would like to see a world where anyone with the passion for modding can make mods.
Go see what paid mods does to the modding scene in FF14 and think again. (spoiler: Its drama, people stealing assets and trying to monetize it, piracy, people paying for mods that stop working when the game updates and getting no refunds, etc)
So is all art, should artists all work for free? Why do I have to pay for books and movies? Aren't the authors motivated by passion? Isn't your argument the same one used by corporations underpaying game devs all the time, "since they should be happy fulfilling their passion"?
Agree, and I wish we lived in an utopia where nobody needs money and everyone can share their work freely. Sadly, this is not the world we live in, and so we need to reward passionate people to let them dedicate time to their passion rather than having to only focus on work for survival. That way not only rich people can afford to make mods.
You mention the world is not an utopia and on the same breath explains how we should make it even worse. I come from a third world country and as a kid most people could only afford one maybe two games, all my friends bought half-life and warcraft 3, can you guess why?
By your logic we should also make libraries paid and charge for all FOSS too, yes, lets put a price on everything! What an utopia this will lead to!
Wow, you managed to completely reverse what I said.
That doesn't follow at all. Books are not free, and yet libraries work just fine. By my logic we should allow book authors to charge for their books. Oh right, we already do. Why do you not like that?
I didn't mention having to charge for anything at all, even mods. I think mod authors should be allowed to charge for them if they choose to, just like for anyone else making anything else.
What a great example of my point. Charging for software is allowed, and yet there is lots of software released for free. Seems it's not that bad after all?
Quite the opposite. Good thing I don't share your ideas.
So you were fine with paying foreign corporations for these games, but you are not fine paying the kid down the street for his mod? Why do these well-off corporations deserve your money, but the modder who actually needs the money doesn't?
You do know that this whole comment chain was started by Valve trying to push paid mods with the help of Bethesda right? Just making sure because all your points make no sense in this context.
Before I start here, "kid down the street" really? Are you creating the image of a fictional modder to attract pity? Arent you gonna add that he has a dying mother that needs surgery or something?
But to answer the question, I have no issues paying 'the kid down the street' for mods, Im not sure if they were kids but I did donate to quite a few modders by now, would do so again.
Now back to the context: https://www.polygon.com/2015/4/27/8505513/bethesda-skyrim-paid-mods-valve-steam (source)
So lets see, 30% goes to Steam, 45% goes to Bethesda and whats left to the "modder who actually needs the money" is... 25% yep. Since I answered my question would you answer mine too? Are you okay with paying foreign corporations to exploit the work of the "kid down the street", keeping the vast majority of the profit?
Before you start typing 'but other companies wouldn't charge so much from the modder!', a few reminders: you said this isnt an utopia, Steam always charges 30%, always has always will, whatever other company that works with steam for paid mods will take their share too. Best case scenario that company takes 20% and the modder will get 50% (which they also have to pay taxes on ofc).
Paid mods is basically "having to charge". If you WANT to pay for mods I really need to ask, what is stopping you? If you actually care about the modders getting money, many of them have ko-fi/patreon platforms where they actually keep most of the money you give them, some of them take commissions even. Heck, Nexus Mods, largest mod distribution website, allows donations directly to the modders. There is nothing stopping you from paying for mods, now that Im an adult with a job I do pay for them often.
Yes, I started the conversion by saying that's bad and should be called out, why?
No, I'm going with your story of being a kid with no money in a third world country, because it was my childhood too. I solved that problem by spending my free time modding a free to play game – I was that kid down the street. Never got paid though. I would love if others did.
Yep, total bullshit. Why are you bringing it up though? We are in agreement here.
No, why? As I said in my first comment, they shouldn't get a cut. I'm not sure why are you are bringing these arguments to me, as if I ever disagreed.
Why would I ever type that, when I only support paid mods where all of the money goes to the modder without middlemen stealing a share?
Nothing, not long ago I bought a Kerbal Space Program mod for volumetric clouds from a guy called Blackrack. It's a paid mod only available by paying him on Patreon. It looks amazing and I think it's great he gets money for it. Which is why I support paid mods and don't like when people are against them.
Not sure why are you against them then. Based on your comments I think you are not against paid mods, you are against companies like Steam or Bethesda taking a cut. Which is exactly my position too, so I'm not sure what are you actually disagreeing with me about.
Great, this whole discussion is because of your inability to understand my first comment in context, the context of talking about Steam pushing for paid mods. Congratz, you wasted both of our times.
I understood it perfectly well, and wanted to clarify that it is not the concept of paying for mods that is problematic, but implementations like Steam did.
Because just saying "the paid mods shit" gives people a wrong idea that giving creators money is a bad thing, when that's not the problematic part.
Why you took my "the store shouldn't get a cut" comment and thought I support stores getting a cut, I have no clue.
Plenty of large mods have crowd funding to support them.
I guess because I never played TF2 back then my experience of games having predatory gambling mechanics was mobile games with the f2p and low costs pushing towards different ways to monetize. Seemed inevitable once mobile gaming exploded and makes up a larger portion of revenue than PC and console gaming making other companies want to copy it.
If Blizzard owned something comparable to Steam they could have become too big to be bought by Activision.
Battlenet brought some really clever innovations back in the day!
If it was 2010 and you had both running, battlenet was clearly superior.
Battlenet's UI and presentation looked great. Automatic patches, lots of settings to where files should go, info about the game. They also had this sweet feature where you can play when it has the core files, and it continues to download in the background, which still doesn't exist in non-battlenet games.
Really though, 2010 was also when Blizzard started to fall apart too. Constant churning of WoW expansions, deciding to split StarCraft 2 into three games, and making Diablo 3 look "prettier" was all bad signs.
Its possible that being the platform meant they wouldn't have been bought up.