this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Weird because I provided actual services and functionality that steam provides in exchange for that cut, and your response was that me mentioning devs do have other options isn't "understanding criticism"
So do you have an actual response or..?
Your response to criticism of Steam was 'there's other services.'
That does absolutely nothing to deflect from criticism of Steam.
Praising their various features comes a little closer, but still doesn't justify taking an entire third of every game's revenue. It takes a whole fucking lot of hypothetical work, which you imagine developers would have to do, to amount to the slice Steam takes right off the top.
What Valve offers that makes companies put up with that is their de-facto monopoly presence. They can sell many copies through Steam - or they won't sell many copies.
So you didn't actually read my comment, cool.
'There's other services.'
' It takes a whole fucking lot of hypothetical work, which you imagine developers would have to do, to amount to the slice Steam takes right off the top.'
Lie better.
Do you think it's simple for a developer to create a friends list network, host/moderate community forums, host/moderate a mod website integrated into the game, achievements syncing, ability to share the game with friends, and integrate VR functionality for the above, on their own dime?
These are recurring ongoing costs for server and continued developmental changes, you are severely underestimating the time and money cost to create/host/maintain all those services?
You are asserting without evidence that Valve needs to take all that money. As if they would go broke if they only took a quarter of all the revenue on most PC games.
Valve makes ten billion dollars on Steam, every single year. Their margins are not slim. And being an established de-facto monopoly, people go there because that's where the products are, and products are there because that's where the people go. They could slash costs to nothing, do the bare minimum work going forward, and still rake in the money on sheer momentum, for years and years and years.
The only feature that really matters here is adoption. And that's not a feature you can design. Even Valve didn't rope people in with a convincing sales pitch. They forced Steam onto everyone who wanted to play Half-Life 2. If you didn't want to put up with an always-online DRM service aimed to take over PC gaming - you didn't get to play the most anticipated game of the year. Whatever benefits you ascribe to the service, whatever functionality you argue developers would otherwise budget for, the core was always 'accept this or pound sand.'