Games

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[–] Belgdore@lemm.ee 73 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

They do provide a good service. There’s no subscription fee. They maintain delisted games so you can download games you bought years ago that are no longer available. Not to mention steam OS and other projects like the steam deck that put pressure on other gaming companies to do better.

This could go up in a cloud of smoke at any point and it likely will as soon as Gabe passes on and the in fighting begins. So this is a “good king” situation and the system itself will not be sustainable long term by any means.

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[–] Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 42 points 2 years ago

Because somehow their competition is even worse

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[–] suaroof@lemmy.world 38 points 2 years ago (5 children)

Ah, yes, capitalism. Because they don’t have to pay to maintain servers and infrastructure or anything, right?

Nor do they pay for bandwidth when you download your 100gb game for the nth time in the past month.

Nor do they have a ton of functions and services for both devs and consumers like easy refunds, regional pricing, steam keys, trading cards, steam workshop, steam forums, chatrooms, remote play... just to name some.

Yeah, such moneygrabbing comic book villains that just sit in their pile of money and don't provide anything good.

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[–] index@sh.itjust.works 14 points 2 years ago

Ah, yes, capitalism. Because they don’t have to pay to maintain servers and infrastructure or anything, right?

They are stacking billions. It means they are paying peanuts compared to what they are making.

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[–] HackerJoe@sh.itjust.works 8 points 2 years ago

I read somewhere most of the cost is payment providers, scams, chargebacks and refunds they can't offload onto the publishers.

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[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

I like Steam but come on, they are more profitable per employee than Apple. They are clearly not hurting even if I download my games over and over.

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[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

And they provide a better service than Apple.

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[–] PanArab@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

Absolutely. There are iOS apps and games I bought that don’t run anymore and Apple wants us to accept this as normal.

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[–] yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de 15 points 2 years ago

Honestly, I pay for the service alone.

Pirating games is easy-ish enough so if Valve ever enshittifies I will be quickly learning how to remove Steam's DRM and put all my games on a server and never purchase another video game in my lifetime.

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[–] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years ago (1 child)

They provide an easy platform for me to buy games so I use them. The steam deck too. Just because they have a competent product, i don't think that justifies any arse kissing. Like you say, they're a company and they're in business to make money.

Yeah, I can see why developers would be unhappy about the 30%. Maybe there's an argument to be made that the platform gives these games a greater potential market but I don't know enough about the business to try making that argument.

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[–] gnygnygny@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

Apple and Google commissions are around 15%.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

They used to be 30%.

And Steam gives devs the option of selling Steam keys on their website without the cut, with the only rule that they can't sell it for less on their website than on Steam. So Valve only takes a cut oft their platform leads to a sale, users can still use the platform to play the games without Valve taking a cut.

Neither Apple nor Google allow this afaik, and I don't know enough about other platforms to know if this is common or unique to Valve.

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[–] gnygnygny@lemm.ee -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Yes but they cut off their margins. As Microsoft did.

Steam key is not an advantage. It is a means of retention to keep a seller captive. A company should be free to sell its game in any way at any price without any restriction coming from one vendor.

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[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

A company should be free to sell its game in any way at any price without any restriction coming from one vendor.

People keep bringing this up like it's some kind of a fact but any time I ask for a source I get no reply. So I'm going to ask again, can you please link the source because I've searched for it and I haven't found it.

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[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

And I guess, yet again, no source is provided.

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[–] gnygnygny@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

The source is Evian.

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[–] GoodEye8@lemm.ee 1 point 2 years ago

The water bottling company?

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

Microsoft cut their margins because they didn't want to get sued.

A company should be free to sell its game in any way at any price without any restriction coming from one vendor.

And that's exactly what Steam's agreement is. If you sell on Steam, you can sell your game with or without Steam keys on your own website, you can sell on any competitor's platform, and you can cancel your game from Steam at any time. There's no lock in here. You can even add your own DRM or no DRM at all (or use theirs), you can make your game free and only sell additional content through your own website (where you keep all profit), etc. There's no lock in whatsoever.

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[–] gnygnygny@lemm.ee -1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

No lock with a key bringing you back to steam, with a unique price. Even the music industry doesn't impose that.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

Neither does Steam. The dev can sell their game directly, provide a Steam key, or a key for any other store. No lock in, this is merely an option if the dev decides to distribute it that way.

For example, I bought Factorio a little after launch (early 2013), and later got a key for Steam when they released there in 2016. I also bought FTL around launch (2012), but I didn't have a Steam account because they didn't yet support my OS (Linux), so I didn't activate my Steam key until I made my account in late 2013. Some bundles also give you an option on how to get the game, and I've activated GOG keys instead when I already had the game on Steam.

Valve doesn't care how devs sell their game, they only take a cut made through Steam itself. There's no lock in whatsoever.

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[–] gnygnygny@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago

Let's read the license agreement : "Developers retain the right to sell the games through other channels." The EU court confirms that the agreement and use of geographic restriction were harmful to competition by object.

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[+] doomcanoe@sh.itjust.works 4 points 2 years ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

[deleted]

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[–] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 2 years ago

As far as capitalism goes they are not the shittiest of companies out there.

They have predatory tactics with lootboxes on their popular games though.

But most of their practices are not anticonsumer.

And they do not enforce drm and their own drm is a joke, so you can basically own most games if you want with very little effort. Just copy the files and have a generic steam crack around and you are golden for most cases.

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[–] pineapplelover@lemm.ee 9 points 2 years ago

Yeah. Really wish they were more like gog or itch

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[–] julianwgs@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

I believe this is something to be aware of and if this is something you don't want use GOG instead. But in reality as long as Steam exists you will be able to download and play your games. If Steam ceases to exists then you will not be able to download them, but there will be ways to still play them, if you previously downloaded them. It is not like "owning" movies on Amazon (or just recently on the Playstation Store), where you always need to stream the movies.

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[–] Pika@sh.itjust.works 1 point 2 years ago

I know according to their license if steam ceases to exist you lose everything, but I can't see them ceasing to exist and having it not end up being a bloody mess. There is no way with how large steam is that if they decide to file for closure tomorrow that regulators wouldn't get involved in trying to provide a way that everyone doesn't lose their games. I believe steam has hit the point that banks are where enough people use the platform that if it tried to close government is going to get involved

Of course this is under the understanding that it's a just choose to close situation, if it is a financial issue, I would expect that people would see that coming ahead of time and they would have a longer period of trying to find out a solution. And that solution could very well end up being a court order saying every purchase that's been on Steam has to be able to be played without the steam client when they close the doors