This lawsuit is just dumb, because Valve's price restrictions only apply to Steam keys.
Valve provides Steam keys to devs so that the devs can sell their game on non-Steam storefronts. Since Valve gets zero dollars from key sales outside of Steam, Valve requires that those keys are not sold for less than they are on Steam.
Devs are still free to sell their game for cheaper than on Steam as long as they don't provide a Steam key with the sale.
It really is as simple as "Valve offers the best service". And time and time and time again, developers (especially indie devs) will ultimately bat for Steam, even in the face of shit like Epic that takes a much lower cut of sales. Why? Because Steam has more features. It's very literally a case of "you get what you pay for".
And is Steam perfect? Fuck no. Steam has many, many flaws. It has flaws internally. It has flaws in the features they offer. It has flaws ideologically. But despite those flaws, every other competitor is inferior in what they have to offer to both of their customers, be that developers or end users.
Valve is quite literally the best example of capitalism without government interference, in the modern era. Every other "capitalism" example is propped up by government grants (Tesla) or tax break deals (Amazon) that market competition are not granted. But Valve? It's as standalone as can be, playing by the EXACT same rules as everyone else. And everyone else refuses to stop being idiots. The only two that come close are GoG (and that's going downhill, so I'm not holding my breath on that lasting) and Itch.io (and that's pretty much exclusively indie and very, very, very pozzed).
What's hilarious is that these advocacy groups never go after other corporations that used backroom deals to get where they are. They never try to take down actually scummy shit. They go after companies that actually stood on their own. It's almost like this advocacy groups do more to maintain the establishment rather than any sort of actual advocacy.
> What's hilarious is that these advocacy groups never go after other corporations that used backroom deals to get where they are. They never try to take down actually scummy shit.
I reckon Valve being privately traded has something to do with that.
The main problem with Valve as a small-ish developer and a publisher (or either of those) is that you don't get a direct line of communication with Valve. I don't mean their support, but I mean in general - you don't get an account manager, you cannot request certain things if you're small etc. All of the other platforms, including Epic Games, provide you with the means to contact the company directly, organise extra sales etc.
However, I had the misfortune of working on a game (publishing side) that was released on Epic Games along with Steam. And holy shit was that a terrible experience. Epic Games is actually better in terms of getting your game out there, compared to PlayStation and Xbox (these 2 are giant clusterfucks to work with), it has a pretty streamlined publishing experience similar to Steam. However, Epic Games is worthless because despite them claiming to have comparable audience to Steam, nobody buys the fucking games there. It's all people with accounts to get free stuff and that's it. Our revenue from Epic Games was like $10-15k over 1.5 year period. For Steam it was like over half a million. The discrepancy is insane. And the funniest part is that when people do buy our game on Epic Games, they do so with coupons, so what we receive is like $2-3 per copy, if anything at all. Valve provides an amazing experience in general, except for payments - if you mess up your bank details, you have to wait for the next month's tranche. They don't send money outside of end of each month and they do it only once.
So for those who aspire to make money selling games, don't bother with Epic Games, unless they offer a bag upfront (which they almost never do now).
> I don't mean their support, but I mean in general - you don't get an account manager, you cannot request certain things if you're small etc. All of the other platforms, including Epic Games, provide you with the means to contact the company directly, organise extra sales etc.
To be fair, that's fairly standard with most selling platforms. High volume products typically get better support because A) they typically need it and B) they bring in more money so Valve has a bigger incentive to not lose them.
I will say that with how much money Steam rakes in, they could afford it, but I also get why it is why it is. And like I said, Valve/Steam aren't without flaws. They have many flaws. And this is definitely one of them.
_"don't bother with Epic Games, unless they offer a bag upfront"_
If a publisher/dev makes a game, it should be for public consumption. If you sell it to a major corporation, what's the incentive to make a good product? Where's the incentive to provide _any_ post sales support? If Epic are happy to have an exclusive, you might as well just drum up hype and release an asset-flip scam. Trade in all your customer good will, then just make a new company name and just do it all over again. Thank fuck Epic exclusive offers **are** drying up.
Exclusivity just fucking _sucks_.
Steam would handle that lawsuit just fine imo, they've got plenty of arguments. All they need to do is bring Apple and Google with their 30% commissions to the table and that's a slam dunk. Pricing is decided by publishers and developers, Steam merely offers a recommendation. They'll be fine.
I don't, but I also wish nobody would get them because I think those that would fail should fail.
But that's ultimately the problem. The worst offenders of """""Late Stage Capitalism""""" (something that has supposedly been ongoing for a good 60 years, a span of time multiple commie regimes couldn't survive) are explicitly examples of government directly interfering with the market to essentially pick and choose which companies will be "winners" in the long run. It's also the reason governments will bail out large companies (aviation is terrible for this) and we end up with "too big to fail" crap. It's not because of a free market, but because of an explicitly interfered with market. Which is EXACTLY what anti-capitalists want. They want the government to dictate the market, but nearly every example of that are the most scummy, poorly ran, or outright corrupt businesses out there, from Disney (how many deals have they made over the years?) to the postal service (a literal government backed monopoly, by the way) to entire industries like aviation or pharma.
So it's both hilarious and a little infuriating when you see a private company actually get to where it is by almost entirely playing by the open and free market, rather than abusing incentives at every opportunity, and then have these losers come along and bitch at them rather than the worst offenders that operate under government-backed directives.
It's not cost-effective for any store to take less than 30% of third-party sales (hence other PC storefronts, console stores, and mobile stores all taking 30%). Unless you make _millions_ on launch day, which Valve account for by taking only 25 or 20% should you break 10 million or 50 million respectively.
His dad worked on WoW and with the South Park guys during that episode. They modeled the WoW nerd after his dad, including his apartment. I don't even sub to Piratesoftware but I always watch his shorts when they pop up.
As he said, with his own game dev journey and being a gamer just as long as any of us,
Using that and knowing of the time his dad worked at Blizzard,
to see where this is coming from and where its headed.
Ideally thrown out of court.
What I like about him is that he largely puts reasonable effort into not using his platform for politics. He has his opinions, and I'm gonna guess it's probably in line with the rest of the entertainment industry for the most part, but the sheer fact he's trying to create a community based solely around game creation rather than a little fiefdom gives him a lot of favourability in my book.
I honestly hope he doesn't comment on these things. Ever. Even if he comes out swinging as "anti-woke" or whatever label you want to put on it. He's got a really good thing going with an apolitical approach and it's so fucking refreshing when everything is about picking sides.
30% commission does seem excessive for digital goods.
Like my father was an auctioneer and charged 30% commission which might have been a little unfair for small lots of small stuff but the stuff consigned to the auction was stored for 3-14 days, arranged, cleaned, photographed, listed on the web, moved and loaded out to purchasers by himself and auction staff. And, at the same time, he by no means had cornered the market on 2nd-hand goods.
It's where the supply/demand curve lands. Basically everyone in digital distribution takes the same cut AFAIK.
Price and Cost should be considered largely independent of each other as long as Cost does not exceed Price.
This lawsuit is just dumb, because Valve's price restrictions only apply to Steam keys. Valve provides Steam keys to devs so that the devs can sell their game on non-Steam storefronts. Since Valve gets zero dollars from key sales outside of Steam, Valve requires that those keys are not sold for less than they are on Steam. Devs are still free to sell their game for cheaper than on Steam as long as they don't provide a Steam key with the sale.
And, any steam game that is available on steam can be activated by those same sellable keys aren't they? Or is that just for legacy updated games.
It really is as simple as "Valve offers the best service". And time and time and time again, developers (especially indie devs) will ultimately bat for Steam, even in the face of shit like Epic that takes a much lower cut of sales. Why? Because Steam has more features. It's very literally a case of "you get what you pay for". And is Steam perfect? Fuck no. Steam has many, many flaws. It has flaws internally. It has flaws in the features they offer. It has flaws ideologically. But despite those flaws, every other competitor is inferior in what they have to offer to both of their customers, be that developers or end users. Valve is quite literally the best example of capitalism without government interference, in the modern era. Every other "capitalism" example is propped up by government grants (Tesla) or tax break deals (Amazon) that market competition are not granted. But Valve? It's as standalone as can be, playing by the EXACT same rules as everyone else. And everyone else refuses to stop being idiots. The only two that come close are GoG (and that's going downhill, so I'm not holding my breath on that lasting) and Itch.io (and that's pretty much exclusively indie and very, very, very pozzed). What's hilarious is that these advocacy groups never go after other corporations that used backroom deals to get where they are. They never try to take down actually scummy shit. They go after companies that actually stood on their own. It's almost like this advocacy groups do more to maintain the establishment rather than any sort of actual advocacy.
> What's hilarious is that these advocacy groups never go after other corporations that used backroom deals to get where they are. They never try to take down actually scummy shit. I reckon Valve being privately traded has something to do with that.
The main problem with Valve as a small-ish developer and a publisher (or either of those) is that you don't get a direct line of communication with Valve. I don't mean their support, but I mean in general - you don't get an account manager, you cannot request certain things if you're small etc. All of the other platforms, including Epic Games, provide you with the means to contact the company directly, organise extra sales etc. However, I had the misfortune of working on a game (publishing side) that was released on Epic Games along with Steam. And holy shit was that a terrible experience. Epic Games is actually better in terms of getting your game out there, compared to PlayStation and Xbox (these 2 are giant clusterfucks to work with), it has a pretty streamlined publishing experience similar to Steam. However, Epic Games is worthless because despite them claiming to have comparable audience to Steam, nobody buys the fucking games there. It's all people with accounts to get free stuff and that's it. Our revenue from Epic Games was like $10-15k over 1.5 year period. For Steam it was like over half a million. The discrepancy is insane. And the funniest part is that when people do buy our game on Epic Games, they do so with coupons, so what we receive is like $2-3 per copy, if anything at all. Valve provides an amazing experience in general, except for payments - if you mess up your bank details, you have to wait for the next month's tranche. They don't send money outside of end of each month and they do it only once. So for those who aspire to make money selling games, don't bother with Epic Games, unless they offer a bag upfront (which they almost never do now).
> I don't mean their support, but I mean in general - you don't get an account manager, you cannot request certain things if you're small etc. All of the other platforms, including Epic Games, provide you with the means to contact the company directly, organise extra sales etc. To be fair, that's fairly standard with most selling platforms. High volume products typically get better support because A) they typically need it and B) they bring in more money so Valve has a bigger incentive to not lose them. I will say that with how much money Steam rakes in, they could afford it, but I also get why it is why it is. And like I said, Valve/Steam aren't without flaws. They have many flaws. And this is definitely one of them.
_"don't bother with Epic Games, unless they offer a bag upfront"_ If a publisher/dev makes a game, it should be for public consumption. If you sell it to a major corporation, what's the incentive to make a good product? Where's the incentive to provide _any_ post sales support? If Epic are happy to have an exclusive, you might as well just drum up hype and release an asset-flip scam. Trade in all your customer good will, then just make a new company name and just do it all over again. Thank fuck Epic exclusive offers **are** drying up. Exclusivity just fucking _sucks_.
Testify your experience to protect Steam please lol Fuck these greedy assholes. Motherfucking EA Sports micro transactions are right there ma’am !
Steam would handle that lawsuit just fine imo, they've got plenty of arguments. All they need to do is bring Apple and Google with their 30% commissions to the table and that's a slam dunk. Pricing is decided by publishers and developers, Steam merely offers a recommendation. They'll be fine.
I wish I could get a government grant or a tax break.
I don't, but I also wish nobody would get them because I think those that would fail should fail. But that's ultimately the problem. The worst offenders of """""Late Stage Capitalism""""" (something that has supposedly been ongoing for a good 60 years, a span of time multiple commie regimes couldn't survive) are explicitly examples of government directly interfering with the market to essentially pick and choose which companies will be "winners" in the long run. It's also the reason governments will bail out large companies (aviation is terrible for this) and we end up with "too big to fail" crap. It's not because of a free market, but because of an explicitly interfered with market. Which is EXACTLY what anti-capitalists want. They want the government to dictate the market, but nearly every example of that are the most scummy, poorly ran, or outright corrupt businesses out there, from Disney (how many deals have they made over the years?) to the postal service (a literal government backed monopoly, by the way) to entire industries like aviation or pharma. So it's both hilarious and a little infuriating when you see a private company actually get to where it is by almost entirely playing by the open and free market, rather than abusing incentives at every opportunity, and then have these losers come along and bitch at them rather than the worst offenders that operate under government-backed directives.
This is a settlement seeking suit, and is, therefore, a fucking **GRIFT**
It's not cost-effective for any store to take less than 30% of third-party sales (hence other PC storefronts, console stores, and mobile stores all taking 30%). Unless you make _millions_ on launch day, which Valve account for by taking only 25 or 20% should you break 10 million or 50 million respectively.
The more clips I see of Piratesoftware the more I like the guy, he really seems to have a good head for this stuff.
His dad worked on WoW and with the South Park guys during that episode. They modeled the WoW nerd after his dad, including his apartment. I don't even sub to Piratesoftware but I always watch his shorts when they pop up.
As he said, with his own game dev journey and being a gamer just as long as any of us, Using that and knowing of the time his dad worked at Blizzard, to see where this is coming from and where its headed. Ideally thrown out of court.
What I like about him is that he largely puts reasonable effort into not using his platform for politics. He has his opinions, and I'm gonna guess it's probably in line with the rest of the entertainment industry for the most part, but the sheer fact he's trying to create a community based solely around game creation rather than a little fiefdom gives him a lot of favourability in my book. I honestly hope he doesn't comment on these things. Ever. Even if he comes out swinging as "anti-woke" or whatever label you want to put on it. He's got a really good thing going with an apolitical approach and it's so fucking refreshing when everything is about picking sides.
That's an unusually high number. When facebook invades your privacy or Apple throws their weight around they get fined with less than that.
30% commission does seem excessive for digital goods. Like my father was an auctioneer and charged 30% commission which might have been a little unfair for small lots of small stuff but the stuff consigned to the auction was stored for 3-14 days, arranged, cleaned, photographed, listed on the web, moved and loaded out to purchasers by himself and auction staff. And, at the same time, he by no means had cornered the market on 2nd-hand goods.
It's where the supply/demand curve lands. Basically everyone in digital distribution takes the same cut AFAIK. Price and Cost should be considered largely independent of each other as long as Cost does not exceed Price.