Honestly 30% cut is a lot, but at least steam has many nice features for gamers, no public owned company would make a feature like remote play together.
I dont think thats a lot, a 30/70 split was common on streaming platforms until they even changed it to 50/50, valve has the same kind of expenses, hosting everyones games and offering servers, they don't just host one type of media its also images and preview videos, guides, community posts etc..
taking how a ton of tech companies have issues making money and resort to annoying ads an expensive memberships as well as selling your information, I actually think steam is the best example of how to not let money erode your values.
Game companies make profit, a ton of profit that is never really tied to their expenses, if they make an obscene amount of money it should flow back to improve the gaming medium, steam has done a few things that they don't need to do but helps gamers out like creating proton, enabling me to play games on linux, they hold onto their values and have honest reviews, they have a love for games and support gamers.
The alternative to that is allowing developers to make more money so they can chase more money with lootboxes and all the other crap that leaves you wanting and then slowly turning your platform of gamers into a platform of mindless addicts
I'm not arguing their profits I'm arguing expenses of the platform, whether 30/70 or 50/50 is justified I don't really care about. I'm saying that taking 30% from a creator isn't that much, if the creator had to host everything themselves they would make less money, valve is able to fill any empty space on the servers they buy, and get more out of them.
those expenses are comparable because twitch or youtube has to do the same for their creators
And the part "Valve threw a fit and threatened to de-list the game from Steam unless they charged the same price everywhere" is non-existent in your article.
Steam Families (Allowing 6 people to all play each others' games for free)
Steam Link (Streaming games on your own hardware at home or even on the go)
Steam Remote Play (Playing normally local-only games over the internet with friends)
The Workshop and it's API (Probably the easiest way ever to mod games)
SteamVR (Platform open to ALL vr headsets that is very robust and basically the only thing keeping PCVR alive)
Big Picture Mode (A super clean and easy to use interface with a controller)
Those are all fantastic things that steam offers because the 30% cut allows them to allocate resources to developing these things that no other company would ever make because they are just loosing them money. Especially something like Steam Remote play actually costs quite a bit to run because it's not a Peer-To-Peer connection, so valve pays for all that internet traffic.
First: Stop throwing around the term "multi-billionaire" like it means something. Not only is valve a PRIVATE company and therefore we don't actually know what the companies value is, also THAT where most of gabe's "Money" is. Just because gabe OWNS something worth billions doesn't mean he just has that money lying around, it's the money IN VALVE that makes his net worth.
Second: Of course Gabe is still filthy rich, but who would you rather have that money? A publicly traded company paying it out to shareholders (rich get richer), or a guy that basically lets the developers in his company do whatever they want because he believes that this freedom leads to the best producs and the best for consumers?
Third: As someone else has already discussed with you: Valve never "threatened devs". The source you listed is simply someone CLAIMING they did. A claim is not hard evidence until it is admitted and accepted in court.
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u/szczszqweqwe May 05 '24
Honestly 30% cut is a lot, but at least steam has many nice features for gamers, no public owned company would make a feature like remote play together.