I’ve been on Steam since 2005, and the only thing that sucks about Valve is that their steam sales are shit now. Other than that I’ve had no issues with them. They seem like a decent company.
Flash sales were great but refunding is better.
There’s also the gambling, and the 30% cut that allows them to make $3.5 million per head.
Steam is pushing the industry forward on Linux support though, so they have my support.
Other thing that is questionable is gambling, apparently lot of people get into online casino through CS.
I think the culture surrounding DoTa to a lesser extend is not good too
genre defining design, literal decades ahead of the rest of the industry
Half-Life? What’s that? I’m talking about Team Fortress 2 hats
I’ve been steaming for that long as well!!!
Weird how if you pay the people activly invested in a product things work rather than having to awnser to why line no go up
Wonder how much of this comes from the gambling business. They don’t own the secondary market where you can sell skins, but they are the gateway into that world.
I suspect a fair chunk. Steam for gamers and devs is great and all but its underbelly of opening up the world of gambling to kids is real gross. Its insane how valve has been getting away with it for so long.
Valve is the living proof that you can have great service and still be profitable. Will capitalists learn? No
Why have great service and be profitable when you can have terrible service and be 1.6% more profitable?
Correction: Be just as profitable but cash out on that profit slightly sooner.
This is awful news, showing that not only Valve - and Steam - are terribly understaffed (explaining the constant issues they face), but that Gaben is pocketing the profits (as all billionaires do, really) for his yachts…and we are supposed to celebrate it?
Showing the importance of sustainable business models over the throw your entire budget at everything then end up firing hundreds and thousands of employees while giving bonuses to executives because the quarterly earnings weren’t as high approach that lot of publicly traded companies have moved towards.
Figuring out how to easily port Windows games to Linux was definitely a recipe for profit.
And it was a shitload of work that took a decade plus, even being built on top of pieces that were even older, with absolutely zero guarantee of any kind of a payout.
Very few companies make these kinds of risks anymore.
It’s not only goodwill, it’s a survival tactic for valve. The worst case scenario for them, is see microsoft expand their monopoly to have all apps and software available only through their Microsoft app store, competing directly with valve, with the unfair advantage of microsoft controlling both windows and the app store. They could (and probably have) tried to get to where apple is with its app store on macos/ios. Though of course this would be an anticompetitive move, but the intentions could still exist making valves life difficult.
The moment they can untie gaming from windows, they have a path forward to keeping themselves not only alive but relevant and probably safe.
Yet other store platforms like epic, gog, blizzard, origin, and uplay don’t bother supporting Linux and are content with Microsoft.
So as much of a survival tactic it might be it would seem any other company wouldn’t bother and still aren’t.
Yet Valve has demonstrated it’s smarter than any of them, we’re literally commenting on an article saying they’re making 3.5 million $ per employee
What are their respective market shares compared to steam? Is it comparable? If it’s not, maybe they’re missing the leverage to try what Valve is attempting. But also, and likely, this is a costly long term development process.
So it shows other companies are short term thinking focusing more on quarter profits, and also explains why they missed put on two console generations worth of time to make a dent in the PC space when the industry was claiming PC was dying.
It’s always excuses and lack of willingness to take risks on plans that might not pan out immediately. Then when it becomes successful from another company excuse is what is the market share in the present.
They could (and probably have) tried to get to where apple is with its app store on macos/ios.
They did.
The Windows 10/11 “S Mode” only allows installing software through the Windows store. It was mostly relegated to OEM installs for cheap x86 and ARM laptops, thankfully.
Ew. I hate that. I see they offer an option in settings to permanently switch out of S mode, but that seems like it’s a crappy excuse. I’m guessing most users are never going to go there, and will stay in S mode, using only Microsoft’s awful products. That’s their intention, at least.
They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
They’ve been nothing but fair to me as a customer but the cynic in me thinks they’ve got an excessive amount of good will to squander since they dominate the PC gaming scene.
Please don’t become shitty. And please release new non competitive games.
That’s what you can do if you’re not publicly traded. The supposedly “wise” market whenever anything goes wrong always seems to insist on burning down decades of good-will to extract a few bucks.
They really figured out the infinite money glitch.
Provide a decent service then sit back and watch your would-be competition develop increasingly effective footguns?
I also use Steam, but they were one of the OGs at taking a 30% cut from digital software sales. Apple always gets shit for this, but not Valve.
Because they got monopoly for controlling the OS too. No one will give a crap about the 30% if the app store and iOS are made by different entities.
Before steam, digital sales of games wasn’t really a thing outside of a few niche examples. The 30% cut was the same percentage that retail stores were taking.
The difference is physical retail had a lot of overhead. Steam just creates a new key and adds it to your account. Yeah, they also have to store the game data and distribution up to the ISP, but that’s really cheap compared to storing physical games at physical locations that only have access to their local buyers. Valve’s profit margins are significantly higher. They could probably take 5% and this would still be true.
Storage and bandwidth definitely weren’t cheap in 2003. Additionally Steam provides features that a brick and mortar store could never even think of providing, including updates, DRM, instant access to global consumers, community features, in-depth data analytics, and the ability to adjust pricing in real time.
While a lot of the work Valve has put in Steam seems both obvious and ubiquitous today, these were features they pioneered for both developers and consumers.
I’d also like to point out that the only digital marketplace I’m aware of that charges less than 30% by default (Epic) is famous for losing billions of dollars in the endeavor.
Storage and bandwidth definitely weren’t cheap in 2003.
To access the same number of people, all around the world, compared to physical stores it’s essentially a rounding error. Rent alone for all the stores would be far more than Valve had to spend, then you need employees to operate the stores and all the other ongoing costs. Storage was not as cheap, and from a consumer point of view it wasn’t cheap, it it’s far cheaper than physical stores around the world.
Additionally Steam provides features that a brick and mortar store could never even think of providing, including updates, DRM, instant access to global consumers, community features, in-depth data analytics, and the ability to adjust pricing in real time.
Not sure how that’s relevant, but yes. I didn’t say they didn’t.
While a lot of the work Valve has put in Steam seems both obvious and ubiquitous today, these were features they pioneered for both developers and consumers.
Again, sure. It doesn’t contradict anything I said so I don’t know why you said it.
I’d also like to point out that the only digital marketplace I’m aware of that charges less than 30% by default (Epic) is famous for losing billions of dollars in the endeavor.
Once again, sure. It doesn’t change anything in my comment.
I don’t know why if anyone says anything that is not just gobbling Valve’s cock with enthusiasm they get people showing up talking about how great they are. Sure, I like them too. It doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to complain. That’s how you end up with companies enshitifying.
It almost feels like bots how frequent it is, but I just think you people have a compulsion to defend them from what isn’t even criticism, like they’re going to praise you for it. Well guess what? They don’t even know you exist.
Steam offers a lot more to developers than a storefront to sell your games. The App Store is an extremely minimal offering to developers for the amount of money they demand in exchange.
What do you mean? It’s not like the App Store is all that devs get from Apple. Apple has an app dev kit and loads of APIs into the phone that they maintain.
Sure, I’m aware. But nothing on the level of what Valve offers.
What do they offer?
Gaben said it best when he said “piracy is a service issue, not a price issue.” There is no other company that even comes close to matching Steam’s services, both to consumers and developers. The industry could become a different place when he dies. I don’t see any other CEO continuing to spend money to innovate and expand services rather than offer less and charge more to extract record profits.
Developers really trying to kill that by having buggy /launchers that run off steam launcher on top
This is absolutely mad cope, but I want to believe that, as forward thinking as Gabe is, he either will find a worthy successor, or already has one lined up to ensure the company isn’t saced for all it’s worth when he’s gone.
Price has become a big issue lately too.
I feel the same, I know that things will likely go downhill if he goes. That’s why I also buy GoG games, I want to be able to download them if things go sour with Steam.
You can downlowad some of the steam games. DRM is possible, but not mandatory
I can only hope he has made some form of training program to have someone like him in place to follow behind him. I do worry about it as well, though. It’s been such a fun ride along the way.
