Valve’s fee is more than earned however. Steam as a storefront is highly trusted by users, it has a rock solid reputation that is hard to come by. As a distributor they take a one time fee for each copy sold, then they manage all of the costs from users downloading and downloading again for as long as the platform exists from that one time fee. Meanwhile if a developer were to do that themselves then they pay each time a user wants to download that game.
Sure the developers lose a bit more money than if they sold on another platform. But the higher up front cost to access the larger platform is a very worthwhile trade as can be seen by developers continually coming back.
Maybe. I’m not a game dev, so Im not sure I can say for sure. But it still remains that there isn’t much of a choice for game devs and Valve holds most of the cards. That level of centralization of power isn’t good, earned or otherwise. It’s evident that at least some devs aren’t happy how much of a cut Valve is taking.
Meanwhile if a developer were to do that themselves then they pay each time a user wants to download that game.
I’m not sure this is exactly right. They’d have to buy and maintain their own servers, or rent them from a cloud provider, but it wouldnt necessarily be a charge for every download. But maybe I’m being pedantic – you’re right that it costs some amount of money to store data and keep computers up.
I think probably from a game dev perspective, the issue here is Valve takes far more of a cut than whatever value they add to the experience itself. If you’re a team that just spent years of work on a game, the one-third cut Valve takes is just not proportional considering the amount of dev work, and is therefore considered extractive. Does that make sense?
I’m trying not to cast too much moral judgement here because we live in a capitalist system and corporations are going to seek profit in whatever way possible, and we are all indoctrinated into it, but from a perspective critical to that system, Valve are not good.
From a gamer perspective theyre a fucking godsend lmaooo
As a cloud engineer - renting any distribution servers from a cloud provider will result in a dev paying for every download. You pay based on the bandwidth you consume in the cloud (I.e., you pay per Gb delivered) as opposed to your pipeline like you do when you run your own private servers. You also pay storage costs per month. You’d have to maintain that “forever” as well, because people would want to uninstall, then re-install later.
I get your argument, and I’m not discounting it, but I do suspect that for smaller devs the price they’re paying to Valve is well earned on Valve’s side (and the fact that so many devs choose to use it would seem to bear this out). We should also consider that steam is essentially built-in DRM to games.
For larger customers, they likely have this infrastructure and get annoyed at the costs. They still go to Steam though because it increases their reach as a type of marketing strategy, so they still likely find the cut worth while. If Steam was more hostile to users, then people would actively look for alternatives (I.e., the Gogs of the world), and the publishers would have to target more storefronts.
So yes, Steam’s primary customers are publishers, but I’m not sure they’re really getting the raw end of the deal here :)
Valve’s fee is more than earned however. Steam as a storefront is highly trusted by users, it has a rock solid reputation that is hard to come by. As a distributor they take a one time fee for each copy sold, then they manage all of the costs from users downloading and downloading again for as long as the platform exists from that one time fee. Meanwhile if a developer were to do that themselves then they pay each time a user wants to download that game.
Sure the developers lose a bit more money than if they sold on another platform. But the higher up front cost to access the larger platform is a very worthwhile trade as can be seen by developers continually coming back.
Maybe. I’m not a game dev, so Im not sure I can say for sure. But it still remains that there isn’t much of a choice for game devs and Valve holds most of the cards. That level of centralization of power isn’t good, earned or otherwise. It’s evident that at least some devs aren’t happy how much of a cut Valve is taking.
I’m not sure this is exactly right. They’d have to buy and maintain their own servers, or rent them from a cloud provider, but it wouldnt necessarily be a charge for every download. But maybe I’m being pedantic – you’re right that it costs some amount of money to store data and keep computers up.
I think probably from a game dev perspective, the issue here is Valve takes far more of a cut than whatever value they add to the experience itself. If you’re a team that just spent years of work on a game, the one-third cut Valve takes is just not proportional considering the amount of dev work, and is therefore considered extractive. Does that make sense?
I’m trying not to cast too much moral judgement here because we live in a capitalist system and corporations are going to seek profit in whatever way possible, and we are all indoctrinated into it, but from a perspective critical to that system, Valve are not good.
From a gamer perspective theyre a fucking godsend lmaooo
As a cloud engineer - renting any distribution servers from a cloud provider will result in a dev paying for every download. You pay based on the bandwidth you consume in the cloud (I.e., you pay per Gb delivered) as opposed to your pipeline like you do when you run your own private servers. You also pay storage costs per month. You’d have to maintain that “forever” as well, because people would want to uninstall, then re-install later.
I get your argument, and I’m not discounting it, but I do suspect that for smaller devs the price they’re paying to Valve is well earned on Valve’s side (and the fact that so many devs choose to use it would seem to bear this out). We should also consider that steam is essentially built-in DRM to games.
For larger customers, they likely have this infrastructure and get annoyed at the costs. They still go to Steam though because it increases their reach as a type of marketing strategy, so they still likely find the cut worth while. If Steam was more hostile to users, then people would actively look for alternatives (I.e., the Gogs of the world), and the publishers would have to target more storefronts.
So yes, Steam’s primary customers are publishers, but I’m not sure they’re really getting the raw end of the deal here :)