398
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
398 points (100.0% liked)
Today I Learned
30906 readers
282 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
friendly reminder that valve is not your friend. they operate the way they do because that's their business strategy to make the most money long term.
No corporation or billionaire is your friend. No matter how nice they appear just because the rest are genocidal sociopaths.
Not all of them are necessarily evil either, but regardless of their intentions, they're almost always a net loss for society.
Regardless, we should reward socially beneficial behavior. Billionaires are humans, and as such trainable through a correct reward structure. Harm reduction is important.
Pavlov has upvoted your comment
Should've worked with Musk...
But remember the CIA is TOTALLY your friend!
~unless you are a third world country. Terms and conditions may apply~
Fairly happy to find a business that wants to make money long term. Pretty rare these days. I would say thats a good thing, wouldnt you?
How do they do it? Looks like expanding into the open hardware space, the open source space, have good customer service and avoid ads except to promote games.
And the alternative is what? GOG?
In the end they are just a store front, so it isnt even like they are the only place to buy a product, yet somehow they are the only ones that seem to even give a shit about me playing games on Linux.
And then there are the employees. As far as we know (please if you work at valve say something) they are the highest compensated people in the it/game industry.
Valve is legendary for being a good employer. I remember hearing about an employee who tried to tender a resignation when he was diagnosed with something chronic and debilitating. Can't remember what. Anyway, point is, he decided he couldnt do his job, tried to resign, Newell refused to accept it and told him "your job at Valve is to get better. Come back when you're better." So the employee kept his pay, his benefits, all of it. And this was right around the release of HL2, so Valve was not yet the monopoly market maker it is today. Gabe Newell is a billionaire. He may or may not be a good person. But he is a forward thinker and a good boss.
Yeah there was some leaked payroll data around 2021, so its old info, but with bonuses, profit sharing and base salary the average compensation is something like 1.4 million per employee.
Way back when Gabe said he didnt want employees he wanted partners and they would share the success. I don't know what its like today though.
Yes, that's why I simply reminded folks that they are a business and not your friend. So many people jumping to Valve's defense over a perceived slight makes me feel the reminder is necessary.
Within faulty power structures, we should make the sober decision to support the ones we seem are best fit for us!
No, Valve is privately owned. That means the company does whatever the owners want it to do. Unlike public companies which can be sued by their own shareholders of they don't pursue profits hard enough.
That's not to say we should blindly idolize a billionaire, but he and in turn Valve can in fact do things that are friendly to consumers.
You can be sued by anyone for anything, but many actions are unlikely to be successful, including that one. In practice, company executives have extremely broad latitude to pursue profits in a way they see fit. If the make the argument in front of court that using Linux, having pretty good customer service, a UI that doesn't suck donkey balls, and not monetising gambling addicts TOO much is the best path to long term profit, the court isn't going to say, "you know what I know better than you".
The shareholders can sue in situations where execs embezzle money, or deliberately fuck the company and leave evidence that they've done so, things like that. Not just because they think that the company should do something else.
What absolutely can and does happen is that the shareholders fire the CEO. But a public company doesn't have to be structured so that that can happen.
Shame they aren't doing those things. Steam doesn't need 30% of the profits just for hosting the downloadable file.
Fact is we need some hard regulations for all digital stores, especially when it comes to gaming but we will never get them because a large number of consumers are dead set on defending one of those stores.
You can't clamp down on Microsoft for stealing from their customers (both devs and gamers) while steam, who's making even more profits, gets a free pass.
This is the funniest thing I'll read today. You have no clue what makes them so successful if you think this is all they're doing.
Tell me what they do that's worth one man having a billion dollars worth of boats.
While having only one store front is convenient, but less competitive, it is not a fault of Valve. People defend Steam because it hasn't screwed them over. Valve built good features that people like into their product, useful features for developers.
Epic Games failed because they set up a dysfunctional store, games were the same price for customers and they went aggressive with anti-consumer practices like free games and exclusives to attempt to secure a base. They offered nothing extra for the developers or customers except uncertainty, so why would anyone want to build a game library there? You can't convince someone to inconvenience themselves for a worse product, just because "Steam takes 30%!!! We only take 12%!!". Epic Store was so fucking shit, I would bet even if them savings were passed onto the customer, most would still pay more to stay on Steam.
Origin failed, UPlay failed, they all tried to profit as much as possible for themselves instead of building a good competitive product. The only other successful ones really (outside of key resellers) are GOG and itch.io, which have their own niche spaces.
The other stores aren't the bar though. Epic being shit doesn't make Steam a saint. I also don't think giving free games is anti consumer. Exclusives yes but not the free games.
Steam is under multiple lawsuits, including one because they threaten devs with delisting if they put their game up for cheaper on other stores (this is separate from their steam key rule).
I think they have a massive ad campaign not only to make themselves look good but also to make the competition look bad tbh. I see a lot of seo work being done for instance. I'm guessing the budget is massive.
Steam also popularized DRM and not owning your games. It's a money printing machine tbh. They have like 300 employees lol.
Yep.
Steam is a functional monopoly, but... I'd argue it didn't get there by being underhanded, ratfucking competitors secretly or brazenly.
It just is better. It offers far more things, to both consumers and developers/sellers.
Think from an indie dev perspective. If your game is actually good? Finds a niche? You don't need marketing, basically. You don't need to budget that, Steam will do it for you. AAA gaming is basically like fucking movies at this point, sometjing like 1/3 the budget goes toward building the hype train, not the product.
Attempts to outdo or directly compete with Steam have just actually been comically incompetent, from at least my own business analyst perspective.
Yeah, it has contract terms it enforces on sellers, but imo, they're far less restrictive than say, platform/marketfront exclusivity, as had long been the norm in the video game industry.
Room for improvement? Absolutely. Functionally gambling on in game items, children doing this, is a legitimate problem. Afaik the court case with NY is still ongoing, will be interested to see how that pans out.
Is it defending a store to point out that your description of it only hosting downloadable files and nothing else is very incorrect?
Yes because it's nitpicking and ignores the point. Are we going to pretend it isn't their main product, and that by far?
If that's a nit, and not a main point, then why is that first line even there? Why mention profits again in the last line if the point is just "We should regulate them more!" When did directly disagreeing with a statement become a "nit" to launch a completely different main point?
And what do you mean "pretend it isn't their main product"? I'm literally telling you that Steam does more than you're saying it does, which is the whole basis of your disagreement with the OP above. I am sticking to the product in question. The only way to think I'm avoiding talking about Steam is if you really don't know what Steam does beyond offering a place to download games, and aren't aware of any of its features.
Whatever they are doing isn't worth close to what they are charging if gaben can spend 1 000 000 000 dollars on boats.
But yes, they mostly host downloadable content that they then charge 30% commission fee for whenever someone buys it. That's the lion share of their business. What are you even getting at?
I mention profits because it is about profits. The profit they are stealing from devs by colluding with other stores and offering a simple service at a massive cost. The profits they make that led to gaben being a billionaire. The disgusting profits clearly show we need regulations. Billionaires shouldn't exist even if they have a marketing team telling you this one is different.
Defend Bezos and Musk next please. It's the same arguments. Amazon isn't only a drop shipping company either, you know.
What I am getting at is that you are using another billionaire's disingenuous talking points uncritically while thinking you're being anti-billionaire. You heard something that sounded good but didn't verify or research any of it.
This whole idea of "Steam takes 30%, that's terrible!" is from Tim Sweeney's anti-Steam PR campaign. The 30% cut was always the standard retail cut, and has been part of every retail store until EGS made a big thing about their lower amount and their disingenuous PR campaign that suggested that only Steam was taking an exorbitant cut. The fact is that all stores took that same standard retail cut. Steam makes a bajillion dollars more than everyone else just from the sheer volume of sales they do. The idea that they make all this money because they take a bigger retail cut is a lie.
And, in case this hasn't been made clear enough to you yet: you don't seem to know what Steam is if you think it's only a service to download games and doesn't offer anything else to users. It has a huge amount of features for users, games, and communities beyond just that, far more than another other retailer or store is offering. It is completely disingenuous to pretend like Steam does none of these to force the argument that they are just taking money and offering the most basic of a singular service. So if you want to argue that Steam specifically doesn't deserve the 30% cut that every retailer takes, then you'll need to demonstrate how Steam offers less than every other retailer. If this requires ignoring all the features and advancements Valve and Steam have done, then that really shows the quality of that statement, doesn't it?
Taking a step back to assess situations fairly and accurately isn't a defense of anything. There's so much to criticize Valve and Steam for if you took the time to be informed, most notably with the lootboxes and gambling aspects (which is also where much of its profits come from). So if you're really as anti-billionaire as you claim to be, are you going to go and examine these assumptions you held and figure out why you got misled so deeply by another billionaire, and make sure it doesn't happen again?
You aren't actually reading what I'm writing lol.
It's the standard because of the collusion not because of the cost. All game stores make bajillions of dollars, not only steam. The only difference is how the profit is shared (stock holders vs a few individuals). Please don't start talking about the "standard retail cut" as well, as if physical products can be treated the same as digital ones. Steam isn't running close to it's cost, even if you pile on everything they do.
I know what steam is, but it's not enough to make me lick a billionaires boot. Steam being slightly better than other stores does not justify their collusion, soft monopoly and anti consumer businesses (like threatening to delist games if the dev puts it for cheaper somewhere else). Please name the feature you think is worth giving a billion dollars to one guy? Is it having a friends list?
You are nitpicking one thing and ignoring the rest.
The other game stores aren't the bar, it's all rotten. And it will stay rotten if everyone keeps thinking the best looking rotting fruit deserves to be defended. Even if you lick Gabens sweaty feet, he still won't let you own your games.
We need regulations not pathetic billionaire worship.
So yes, steam is better than Xbox but it isn't good enough. Polished feces are still feces. Quality and price of games is directly affected by these vampiric mega corps taking 1/3 of the profits to buy boats. Grow up and stop being part of the problem.
Unless you're going to show that this price fixing was somehow agreed to and accepted by regulations decades ago with brick and mortar stores, and then there was an agreement from all the digital marketplaces to join onboard, you can't assume it must be a grand conspiratorial cabal except, somehow, for Tim Sweeney and Epic Games, who are standing against literally everyone else.
Nothing you have said about Steam seems to indicate you're aware of anything Steam does beyond distribute games. Even here, you're not demonstrating any knowledge of its other features. It says quite a lot you think there must be one singular feature that makes all the difference, it's like you have no frame of reference for how many other features Steam has compared to other stores and how they could all be of immense value together. You did, however, reference yet another piece of disingenuity: the bullshit MFN clause complaint. Yet another standard retail practice and agreement that someone is disingenuously claiming is unique to Steam. I'd chalk this up to another EGS thing but there's no proof they're connected to or, you know, colluding with this Dutch group behind the odd class action suit.
So much of this is just ignoring what the standards are and lying by saying they're unique to Steam and nobody else. Standards are standards. There are other agreements in place to keep digital pricing the same as physical pricing too, we should be talking about standards more, not less. There's no good reason to reject acknowledging and considering standards and how little they have been changed. This is Tim Sweeney's whole push about lowering the fee to 12% too.
Pointing out the basis for your arguments are wrong is not nitpicking. The premises are the foundation of the argument and directly lead to the point. You don't have a point if everything that leads to it is wrong. It's also not defending anyone to say that you, and specifically you, are working on false information. If anything, it's closer to being a attack on you than a defense of anyone else.
Speaking of not reading what is being written, you somehow missed I told you what you legitimately could grieve Valve, Steam, and Newell over and you somehow missed it entirely in order to keep up this lie that Valve or Steam are being defended by pointing out you've been played to believe something that isn't actually true because you have little to no experience with the services in question.
Speaking of billionaire worship, I notice a distinct lack of you questioning why billionaire Tim Sweeney would be manipulating public thought and argumentation against his competition in the exact same way that billionaires have been doing for the last decade, and how you fell for it. If you're really anti-billionaire, you should be mad that happened and actively untangling all of the bullshit away and moving on to more legitimate grievances and criticisms instead of doubling down on them by hoping yelling "collusion!" enough will make it real.
Jfc, tell me the feature you think is worth a billion dollars worth of boats. I'm saying I know the features but they 1. Are a drop in the bucket in terms of profit and cost compared to actually hosting the game files, and 2. It isn't enough to justify any of it.
Now who's nitpicking? My point was never that there was one killer feature that's worth $100b/yr. Again, it's weird you think there is one, a weirdness that can only be chalked up to a total ignorance of what Steam actually offers. The whole point is that the entire meme argument of "Steam doesn't deserve the 30% cut!" is based on flawed premises based on the PR campaign of a competing billionaire trying to take much of that capital for himself, there is not a single way to make a reasonable point in that direction unless the argument is that nobody deserves a 30% cut but, given the features provided compared to every other retailer out there, Steam would deserve the highest cut (even if that's something like 15% instead of 30%).
Accusing collusion, pretending Steam doesn't have any extra features compared to other retailers or digital platforms, ignoring market and industry standards, and accusing any pushback as being a defense are not reasonable lines of argument.
No one deserves a 30% cut for hosting virtual game files, even with the extra features included.
Steam, Epic, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are literally sucking out profit for something that has virtually no expense compared to that profit.
That profit could be going to the actual people making the product and all it needs is a minimum of regulation. We could be getting more and better games right now but instead Gaben and company get big boats.
All of them have fluff like friends lists, multiplayer frameworks and what not. Sure steam is better than the others but they are still part of the same club playing the same game. Even worse, with their small staff, steam probably has the highest cost to revenue ratio.
I'm trying to explain to you that the features don't matter and certainly aren't currently enough to justify robbing devs of literal billions.
That's...that's how a business should operate. Not chasing quarterly reviews and stock prices, but being in business as long as feasibly possible. Making products and/or services that meet the need of the market and continual improvement of them.
Instead most businesses, especially dealing with video games, are ran by short term thinking psychopaths who only care how a quarter looks and not the long term sustainability of the entire company. They saw a massive influx during the Covid lockdowns and didn't realize that was temporary growth for a particular difficult time so keep chasing those kinds of profits with layoffs, studio closures.
Their organizational method is pretty cool and their book on it is open sourced.
Cool, still not your friend.
It is very cool
I think Gabe acts more like the European rich. They are still pieces of shit, but they learned a long time ago to STFU about their money after a long history involving guillotines and the like that the U.S. hasn’t experienced to the same extent just yet.
I like steam I send them a christmas card every year with my life updates.
I will settle for a company who's demonstrated long term strategy is mostly in line with my interests. It's not perfect, but I'll take "morale because it's profitable" over "enshitifcation for a quick profit"
that's why i said friendly reminder and not "boycott valve"
Fair, fair.
Corporations are not your friends. They may do something you like but will shit on you if it benefits them.
I never thought he was my friend. The CEO being my friend is not a requirement for running a company I don't mind buying from.
Do you refuse to buy toilet paper because no TP company CEO is your friend either?
when did i say never buy anything from valve?
Yeah you're right 😔 why can't they be motivated by morals and social high standings like people
Fuck capitalism