They simply did what everyone else refused to do, get out of their own way.

I think the key was that Steam wasn't created to make money, but to solve problems they themselves had, like "How do we get new versions of Counter Strike out to all these players?"

Then as Valve wasn't the only company having these problems, the solution could easily be sold to others.

If the other companies really wanted to crack Steam's near-monopoly, the solution would be to tackle the problems associated with not having all your games on Steam. Work together on a open-source launcher supporting all stores, similar to GOG Galaxy. First make something useful that tackles an unsolved problem, then you can make money off it when it becomes successful.

Instead they go in just trying to make a buck, and end up just being worse versions of Steam.

That ended up being a bit of a rant, but I'm frustrated at their shortsighted market strategies :p

• The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs

Sigh. Here we go again. I'll just copy one of my older comments about that attitude.

Steam is not a parasitic middle man, it is a collection of services that would have to be provisioned and operated by the developer otherwise. The 30% cut pays for:

• A massive infrastructure to store and deliver the game and its updates, worldwide, and at an acceptable bandwidth that Valve operates
• A storefront that enables monetizing the game
• The audience and discoverability that would not exist otherwise
• The Steam API, achievements, cloud saves
• The client itself, content management, validation, and Linux compatibility tools
• Network and operational security
• Also keep in mind that Steam and its services are operated by experts. A game developer would have to hire the experts or get training.

If the revenue from the cut exceeds the operational costs: it's called profitability, not theft. The world doesn't run on good vibes.

The 30% percent cut, stealing money from devs

This is a pretty spicy take. Let's consider two possibilities:

1. Game devs choose to distribute independently, and sell their game for $20. They sell 100,000 copies and make $2 million in revenue, and keep the entire $2 million.

2. Game devs choose to distribute via Steam, promote it with a 50% off sale, it goes to the Steam front page, sells 500,000 copies at only $10 each, for a total $5 million in revenue. Steam takes $1.5 million and the devs take $3.5 million.

In scenario 2 the devs make 75% more than in scenario 1. Did Valve steal from the game devs?

I love Valve for a lot of things but I'll never forget that they spearheaded some of the most predatory microtransactions in the industry (loot boxes and battle passes) and were happy to help Bethesda try to sell mods until players raised a huge stink.

A steam account being un-inheritable, making you defacto a tenant of your games

Can’t you just give your kids your steam password ? How would they notice ?

I didn’t knew about he claiming to be a libertarian. Rothbard must be turning over in his grave.

Not to mention his insane Porsche collection, yeah he's just another billionaire

Valve ruined my favourite game (dota) by flooding the game with ridiculous cosmetics that even change particle effects with no way to disable any of this

A steam account being un-inheritable, making you defacto a tenant of your games

This is unenforceable under US Law

Valve takes 30% from every sale on Steam, which is quite landlord-like. Although there are much worse practices in the market.

He hasn't enshittified anything yet, and it's looking like he might not ever, which is why people respect him.

There's valid criticisms, yes, but that meme is dead accurate. I don't want to imagine what gaming would look like today if someone like EA the same vast influence over the industry instead of Valve.

As far as billionaires go, he's the least shit of the bunch. No idea what his personal life is like, and I don't want to know. Every billionaire that makes their personal life public so far has turned out to be a giant cunt.