this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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At this point, their cut is just about mathematically fair, given how little value customers get from buying games most other places and how much value they get from Steam. Then that money got funneled back into decoupling PC gaming from Microsoft and making probably the only mass produced handheld gaming system that's open enough to let you opt out of their ecosystem. I'd be really curious as to how many games on Steam even have ARM builds, because I'll bet it's a very low number, and that would likely make the juice not worth the squeeze.
Their cut is mathematically fair but the inputs for this formula are mostly pain tolerance levels of consumers and producers. I meant fair for having a monopoly. Either you're a utility or need to be broken up so that actual competition can take place.
Steam Deck and Proton killed Linux gaming because nobody bothers to do native ports. While I don't agree with that approach it kinda works but it's not that Valve does this because they like Linux. They're scared of losing their monopoly in case Windows changes too much.
There are ARM native games on Mac (Disco Elysium for example) and Steam has no issues with them. Not having ARM client though means that you're running a dynamically recompiling web browser through a translation layer resulting in terrible performance.
Pain tolerance levels? The biggest pain points I have with Steam are that it's not universally DRM-free (which is why I shop GOG first) and that their multiplayer servers go down for 15 minutes during maintenance windows once or twice per week. Native Linux ports were not going to become more common prior to Proton; they were on the fast track to becoming less common, especially given how many more games are now released every year, and Proton has the added benefit of adding Linux support to games where it was just never going to feasibly happen otherwise.
It's both. That fear of losing their market position is exactly how a functioning market is supposed to work. Competition is supposed to come in and outdo Valve. EA looked like they were interested for a little while back when they launched Origin, but they changed their minds. Epic says they're interested now, but they only want sellers and not customers. It's not a monopoly, legally, when they attained their market position by just being better than everyone else.
And I wonder how many more there are out there. Because if that number is low enough, it may just not be worth it to bother. I'd imagine it's a nightmare to have to support Apple through all of their standards that they dictate at their business partners. Valve went through the trouble of making a Vulkan->Metal translation layer, since Apple refused to support open standards, and then Apple retired x64 on their machines shortly afterward.
Pain tolerance to prices, how good the support is, how snappy the app is etc. Within the space of game marketplaces they're average and that's because every one of them kind of sucks. If Epic was first to monopolize PC game marketplaces people would be defending them like they defend Valve now because they want all of their games in one place.
Linux gaming was stable before Proton. It was never big but mainstream titles were getting released. These days there's nothing. Titles could be broken at any moment by a developer and nobody will have any responsibility to fix it. I very much doubt that a for profit company does anything because they "like" something like Linux. They're there to make money, period.
I'm not saying Valve should port their games to ARM or update them, it's up to them and they don't seem to be interested in developing games all that much these days. My point wad that plenty of games run via Rosetta2 fine. Steam doesn't run fine because essentially it's a web browser and that's where you can say that 80 developers might not be enough to support this money printing machine.
No, people accept Steam because of the proven track record, values of their leadership, their hardware and the work they do with Linux.
Please.
EGS would have all this in that hypothetical scenario, why wouldn't it?
Pain tolerance to prices? We're talking about the platform whose name is frequently coupled with the word "sale". Given the complete lack of ideas out of Epic in the year 2024, I don't have much confidence that they'd have risen to be a dominant market leader in the first place.
Stable, but not many titles. Mainstream titles were getting released because Valve was either greasing the wheels or because those partners thought Steam Machines were going to be a bigger deal. When they weren't a bigger deal, those mainstream titles dried up fast. The Witcher 3 and Street Fighter V both announced Linux ports and cancelled them when the writing was on the wall for Steam Machines. Both now work in Proton.
I was told, to my face, by a Valve employee between the launch of Steam Machines and the release of Proton, that a lot of engineers at Valve "are enamored with Linux" before he gave me a look indicating that he couldn't say more. But also, yes, the pursuit of making money leads to all sorts of wonderful new things, like simultaneously porting more than half of the history of PC gaming to a different operating system.
But if there aren't many games ported to ARM, and if the number of games running via Rosetta "fine" isn't high enough, then the number of customers you're benefiting by making a native ARM build of Steam is very low, and throwing more developers at the problem only makes that math worse. I think you should have a better Steam on Mac. I also know that Apple is actively hostile to gaming on Mac, so I get it if Valve isn't super interested.
The only reason you don't see the price as a pain point is that you refuse to see that about 50% of that goes to companies that make billions in profit while people like you and me can't afford rent.
Valve is not your landlord. They made a good place to buy video games. And come on, now; it's 30% at most to Valve (which is less than brick and mortar before it) and then some more to the government.
30% for Valve, another 10 to 20% for the publisher...
Guess where the billionaires work?
There isn't always a publisher. Sometimes the publisher owns them outright, and the devs will only see a salary in either case. There are only a handful of publishers that are worth more than a billion dollars and therefore run by billionaires, and they account for very few game releases in a given year on Steam these days. There's a lot of nuance to this. And quite frankly, if a game I want to play comes from a billionaire's company, I'm going to buy the game, they're going to get some of my money, and I won't feel bad about that.
Billionaires, multimillionaires, they're all part of the problem. Right now you're defending the people making you pay more for stuff than it's worth.
If you sold something for $10 that hundreds of thousands of people wanted enough to buy it, you'd be a multimillionaire too. The only way you fund a development team with a handful of people working there is with multiple millions of dollars.
Oh so Gabe's six yachts, that's for development purposes?
It's irrelevant, is what it is. When you make something a whole bunch of people want to pay money for, you get to buy yourself nice things. I find a yacht to be a pretty wasteful use of money, but when I handed over thousands of dollars for hundreds of Steam games, it's because we were both getting something good out of that transaction.
And you're doing that while your peers are starving.
Do you realize that you're the victim defending their abuser in this relationship? You'll never been one of them, wake the fuck up.
I'm not in an adversarial relationship with the people who sell me video games for fun. Every time you buy a video game from an indie dev on their own web site, that too is money you could have used to buy food for someone who's starving.
When I buy from an indie dev directly the money goes to the person accomplishing the work to make the product I'm buying, not a bunch of rich guys that have so much money they don't know what to do with it.
So what happens when that indie dev sells multiple millions of copies and has more money than they know what to do with? The game is just free for everyone else once it reaches a critical mass? Your definition is so arbitrary. Rich people get rich by selling things people want.
That's when wealth taxation comes into play.
I wish you the best of luck.
If this was true, games would cost 18% less on EGS because they only take 12%. Shockingly enough, they cost the same.
Because the same games sell for more elsewhere (also, funnily enough, we're seeing tons of info on Valve because they're getting sued for including a non compete clause in their contract to prevent games from being sold for less elsewhere), that's an issue for the market as a whole and doesn't apply to video games only. You're paying too much for your food, for your gas, for your housing, for your clothes, for every fucking thing!
Profit shares for distributors will need to be regulated and wealth tax will need to be applied.
This is completely incorrect. Their contract states that you can't sell Steam keys for less elsewhere, which is entirely fair in my opinion. If your game is on multiple platforms or storefronts, you can sell it for whatever price you want there. The fact is that nobody does; they list it for the same everywhere and pocket the difference if someone buys on EGS.
Show us price comparisons between storefronts. Prove what you're saying. Full retail price, not sales prices.
That's my fucking point, the whole distribution chain needs to be regulated to stop distributors pocketing so much of our money when they're accomplishing barely any of the actual work. It's not a Valve problem, it's a capitalism problem!
So you think grocery chains are making record profit every year without it impacting your wallet or something?
Still waiting on those price comparisons.
Kinda impossible to do price comparisons when the whole is system is rigged, right?
If you're an idiot, sure
Alright then, can you do math?
Valve gets a 30% cut, take a game, reduce that cut to 10% and figure out the price. Price stays the same? Alright, that just means more money going to the devs, which are the people like you and me, instead of Gabe, which is a billionaire.
Apply that in all sectors and we end up richer, billionaires end up poorer. The 1% would finally stop owning 63% of all wealth... But I guess you would rather defend their right to make as much profit as they want while you can only afford a 10$ game every six months.
Still waiting for the price comparisons
Ok, so you can't do basic calculations then, the education system truly failed you, no wonder you complain that you're poor but can't understand who made you so.
Have a good life!
What calculations? Lmao.
You refuse to prove what you're saying. Show us how every online storefront has different full sale pricing for the same games.
There are no calculations needed. You simple look at the price for the same games on different stores. But you're somehow unable to do that?
I disagree with your definition of "killed Linux gaming." It killed native Linux development perhaps. But using Linux for gaming is more viable than ever thanks to Valve. They single handedly boosted Linux gaming, if anything.
And they also offer more than the competition. For a while there games on EGS were just telling people to get support on steam forums because epic had nothing for supporting games they sold. Steam has forums, screenshot storage, achievements, remote play, friends lists, a shopping cart (🙄) and is adding new features like clips. I'm not using steam because it's a monopoly, I'm using it because it's a better platform.
Killed Linux gaming? I hard disagree with that. Yes developers may not do Native ports as often anymore but I would much rather have the ability to play games that are not considered a native Port because the ocean is so much vaster. If anything proton in the steam deck put Linux on the map, prior to the deck AAA titles you would never see running on Linux you barely saw AA titles on it. However with the introduction of the steam deck in proton we now have companies moving closer to at least making sure their game is compatible with the deck which is one step closer to allowing it to be Linux compatible. It allows you to take your windows games and for the most part just be able to play it without having to have the studio spend as much for it as they would with a native port, because that's the number one thing that holds them back from making a native Port the lack of market share. I would not have switched off of Windows if this was not the case because that was basically the only thing that was holding me on Windows still was the lack of decent gaming support
Let's take Elden Ring for example, it plays beautifully I haven't had a single problem playing it. They weren't going to release a Linux branch but they made sure it was steamdeck compatible, which meant that it was proton compatible which then allows me to play this amazing game on my Debian 12, a game that otherwise would not have worked because none of the other translation layers function with it. I notice zero difference in performance it plays flawlessly, but I would not have been able to play this game otherwise. It might as well be a native Port because I've had zero issues with functionality.
The Factorio development blog has a piece on developing Linux-native. Basically there's ONE GUY who works on the LInux-native version, and it's a lot more challenging than people think -- from managing and linking dependencies, to working around GNOME's monumentally stupid decision to expect client-side decorations from all apps. It's simply more worthwhile to ensure that a game works well on WIne/Proton.