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Cake day: April 26th, 2025
  • DoGeeseSeeGod@lemmy.blahaj.zonetoGames@lemmy.world•For Warhorse's 15th birthday, we chatted with its co-founder about the demand for 'grown-up' RPGs, AI, why games are too cheap, and his role in the collapse of communismEnglish
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    23 days ago

    And why do gamers say that? Is it because Steam is holding a gun to gamers head? Or is it because Steam is the most feature rich and most gamer friendly storefront?

    Allow me to summarize my below ramblings. Steam is a de facto monopoly, yes. But it is one cuz it treats gamers better than any other storefront. Its not because they are evil, at least in my opinion.

    I’m hesitant to believe steam’s 30% cut is really that awful for devs, or too big of a cut. I’ve read multiple stories about how indie devs make way more money on steam than off it.

    If steam took a smaller cut, I don’t think we should assume the extra money would go to the devs outside of maybe indie titles, most of the extra money would go to the owners.

    If the 30% cut Steam takes is so insanely high, why doesn’t someone make a rival storefront and offer even steeper discounts?

    To be clear, I’m not going to pretend there isn’t some “fat” in that 30% cut. Gabe is a goddamn billionaire after 21 years of Steam. Tho some of that billion could have come from reinvesting some of his money and getting lucky, or from the success of the valve games.

    As much as I despise billionaires, Gabe is probably one of the least evil billionaires when it comes to how he acquired his wealth. Steam filled a niche in the video game world and earned its huge monopolyish marketshare by doing right by the customer. If we consider Steam a monopoly, it’s a monopoly became no one has tried to really compete against Steam by offering great valvue to gamers.

    I don’t know of any anti competitive bullshit steam has pulled like other companies. I can fairly easily install gog games on my steam deck. If that was a Xbox deck or a PlayStation deck, I’d bet money they’d lock down the software to prevent you from installing games that didnt come from their store.

    Ultimately I think Gabe would be a better person for donating lot’s more of his money/not being a billionaire.

    Ultimately, I worry about when Gabe is no longer the head of Steam. They are effectively a monopoly cuz no one else treats gamers as well. When Gabe is gone/if enshittification comes to steam, then I’ll think we’ll see a new storefront start to take over and an end to the steam “monopoly”. But that end will be, hopefully, because some other storefront is treating games better.

    Going back to the original thread topic of devs not getting enough money. If steam suddenly changed to a 15% cut, there is no guarantee that extra revenue would go to the devs. Maybe some would, but if a studio is already underpaying treating devs shitty I’m betting most of that 15% will go to the owners/managers.

    The majority of the game studios and storefronts are out there actively shooting themselves in the foot, while Steam is there just being decent. It ain’t the devs fault that their bosses decided to make a shit game, but it ain’t steam’s either.