Valve could reduce their cut honestly, perhaps some program for independent developers to help them get on their feet. I don’t think the top games or big publishers should be getting cut reductions.
Either way, Valve haven’t been buying out studios for exclusive games, so Epic and Sweeney can go fuck themselves, they are scum.
I do think Valve could drop it to 25% and not lose much sleep over their coffers.
I mean I don’t know how much money steam is banking, but they provide quite a good service for their share.
Max download rates at all times (almost).
Amazing steam overlay. Online gaming. Online saves. Workshop. Linux support.
And many more. Some of that epic has too but in comparison epic launcher is shit.
Less drama more context would be nice from headlines, but man does it feel like I’m asking too much
Is epics cut still 12%?
And in the same court case - it was discovered it was not profitable despite their more limited offerings.
Yes. Since nobody else seems to want to answer. Also, they waive the Unreal Engine revenue share from sales on the Epic Store.
I appreciate Epics pro developer stance, but the need a better consumer experience and innovation in that space if they want to be serious about the store.
Valve has spen’t much of the last 25 years pushing the industry forwards in distribution. That’s why there’s so much loyalty to them.
They are only pro developer because they aren’t breaking into the market well at all.
I guarantee that if they ever have a breakthrough and start approaching 40% sales or more, they will double their cut for sure.
Their cut is literally only to draw in developers and operate at a loss, subsidized by other income or investors, to gain as much market share as possible before jacking up prices.
It is the exact scummy playbook that amazon went by to drown their competition with their bare hands. The only difference is that Epic doesn’t understand the market at all and won’t commit resources to improving their store.
Sweeney is a third-rate Carmack
Which Carmack is the chud hack and which Carmack is the one that had his hands in Unreal Tournament
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Fuck does that mean there’s a third Carmack I’m forgetting about? 'Cause I’d swear there’s a Carmack in the credits for UT2k4.
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Y’know after wracking my brain for the past 15 minutes you might be right; I might’ve somehow mentally mondegreen’d the credits screen of Quake 3 Arena over that of Unreal 2k4
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Steam community or not, the glib defense of rent-seeking behavior on lemmy.ml is wild.
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If scale is no longer an issue, why can’t Epic create a store with similar functionality to steam? Because it’s not about that. It’s about Tim not being able to pocket as much.
Epic simply doesn’t want to be consumer friendly. Epic sees the money Valve is making, but not the effort Valve puts into their store. Just how consumer friendly Valve is the reason Valve basically a monopoly. Valve gives so many tools to the devs too such as SteamAPI to make their games better and accessible to a wide range of consumers with a wide range of devices.
Epic knows that the way it can fight Valve is by pointing out their 30% cut. Everything else, involves making their store better, which Epic doesn’t wanna do.
I am not sympathetic at all to epic, let alone Tim Sweeney, but I do think people are very unwilling to talk about valve’s absolute dominance and how much the current ecosystem is heavily dependent on how magnanimous they are feeling.
We worry about companies that aren’t anywhere near as dominant as valve. Just because their interests align with ours today doesn’t mean they will tomorrow.
While you may have a point that we can’t know what any company will do in the future, the fact remains that Valve has earned their place by 2 factors alone:
1.- Constant innovation to make their platform a place where everyone wants to be, without crippling the competition, despite having the means to do it. 2.- years of building trust with their users and providers alike by being transparent and clear on what they offer, while adding value which costs money that they absorb.
Yes, 30% of so much money is a shitload of money, but I have yet to see one good reason why that’s a bad thing other than the usual “it’s too much” bullshit argument.
Unity, Reddit, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, these companies have 1 common denominator: they have gone out of their way to destroy anything that would present a risk to 10 cents of their revenue, including, but not limited to, absorbing any potential competition, regardless of if they represent a risk to their dominance or not.
Do not compare valve to these assholes. Valve is making tons of money? Unless you can show me, with evidence, how this is detrimental to anyone else, other than the fact that you are not making as much, all you have is bullshit and a fucking tantrum.
my problem is people conflate pro develper and pro consumer actions as the same thing, when they arent. what epic does is very pro developer(better cut, money in advance if exclusive), but the platform is far from being pro consumer(removes consumer choice in platform to buy it on, lower competiuon, inconplete community, store, workshop, and os functionality). I’m in open arms for competition, but it actively is a worse consumer experience, then its very hard to support.
I said this in another place, but the single only reason that Epic is pro developer is because they have miniscule market share.
If they gain significant market share, they will 100% absolutely guaranteed, no doubt, double their cut from developers.
It is the exact scum tactic that has been done dozens of times before like amazon.
Here’s the difference. When we talk about companies dominating an industry, we’re usually talking about practices that keep competition from even forming. Monopolies are formed as a result of big companies buying out or making it impossible for their competition.
Steam doesn’t do that, which is a big reason they won their monopoly suit. They just provide a better model than anyone else is willing to, and they rake in the cash because of it.
Compare this situation to books-a-million in the states. Books-a-million doesn’t have a monopoly on books, they just have created a better environment for selling them. They aren’t stopping other book stores from opening or buying chains to shut them down, they just sell you a cup of coffee and give you a place to sit while you browse their massive selection.
That’s not a monopoly, that’s just better business.
We worry about companies that aren’t anywhere near as dominant as valve. Just because their interests align with ours today doesn’t mean they will tomorrow.
Valve is dominant because they treat users well. Is your argument here seriously “Yes, Valve is a better platform that treats you well, but you shouldn’t use it because other people already do! You should use a platform that’s not as good because competition!”
A competitor in any industry needs to do more than “exist” to be worth using. If Valve starts acting shitty I will stop using it, much like how I have stopped purchasing or playing Blizzard games.
Valve isn’t dominating an essential industry. They could control 100% of the game market and it would make no difference to anything important.
Neither is Tiktok. But the US Congress is still freaking out about it.
The US congress is freaking out about TikTok because of national security concerns about china potentially harvesting data on americans and influencing politics, not because TikTok is a monopoly.
This is not at all the same thing.
Steam is just perfect at keeping the gamers behind them as they are only assholes behind doors to the Devs on their platform.
30% is an absurd cut for a store that has such a monopoly that if you don’t release there your game is pretty much cancelled even if you release at your own store without DRM and with additional goodies (Looking at GOG and The Witcher - they released the Gwent standalone like a year later on steam because it didn’t sell at all on GOG and then it apparently outsold the GOG version without a week)
People are just too lazy and Steam is keeping them happy enough to not bother looking another way.
Epic isn’t a good guy in any case but the exclusive deals on AAA Games they do is probably the only way to get someone to buy the game there instead of Steam
30% is an absurd cut for a store that has such a monopoly that if you don’t release there your game is pretty much cancelled
That’s exactly why they take 30%. Because having your game on Steam is a huge deal. Because Steam is very popular and lucrative. Because it’s well-made and useful. Little Timmy wants to skip to having a popular and lucrative platform without first doing the step of making it well-made and useful.
The exclusive on epic game store is a cancer that should not exist. And epic should remove their parody of launcher from existence because they somehow managed to make this a cancer too.
People hated Steam and were very skeptical initially. Respect was earned over time
They were literally selling physical game boxes with a code and an installer for Steam in it instead of the game.
Steams initial tactics are as scummy as Epic’s. The reason they don’t need them anymore is because of their semi monopoly.
Those DVDs usually had the game backup files on it too, so you didn’t even need to download most physical copies you purchased. And I can still download the original CS game I bought like 20 years ago. Seems like a good deal since that game cost me like $40 in store.
people use ‘u mad bro’ like it’s some great insult. people get mad. it’s a human emotion. it exists for a reason. it’s not a glitch. anger is a motivator, and a damn good one. get mad, folks. use that energy. most people aren’t mad enough these days.
See https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/u-mad, in particular the “Due to the agitating nature of the phrase, it is often considered a form of trolling.”
u mad bro?
maybe. whacha gonna do about?
Cry :(
👑
Their criticism of Steam seems pretty valid
