this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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8500 million in revenue and 350 employees.
Gaben owns 6 yatchs and spends 70 to 100 million maintaining them.
There is absolutely nothing that differentiates valve from the other stores front to justify this. The whole store front industry should be tightly regulated. No billionaire should exist and if you find yourself defending one, it just means they have a good marketing team.
This is having a negative impact on the industry and the only ones benefiting are Gaben, Nintendo, Microsoft, Epic, etc. it's clear collusion.
Can't wait for all the downvotes and simps coming to defend him because "Gaben isn't your average billionaire".
The "justification" is that Steam is a good storefront and others kind of blows. There's nothing stopping other companies from making good software....they just haven't.
That's not what collusion is.... Steam doesn't sell Nintendo games and is Epic/Microsoft's rival.
To be clear, I'm not defending billionaires. Your talking points are just kind of baseless.
I mean they have tried, but than they get in shit for doing something different to get their foot in the door(epics free games). Valves marketing and fan base is top notch and defends them voraciously with their rose coloured glasses.
They have buggy games, they don’t update them, they are currently over run with griefers making some unplayable to any fun degree.
What’s with the passes they keep getting? As you said they get “justification” lmfao, what a fucking joke. Its capitalists defending despite you claiming you aren’t what a joke. Does musk get a pass for his space ventures? No, so why does gaben? Please explain in detail, I would love a legit answer to this.
Because people dont want free games, they want a useful service with features. EGS is a piece of shit that leaks users data often.
L O L "doing something different"
Epic tried to pull an Amazon.
Get VC money and chinese money and subsidize and undercut competition using anticompetitive practices to gain market share before the rug pull where they jack up their margins to the industry standard. (Everyone uses 30%, even brick and mortars except humble which is 25)
The difference is Amazon actually made a good software experience in the beginning few years and Epic spent literal years with very few feature updates and whining and burning money suing about "unfair market practices" when they were the only ones actually engaging in anti-consumer practices like paying off developers to be Epic-exclusive and buying developers and removing their games from steam. The other "different" thing that they did I guess is their CEO is an outspoken objective asshole.
They never got to the rug pull part because their actual software sucked balls and they refused to improve it so much so that someone else actually made a better launcher than them for their own products...
Nowhere did I say Gaben gets a pass, I'm saying Steam is a great service.
Nobody shit on epic for giving away free games. You can't just make a completely false statement like that.
People don't like epic because they bought games and made them exclusive to their store.
Uhh go check the internet maybe? Epics gets bashed for everything, including the free games dude lol.
Provide one example if it's so ubiquitous. I have been following the EGS discourse for years and never seen anyone complain about the free games.
Maybe complaints about how the games aren't worth it because you have to use EGS, sure. I've made that joke myself. That's a different complaint though.
Ah so you’re just a troll. You understand the hate, participate, but claim it isn’t. Thats what racists and other type of people justify their hate.
Blocked.
Well, that sure took a turn I wasn't expecting.
This dude has got to be bipolar or something. Dudes comments go 0-60 faster than a the NASA X-43.
You mean the part when they realized they were backed into a corner and were about to lose an argument so they tried pulling the escape lever of "Blocked"?
Others barely tried to compete. GOG has its niche in DRM-free, while Epic engages in REAL monipolistic behaviour(Epic exclusives) and upset gamers with it.
Please cite a source for your claims
Did you read your own article?
That's the indie industry getting fucked right there, but sure, drink Gabbens sweat.
The actual revenue is difficult because it's all estimation, they clearly don't want us to know and hide it. One website says 13 billion lol, and they brought it an estimated 1 billion just from Counter-strike crates. I got 8.5 from the article that was posted two days ago. Whatever it is, it's too fucking high, stop defending multi billionaires.
Go ask any indie developer if they think the 30% cut valve takes from sales through steam means they're "getting fucked". I can assure you, the vast majority do not.
Serving files, absorbing the costs of credit card payments and charge backs, and maintaining community forums is worth the 30% alone. Hell, just being able to list your product on the most popular store is worth it for some people.
In my industry, physical stores won't even consider stocking your product for less than 40pts of margin and the big guys expect you to absorb the freight costs as well.
30% on storefront sales and you can sell your own keys for 100% profit on your own site is more than fair.
https://www.wired.com/story/death-occurs-in-the-dark-indie-video-game-devs-are-struggling-to-stay-afloat/
The indie industry is seriously struggling. I'm pretty sure they would rather survive than donate to Gabens coke and prostitute fund.
There's also a huge difference between a physical store and a digital soft monopoly.
Stop defending billionaires.
I can't read the link but if we just gauge the health of the indie game portion of the industry by how many games are released, I think the only conclusion you can make is that it's quite healthy. In no small part due to steam which provides discoverability for smaller titles and handles a lot of the technical stuff (downloads, multi-player, even drm) so indie devs don't have to.
You just seem to have a chip on your shoulder in this department and it's not clear why other than "billionaires are bad".
I'm gauging the health of the industry by the amount of studios that are struggling and closing their doors. The amount of games is meaningless since a lot of those games are that studios last one as well as the amount including all the shovel ware garbage. Anyone can make a game these days with AI, the amount is not a good metric.
Someone being a billionaire is a valid reason for saying they shouldn't be a billionaire. Yes, all billionaires are bad and leeching off society. Though I do have a chip on my shoulder and that's because of seeing people actually defend Gaben as if he was any different than all the other ones. Stop defending billionaires, they actively hate you and probably giggle seeing what they consider peasants coming to their defense.
You can go in incognito mode to avoid the paywall. In any case, here's a gpt summary:
Thing is, even if Steam charged them 0%, they would be struggling all the same. They're struggling because they don't have enough sales.
Steam is taking 30% of their sales, so they are struggling more because steam is greedy. At the end, it's the profit that matter. Selling more copies or selling the same amount but with a better profit margin is the same thing for the bottomline. I'm not trying to be harsh but your point is a bit silly.
Its also not like the whole industry is together and it's one big pass or fail. Some studios that were walking the line and would have survived with a bit more profits don't because of Steam.
Steam cuts into the profit of every sale and forces them to need more than they should to survive.
I mean about the yachts.
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
Here you go. Sorry if I'm being a dick, my hate for billionaires spills out whenever I approach the subject.