• Zozano@lemy.lol
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      8 months ago

      What is there so hard to understand?

      They became billionaires without treating their customers like a product.

      Enshitification hasn’t reached Valve yet.

      They are making important progress in Linux compatibility for free.

      Customer support consistently break their own rules to keep customers happy, at the expense of profit.

      Their platform offers a lot of great services to customers for free.

      • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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        8 months ago

        Lmfao “for free”. Did you read the article? Did you not see the part where Valve takes 30% of every single game in existience’s revenue? The part where Valve makes more money per game then the studios actually developing them?

        Yes, steam was great and rose to its monopoly through its greatness, but they have been flat out abusing that monopoly by not lowering prices when they can. The occasional free return is a trinket they throw back at you after overcharging you by at least 15% on every single other game you’ve ever purchased.

        • Zozano@lemy.lol
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          8 months ago

          The services are free for the customers though.

          30% is and isn’t a lot when you consider everything it entitles you to do as a developer, including high-speed download servers, community tools, advertising, SteamWorks platform etc.

          The work valve is doing in development of Proton isn’t an occasional trinket, it’s an ongoing and important project which is helping to defeat the real monopoly, Microsoft.

          Also, I’m a patient gamer, Steam sales are frequent enough that I have always paid the best price.

          • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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            8 months ago

            Epic charges you 5% of revenue after a million dollars to use the entirety of Unreal engine. 30% for a store with an add on market is not reasonable.

            • Zozano@lemy.lol
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              8 months ago

              And how’s that going for them? Have they stopped running at a loss yet?

              Come back to me when Tim Sweeny has a viable business strategy.

              • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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                8 months ago

                And how’s that going for them?

                Excellently, Unreal Engine makes a huge amount of money for them.

                Have they stopped running at a loss yet?

                You’re probably thinking of the Epic Games Store, not Unreal Engine, and it would be grossly profitable at 12% commission if it had the established infrastructure and sales numbers that Steam does, it’s only not profitable because they are still developing and building infrastructure and they basically just sell Fortnite and Rocket League.

                • Zozano@lemy.lol
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                  8 months ago

                  I was only talking about Epic Game Store, not Unreal.

                  But on that matter, Valve charges much less for their engine, and is often free for indie devs.

                  EGS would be grossly profitable if they had a good service, but they don’t because their platform is shit.

                  “They basically just sell Fortnite and Rocket League”

                  So, has anything changed in the past 3 years or are they just doing the exact same thing, hoping something would change?

                  • masterspace@lemmy.ca
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                    8 months ago

                    But on that matter, Valve charges much less for their engine, and is often free for indie devs.

                    If you’re talking about the Source Engine, they’re really, really not comparable. The Source Engine hasn’t even been updated since 2013.

                    EGS would be grossly profitable if they had a good service, but they don’t because their platform is shit.   What are they supposed to do?

                    How would you convince gamers to use your store instead of Steam? There are reasons that anti-monopoly laws don’t care how you got your monopoly, once you have one it’s problematic because it makes nearly impossible for competition to form against you.

        • arefx
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          8 months ago

          Your reading comprehension skills are garbage if this is your take. Also steam has DEEP discounts on their store 4x a year for 2 weeks at a time lol. Literally two months out of the year.

    • Seasoned_Greetings@lemm.ee
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      8 months ago

      I’ll never understand why some people look at the fact that steam is popular because of their policies, and can’t help but make a comment like this equating that popularity to cock worship.

      Like, we get it bro. You’re thinking about cocks and you’re mad about a half decent game store. What compelled you to combine those thoughts on a public forum?

      The weird thing is that this isn’t even the first comment I’ve seen like this. Dudes that are mad about steam want everyone else to know about steam’s massive, throbbing cock for some reason. This guy alone has posted 3 of these.

    • RoyalEasy@lemmy.ca
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      8 months ago

      You could go to another site but then you wouldn’t get the attention that you crave.

      You need us “assholes.”