There’s only a handful of companies and the smallest one (itch.io) takes between 0% and 10%. The companies that “couldn’t deal with it” are Microsoft (for Xbox, they actually take 12% on PC), Nintendo, Sony.
Look up what a soft monopoly is. In any case, they have market dominance and are abusing it. Steam is currently dealing with more than one anti trust lawsuit, including a 900$ million one in the UK.
It’s weird seeing people defend billionaires and their money sucking machine. You could defend Airbnb or Amazon with that same kind of energy and arguments. They haven’t lost a single monopoly lawsuit either.
30% is a disgusting cut for a few gb of data on a virtual store front. It’s having a negative impact on devs, and it only helps makes rich people richer. You don’t get a networth of 9 to 11 billion by being fair and having consumers at heart. Steam and Gaben aren’t your friends, they actively treat you and the industry as a bag of money to be exploited. They just have a really good marketing team.
Starski@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
I defend it because I love the service, and have used it for over a decade. I again will wait until the results of these lawsuits, as steam has won every other monopoly lawsuit in the past, and I personally believe for good reason as described in my comment above.
Grimy@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
You can say the same thing about Amazon and Airbnb. None of them are bad products and they are all convenient, but they are having a negative impact. You don’t directly feel it but the workers do and in the end, it does mean less quality and overall games for us.
I’m not calling for a boycott here but the minimum would be calling them out on it.
Starski@lemmy.zip 4 hours ago
Nah, Amazon and airbndn do not remotely have comparable service to steam, I’ve personally had shitty experiences with both and no many others who have as well. I have many personal gripes with numerous of their business models, and those have deserved hate to them. I’ve never personally had any negative experience with steam, nor has any singular person I know or have met and talked to steam about. I use the service daily, along with all of my friends, and its has been nothing but amazing, and has provided stellar service to me and all my friends for over a decade. The second a better service comes along, I’d be willing to switch, but as it stands every single other online gaming service is straight shit compared to steam, even Gog is going down the drain. I owe the ability to even play a third of the games I own to the work steam has done with proton. Everything I know and have seen about their work flow is also incredibly respectable, it seems to be an incredibly healthy Democratic work environment that promotes innovation and quality of content over pumping out bullshit. So far, the only reasoning I’ve seen you give as to why steam is bad is that they’re a monopoly, which not only is false, but the accusations have only come on because of how massively successful they are due to having an objectively better service than anything else out there.