Do You have any idea what the hosting infrastructure, steam works, and traffic costs?
Also, valve is giving massive contributions to open source from those 30%
So, Apple and other companies that charge 30% to host apps: BAD
Steam changes 30% to host games: GOOD
I’m not saying this is your argument, necessarily, but it’s funny to hear that “30% is good actually!” in the tech space because the last few years it’s been “Apple and others who charge 30% are taking too much! All they do is host and manage the traffic for apps!”
And I’m not trying to say Apple is good or anything. It’s just funny.
So you’re not really saying anything at all then. Got it
Then you need to read better.
They are calling out the hypocrisy of those criticizing Apple but worshiping Valve using the same argument for both.
Valve is one of the most profitable company in the world.
itidings.com/…/valves-17-billion-revenue-projecti…
I mean, just look at this thread and see how much free propaganda they get from gamers. That’s a lot of free labour just to defend a billionaire that profits from gambling for kids.
What exactly is this the answer to?
Yes, they make a shit load of money. But assuming you want to distribute a game directly, how much of would that cost you, and let’s ignore the whole visibility shit for a second.
You can litteraly watch 45gb movie instantly over torrent these days.
Because p2p … How exactly does this apply to content distribution? Torrents are not always a reliable option…
Honestly not that much. The biggest thing Valve brings to the table is advertising and access to customers.
Hosting doesn’t cost that much. If you were that desperate for bandwidth (no one is), torrents exist as an option. Blizzard used to have torrents built into their downloader.
The infrastructure is a nice afterthought.
My day job is designing complex IT platforms.
And the cost goes massive down with size.
So. If your game sells badly, you will most likely spend more. Oney in hosting and distribution then you would make profit.
For example, assume your game has around 50gb. You sell 100 copies of it. You can easily calculate 1-2$ per download.
Add your own personal on top of it, someone has to run that stuff, and licensing and more for statistics tooling and more.
Platforms like valve allow indie devs and small studios to avoid all those costs upfront.
“Not that much” depends on the view
They help market the game as well on their storefront.
They could just let you rot in obscurity.
Serinus@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
Yeah, not 30% of all PC games. It’s how they turn out absurd profit.
vapeloki@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Never said that. But what is better for the dev? Using those services or run their own?
And I am fine with Valve making absurd profits, after all, they have put at least 500.000.000 USD into open source (Around 100-200 external oss devs on payroll for projects like Mesa, SDL,…).
Will I leave steam and call valve out if they get toxic? Yes! Are they evil or the enemy right now? To the contrary.
Serinus@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
If they could have still images and text on the Steam store and a link to their external site for everything else, it’d by far be running their own.
It’s the exposure that Steam has an effective monopoly on.
vapeloki@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
GOG takes 30%, most publishers take 30 to 50%, apple app store takes 30%, as does Google.
Is this to high? Maybe, I don’t publish games. But at least it is not absurd in means of industry standards :(
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
See OP image. It’s an effective monopoly because the competition have dumped billions into squandering decades of consumer goodwill.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 11 hours ago
What would be better for the dev is a 9% platform cut and just a slightly smaller megayacht for Gabe.