Comment on I make games and this literally happened to me this morning

• SirDerpy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  I want to note that you’d need about $143 in gross sales to meet the threshold of $100 in net profit.

  On the surface that sounds like a lot. But, they’re providing a service without any guarantee of any income. Epic can only compete because they’ve few users and are willing to operate at a near loss in attempt to garner market share.

  This will be a difficult one for others to understand as a “good deal”. Gamers are usually correct when they pull out their pitchforks. This should not be one of those times.

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  • Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    While I’m no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve’s market dominance in PC game sales isn’t a good thing for developers or consumers.

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    • SirDerpy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Competition in capitalism is always better than a lack thereof. But, we’ve not busted monopolies in a significant way since Ma Bell. And, even if we were, at 75% of the global market share they’d not warrant any action yet.

      There’s going to be a dominant organization because late stage capitalism sucks. And, I’d rather it be Valve than some alternative trying to fuck me over at every opportunity.

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    • AlotOfReading@lemmy.world ⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      The thing is, steam’s market dominance is one of user choice rather than anticompetitive strategies. Steam doesn’t do exclusives, they don’t charge you for external sales, they don’t even prevent you from selling steam keys outside the platform, or users from launching non steam games in the client. The only real restriction is that access to steam services requires a license in the active steam account. Even valve-produced devices like the steam deck can install from other stores.

      Sure, dominance is bad in an abstract theoretical way and it’d be nice if Gog, itch.io, etc were more competitive, but Steam is dominant because consumers actively choose it.

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  • Serinus@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Epic can only compete because they’ve few users and are willing to operate at a near loss

    Bullshit. Epic’s loses are in paying for exclusives and giving away games while ruining their PR.

    Steam could operate at 15% if they wanted to. But… why would they do that?

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    • SirDerpy@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Neither is publicly traded. Neither of us know the numbers.

      Does Steam make money on hosting indie games?

      How does one research such a question?

      I don’t need answers. I had them before I made my second post above.

      Good luck to you.

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• ichbinjasokreativ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Steam only charges that for larger developers though iirc

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• JimmyMcGill@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

  Isn’t it free up to a certain amount?

  Also aren’t you able to create steam keys for free and resell them wherever you want and they won’t take a cut off those?

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