Steam is not a nice platform. They are meant to be a business, of course, but my issue is that they pretend they are some kind of grand sauveur for video games. The fact remains that Steam is super expensive, doesn't really do much, and take a huge huge cut of indie companies (in particular) revenues. 30% of sales is simply insane for the very little they do. At most I'd accept if they took 1) 5% for credit card fees 2) 5% for paying servers/downloads 3) 5% profit margin.
Steam would still make hundreds of millions. There's a reason they didn't really release many games in the last 15 years: it's just not worth it. Why spend years and years developing half-life 3 to maybe sell 10,000,000 copies at a $30 profit (300M) when you make more than that just from doing nothing?
Let's also talk about DRM. Why is everyone here so accepting of this garbage? Steam IS DRM. Good luck trying to play games offline. It works a week AT MOST, and you better have downloaded and prepared your games beforehands.
Steam also encourages Denuvo and all that trash. They could take a stand and say that this stuff is not allowed on their store. They don't.
Same for kernel level "anticheat" aka you give out total control of your computer.
Oh and of course, as soon as Visa/mastercard raised their voice, Steam took many games off their platforms. Not a word, nothing. Gone.
Steam also sells licenses to game. They plain and simply say they can revoke your game licenses at any time for any reason.
And somehow people here are fine with another launcher for their games?
Steam is nowhere near as bad as Ubisoft/EA, but it's still garbage. And their prices are high, too - you can almost always find the same game cheaper on other websites.
I'll respect Steam for having easy downloads/easy, auto-updates, and sometimes decent sales. But it remains a cancer to the video game industry. They are as censor-heavy and as DEI/anti freedom as any other big company. Profits and profits alone count.
I buy my games on gog when I can, else I pirate them.
yeah, i have a studio that'll be releasing a game this year and the 30% cut thing is abysmal. 30%, then 30-50% to draconic taxes, and you are basically working to enrich other people. it's daylight robbery.
people say "of course they're a monopoly, they're the only good platform!" but other platforms being too incompetent to uproot the monopoly doesn't make their abuse of it any better. especially when a shitton of the money is going to stuff like Gaben having 6 pleasure yachts.
Steam is not a nice platform. They are meant to be a business, of course, but my issue is that they pretend they are some kind of grand sauveur for video games. The fact remains that Steam is super expensive, doesn't really do much, and take a huge huge cut of indie companies (in particular) revenues. 30% of sales is simply insane for the very little they do. At most I'd accept if they took 1) 5% for credit card fees 2) 5% for paying servers/downloads 3) 5% profit margin.
Steam would still make hundreds of millions. There's a reason they didn't really release many games in the last 15 years: it's just not worth it. Why spend years and years developing half-life 3 to maybe sell 10,000,000 copies at a $30 profit (300M) when you make more than that just from doing nothing?
Let's also talk about DRM. Why is everyone here so accepting of this garbage? Steam IS DRM. Good luck trying to play games offline. It works a week AT MOST, and you better have downloaded and prepared your games beforehands.
Steam also encourages Denuvo and all that trash. They could take a stand and say that this stuff is not allowed on their store. They don't.
Same for kernel level "anticheat" aka you give out total control of your computer.
Oh and of course, as soon as Visa/mastercard raised their voice, Steam took many games off their platforms. Not a word, nothing. Gone.
Steam also sells licenses to game. They plain and simply say they can revoke your game licenses at any time for any reason.
And somehow people here are fine with another launcher for their games?
Steam is nowhere near as bad as Ubisoft/EA, but it's still garbage. And their prices are high, too - you can almost always find the same game cheaper on other websites.
I'll respect Steam for having easy downloads/easy, auto-updates, and sometimes decent sales. But it remains a cancer to the video game industry. They are as censor-heavy and as DEI/anti freedom as any other big company. Profits and profits alone count.
I buy my games on gog when I can, else I pirate them.
yeah, i have a studio that'll be releasing a game this year and the 30% cut thing is abysmal. 30%, then 30-50% to draconic taxes, and you are basically working to enrich other people. it's daylight robbery.
people say "of course they're a monopoly, they're the only good platform!" but other platforms being too incompetent to uproot the monopoly doesn't make their abuse of it any better. especially when a shitton of the money is going to stuff like Gaben having 6 pleasure yachts.