Yes, the Steam Deck is great, and Steam is definitely one of the best games platforms there is. And Valve has done great work supporting Linux and open source development, and forcing more transparency for sellers on Steam.
But I feel like people sometimes just love valve for everything they do. GabeN is still a billionaire, buying super-yachts and stuff. Valve makes a ton of their money from gambling on loot crates in CS2 and TF2, and have not done enough (imo) to stop even more predatory third party item gambling sites. And whenever I bring stuff like that up people keep defending Valve.
We should be able to praise their great games and hardware, at the same time as criticising other parts of the company.
People praise a company that does a lot better than basically any other company. Not shocking and only makes sense when the norm is such shitty, anti-customer behavior. If the bar weren’t so low, you’d never hear this much praise for any company.
I think there’s a bunch of different things conflated here:
- valve is generally doing a lot of good things, even things that basically don’t benefit them at all
- gaben is a Billionaire with all the billionaire things
- people love valve for all the good that they do
- a bunch of people are pointing out that valve is still deeply involved in their gambling economy; in fact it seems to be a significant part of their profit margins
- there’s no +/- on this. The good valve does doesn’t displace the bad they do.
- a bunch of things can be true at once
- we should praise them for the good an criticize them for the bad
- people do not stop their opinion usually, it’s just public focus that shifts to a new focal point.
What I’m trying to say is, from what I’ve seen most people are glad because valve is doing a bunch of good things while also being aware of the bad that they do. It’s just more useful to criticize Microsoft or nvidia for doing net negative by a mile, and the public focus can only be so nuanced. Also people hesitate to punish valve for being bad, considering they might be one of the least bad big tech companies.
That’s what I think anyway, and that would mean your opinion isn’t unpopular just that the smaller parts of it interact in a different way than you describe.
In a lot of conversations I’ve had (not necessarily on lemmy) people defend a lot of valve criticism by saying things like ‘but look at all the good they do, or trying to justify that they need to do [shady thing] to fund their support for open source stuff. But maybe I just happened to have come across mostly only valve defenders.
And conversely, I see a ton of people who criticize Valve extremely, sometimes literally hysterically, over issues they fundamentally do not understand, over things that … Valve doesn’t have any real control over… things that basically every comparable actor on the same stage does to a far worse degree than they do.
People just don’t like it when they cannot put things ideas and/or people into either the good box or the bad box.
People don’t like it when things are complicated, when things are a mixed bag… people do like it when they can be very emotional, either negatively or positively, about anything.
Like here lets try this:
Loot Gambling? Bad, very bad.
Gacha games, Robux, etc., also bad, very bad.
Open source development of Proton? Good, very good!
Same with many, arguably as or even more important open source frameworks, systems, libraries, etc.
30% ish cut of game sales? Not great, not terrible.
Arguably reasonable, given all the awesome stuff Steam does in terms of free marketing and discoverability and distribution… definitely not perfect though.
Steam Machine expensive, bad.
But also… they’re a company of less than 500 people. They’re literally nobodies in terms of volume and sourcing parts in bulk for theoretical price discounts, and they actually have way, way less money to throw at stuff like that than what people are used to from other console manufacturers.
I similarly got ripped apart by Steam fanboys for trying to tout GOG over Steam.
Is he really doing a lot of shady things? Maybe he just become a billionaire and adapted. For better or worse is the question, then compare him to the other billionaires. Having that amount of wealth changes people just like it would you or me and every other person here.
“We can’t really judge Hitler! Being a dictator just changes people. Was he better or worse than other dictators? Having that amount of power changes people just like it would you or me and every other person here.”
Comparing Gabe to Hitler is rather retarded. Gabe became a billionaire because people like steam. Hitler became a dictator because he was an evil bastard.
I was comparing your argument to one you could make about Hitler. If we agree your argument is reasonable, then we can also agree that the argument I made can be made for Hitler.
It isn’t reasonable. My point was not comparing Gabe to Hitler, because the entire argument is absurd. It was a proof by contradiction that we must not use arguments like this to justify evil actions, or we end up in a situation of being able to justify evil actions like what Hitler did. You agree that my argument is absurd, but it followed the same reasoning as yours, so yours is invalid as well. Gabe is not saved because being wealthy made him a greedy asshole. Your wealth is not an excuse for your actions or behavior.
+1.
I don’t trust Valve as far as I can throw them. I use, and appreciate, their service and products, but it is an exchange. I’d drop them like a rock as fast as they’d drop me.
And I’m certainly not going to overlook the concerning parts of their business.
Yet some online seem to think… I dunno, they’re on the same team?
I just don’t get the parasocial relationships people get into with corporations. But then again, I don’t get a lot of stuff.
Eh, not really unpopular opinion. Pretty much every post on lemmy about valve vs. competitors always mentions that steam wins by simply being the only storefront that understands the value of customer satisfaction and retention
pretty much every post mentions that steam wins by simply being the only storefront that understands the value of customer satisfaction and retention Yes, but I feel like that they often talk about in a way like they are on the same team. Like: “but steam/valve, they get us, they have our back” but maybe I am generalising too much.
No that’s exactly it. “Same team.”
I think human brains are just fundamentally tribal. We (in aggregate) simply cannot help ourselves.
Correct, we are wired for small group formation that anchors our individual and collective identities.
Our brains, broadly, are very not good at existing in a world with billions of people with smartphones.
So, we become parasocial, we become bigotted based on notions of different ‘kinds’ of people, we develop fandoms, etc.
We’re built for living in bands, tribes, of between 50 to 200 people.
We have not biologically caught up with the last couple few % points of time of our entire evolutionary history, civilization and technology exploded way faster than natural selection can rewire our brains.
its like the pope or obama. unfortunately it should be typical for what it is but everything is so trumpy that it seems awesome.
I agree and am with you in believing that too many people see them with rose colored glasses.
Some truth nukes 💣:
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Steam is a storefront that is very good for consumers and that has a [benign] monopoly according to almost every metric.
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They exclusively sell licenses, not ownership, of games.
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Their pioneering and aggressive defense/proliferation of “loot crate” gambling mechanics has been one of the worst in gaming, ever.
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Valve as a game developer is functionally dead. Their brand image is built on 4 IPs from two decades ago.
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Gabe Newell has credibly been cited as being 99% hands-off with the daily operations at Valve for years, and if you do love Valve/Steam for what they do, it’s an insult to the actual staff to credit their work to some CEO.
Most laws don’t have a problem with becoming a monopoly, the issue arises when you use your monopoly to stifle competition. Do we have any evidence of that?
Also, given how copyright works, no one sells games, only licenses. The only games that could be sold are public domain - even FOSS software is license-based. Now, if you mean that the way Steam works that you can most often have access removed from a game after you’ve purchased it, that would be a more correct statement with competitors who behave differently.
As for Gabe’s influence, he set the direction and attitude of Valve. That isn’t a day-to-day operation, but is vital to the operating principles of the company (which includes loot crates). This is no different than the CEO (or whoever) of Costco insisting those hot dogs can be bought for cheap. That is also not a major part of what he has to deal with while actively running the corporation, but everyone knows about it.
You’re right about monopolies, which is more than most Valve defenders are whenever the argument comes up. I’ve commented on this before, so I’ll just repost my thoughts:
“Monopoly” is neither illegal nor immoral. It’s a de facto label given based on observation. A “good” company can still be a monopoly.
Steam distributes ~75% of all PC games. It took me less than 30 seconds to find that that was the same market share needed to indict USMC in 1954. This is what happens when you hahave an entire (multiple?) generations who have grown up with gutted anti-trust policies.
ETA from my other comment ITT but worth reiterating:
ETA: Monopolies are generally allowed to exist in the US until they start either harming customers or engaging in flagrant anticompetitive measures. Without either of these, there is no victim class to sue. The Sherman Act makes it much easier to litigate instances of “harming customers.”
There are tons of existing private monopolies in the market today that are allowed to exist just because no one’s sued for harm. The Govt. doesn’t just go around trust busting without cause.
The glass bottle industry is dominated by Owens, which has a ~85% market share but is allowed to continue because they’re ostensibly the best for the economy. Glass bottles are cheap to buy and no one’s really eager to start a competing plant. If either of those changed then trust busting might begin, but that doesn’t mean they’re not already a monopoly.
You can argue what kind of monopoly that Steam is, but the idea that it’s not is completely unfounded in reality.
On hurting competition, there is room to debate. Over the past couple years, Valve has been under some serious scrutiny for their [benign] monopoly and whether or not it stifles competition. Courts in the UK have certainly seen enough support for this claim to allow a £656m class-action lawsuit to go-ahead.. In the US, a new lawsuit was recently filed alleging that Microsoft and Valve have been in collusion for decades and that Steam’s no-tolerance price parity rules stifle competition and ruin any chance of smaller stores from making profit on margin.
I’m curious what USMC refers to. Most modern searches are going to direct you to the Marines, and I don’t think antitrust law would apply to them.
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A 30% rake is also absurd. It’s absurd when Microsoft does it, Google does it, Apple does it, or Steam.
Yes, Steam provides some nice services. One, they don’t cost that much to provide. I think Steam would still be quite profitable at a 12% rake.
What really allows Steam to charge those prices is a near monopoly on discoverability/advertising. On PC it’s really only Blizzard and Riot that can compete.
And I bet you don’t get featured if you charge a lower price off of Steam than on Steam (even if you don’t use Steam keys to do so).
All of this walled garden shit should be illegal. You should be able to find the same single player games cheaper on GOG than on Steam, and then we could really see how much people value the Steam extras. Do you value having Steam achievements for a single game at $12 or not?
You have no idea what you’re talking about lol
Everyone is saying you don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re obviously right. They’re one of the most profitable companies per employee in the world. Saying they could take a smaller cut and still be profitable is obvious to anyone who doesn’t have their head in the sand.
Valve is using their market dominance to force price parity too. This is an ongoing case, but all the documents seem to indicate this is true. For all the “Valve can’t do anything wrong” people, wouldn’t you rather pay less for games? If another market is allowed to sell a game for 10% less, isn’t that better for you? Maybe Valve sees this and cuts their share to drop 10% too, but isn’t that even better? Why are you so insistent on arguing against your own best interest.
Yeah, 30% is standard. Who the fuck cares? Don’t you want it to be lower? Do you know how that’s lowered? It’s by other stores competing on that cut. They aren’t allowed to (on the consumer end) though. Epic does on the developer end, but Valve prevents them from giving consumers a cut.
A 30% take is very standard, and is significantly better than the cut of sales stores took when everything was physical. I think it’s quite telling that the only store that brags about taking a lower cut is Epic, which also spends unreasonable amounts of money handing out free games to try to get people on their platform. You know what that reeks of? Enshittification; provide an unsustainably good deal to consumers to get them in the door before ripping it away, provide an unsustainably good deal to creators before ripping it away, and in the end you are left with both sides of the equation that hate you but feel trapped because they have so much stuff locked there.
Yeah, Epic took a dumb approach, and they’re not the good guy, but they’re also not wrong on this.
I don’t buy for a second that their 12% cut is actually sustainable, and if I’m right then it’s going to be raised at some point, probably up to 25% or so (which is also the cut steam takes after the first $10 million in sales IIRC)
Lemmy here is hosting about half of it for token donations. Bandwidth isn’t that expensive.
Fuck AI, find me a real source and I might believe you.
I agree, this isn’t the way to get information, but all of that’s accurate as far as I can tell. This is all information that’s commonly known. They’re one of the most profitable companies per employee. They make insane profits. They absolutely don’t need the 30% cut, and that’s obvious. There is some limit to how low it could go, but it isn’t 30%. Sure, that’s the standard. Do you know how a standard is made though? People just accepting it. It can clearly be pushed lower, and people advocating for not doing so are arguing against their own best interest and in the interest of a company making billions in profit every year.
They’re a game company. It’s not worth this much of your life.
A post?
Its a wooden pole, usually part of a larger fence. But that’s not important right now.
Do people even play video games?
/s
