Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?'
Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?'
Newell remained magisterially above the fray.
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Sweeney is such a child
He's entirely right. Valve is just stealing money from gamers and developers by not lowering their fees.
Perhaps, but on the other side of that coin: Because valve doesn't have legal obligations to make money snd increase shareholder value, they put a lot of money elsewhere. The products they create are awesome (literally the best launcher on PC, Tim Sweeney is probably upset because his is ass) and invest heavily in things better for gamers:
- digital returns were huge when they first rolled out
- (IMO) spearheading game streaming with steam in home streaming & the steam link
- creating awesome games and not milking them for perpetual profit (other than maybe in game items but i don't want to have this discussion)
- investing heavily in alternative ways to play (steam machines, aforementioned steam link, VR/index, steam controller, steam deck)
- legitimately spending money to make it possible to game on Linux, reducing gamers reliance on Microsoft/Windows
legitimately spending money to make it possible to game on Windows
Linux* I assume?
Yeah good catch LMAO
Finally... after all these years... Steam on Windows
The Epic launcher could actually be so much better if they bothered to put any effort into it. Obviously they're going to have fewer games and stuff but they could still make a decent launcher that isn't so annoying to use and actually has additional features.
Part of the problem they have is that it's actually difficult for game developers to put their games on both platforms so i've got to pick one and obviously i'm going to pick Steam.
Valve also allowed most of their employees to work on whatever they wanted for a decade, an initiative that produced almost nothing, and during that time they still made close to a million dollars per year per employee.
I'm not saying I'm unhappy with Valve being private or with Valve making enough money to give itself a nice cushion, but the scale of the money they're making is absurd when independent game devs often still struggle to make money.
Experimenting with company structure is a good thing long-term
Source on producing almost nothing for a decade because the employees had freedom of work projects?
Yeah, I've been with Steam since 2013 when they came to Linux, and Steam has gotten better every year since then. For example:
- Steam Controller
- Steam Input
- Steam Link app
- Proton & Steam Deck
- tons of bugfixes (Steam on Linux sucked when it launched, it's way more stable now)
And so on. I don't know which decade OP is talking about, but at least the last decade has been fantastic for me.
Valve also allowed most of their employees to work on whatever they wanted for a decade
So 30% cut leads to employee well being? Great!
No it doesn't. It leads to Valve wasting money enriching themselves to the tune of millions of dollars per employee per year while independent game developers making normal salaries continue to have to lay people off and be underfunded.
It leads to Valve
"... employing Linux developers and finally making actual cracks in the true monopoly of Windows."
FTFY.
while independent game developers making normal salaries continue to have to lay people off and be underfunded.
Funny, it's not the indies with the huge layoffs but the megacorps that have enough money to buy fucking Activision-Blizard-King and then shed crocodile tears about the hard economy.
“… employing Linux developers and finally making actual cracks in the true monopoly of Windows.”
Again, Valve has made close to a million dollars per employee per year. No they have not spent anywhere remotely close to that on Linux developers. You're equating a trinket they tossed you in the last couple of years with the giant horde they robbed from developers.
Funny, it’s not the indies with the huge layoffs
It is, independent studios lay people off and have to close up shop all the time, on top of just not making that much money to begin with, they just don't make headline news the way that big companies do.
No they have not spent anywhere remotely close to that on Linux developers.
More than any other games company.
It is, independent studios lay people off and have to close up shop all the time
[citation needed]
on top of just not making that much money to begin with
Doesn't affect me. Improved Linux technologies affect me. Improvements to widely used open source software is public service.
More than any other games company.
It wasn't their money to spend. Devs lost their jobs because Valve kept taking more than they needed.
Again, 1 Million dollars. Per Year. Per Employee. That means per every single Linux dev they employed, they still made a million dollars per employee.
That's indefensible and it's really weird to see lemmy get their dicks hard about excess greedy capitalism just cause this time it's behind a service that they like. Facebook gave back a huge amount of open source projects but that doesn't make up for the harm they've caused, even just the harm caused by them sucking up an inordinate amount of societal resources, and Facebook "only" makes ~$750k per employee per year.
It wasn’t their money to spend.
Sure it is. That's how a free market works. You are free to engage directly with indie developers on itch.io etc. It's not your call to make what others do with their money. You don't see me fuming with rage just because you spend your money on different games market places.
Valve is just stealing money from gamers
If you actually think that reduced fees mean lower cost for consumer, you're out of touch with reality.
and developers
They are free to go somewhere else like the EGS utopia where developers are definitively get paid directly an equal cut of each sale and no publisher intermediary like EA and Activision is just taking all the revenue and the developers get paid their usual salary anyhow.
You're right. Giving 30% for really fucking good platform services is way worse than having to find a publisher that takes in 70 to 90% of revenue and pushes devs to release unfinished games.
Yeah seriously. As a dev, that 30% cut gets you a lot of stuff with absolutely no additional charges. Trying to roll your own distribution for your downloads could exceed that 30% by itself after you:
- Host the files somewhere that can be downloaded anywhere close to as fast as steam's servers
- Handle payment processing fees
- Develop and maintain a site with high reliability
And that's only downloads. With steam you also get:
- p2p networking tools
- game server hosting
- steam community integration
- analytics
- cloud saves
- voip
And like 50 other things. It's ridiculously good value unless you're developing some super low rent single player indie title. Even then, just having it available on steam will get you way more sales to make up for it.
Sure, epic charges 10% but you basically only get distribution and some super half baked community features.
They are not stealing from gamers. A game would still cost 70 dollars on steam no matter the cut they take.
Developers, I won't argue with
EGS is not profitable with the cut they take atm.
Sweeney it's on drugs if he thinks valves cut is unfair
EGS would be profitable if they had the sales numbers that Steam does. Theyre not profitable because they're basically just a fortnite and rocket league store.
And also a free games tap
If the developers want to just directly sell me their games old school I'd be cool with that.
Exactly. I've been Linux-only since 2009 or so, and had never used Steam before switching. I remember buying Minecraft and Factorio directly from their websites, and I remember when Humble Bundle didn't have such a connection w/ Steam.
I'd be down with it if they support my platform. If they don't, I'll stick with Steam.
And Epic Games is just distributing games to gamers and providing services to developers at cost?
I don't like Steam but its clear that Epic is just mad because they were late to market and would otherwise charge similar fees.
Those fees are multi-industry standard though.
What about our economy makes you think that multiple industries can't be corporate controlled monopolies / oligopolies?
You know what, I appreciate the call-out. I don't trust our economy, and shouldn't reference it in defense of one (in my experience) honorably led company.