Valve rocks

Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It's easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.

This.
Valve doesn't release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It's great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren't trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that's the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
- Invented the loot box y'all love so much. Tried to invent paid mods. Valve is still a Corpo and corpos gonna corpos
- DOTA 2, Counter-Strike 2, TF 2 are all maintained and get updates or total overhauls.
  What’s their opinion on NFTs now?
That 20-30% tax also gives developers access to Valve's massive infrastructure (content delivery ain't easy or cheap) and Steam's audience, and that's something that can't be replicated with exclusivity deals.
- Oh, and they KNOW that, too. Valve's entire business model is making other people work for them. Their third party relations talks are less keynotes and more thinly veiled, very pleasant shakedowns.
30% is the industry standard.
- Doesn't change that it's a lot lol they're also basically "the industry"
I think you're missing the principle. They could still charge for it, they simply won't. Think of it this way, if it was EA in that situation would they give it away for free? Somehow I doubt it because EA does things for profit. This is a potential avenue for profit and which means not asking money for it would go against the goal of EA.
Is it though? The only reason other platforms take 15% is to try to break through valve's market. Once they make it (like Epic) you better trust they're going to take as much as they can.
Plus, it's apparently not easy to be generous, Apple and Google make far more money, where are they being generous? Gaben is a gem
(Google and apple also take 30% of transactions on their store). You get much more for you 30% to valve than 30 or 15% anywhere else.
Well it's easier even to want more money, cooperations giving something away for free that could have earned them money is not that common.
- It is when it gets people on your platform, and more likely to spend money on other things on the platform. It's called a loss leader.
Yeah, this is cool and all, but it's like Epic posting a game for free, which they do every week or so. People still complain about Epic being greedy or whatever though. I like the products Valve makes, but this isn't particularly amazing, just fairly nice to have.
- Epic paid people for exclusivity in an attempt to force the customer to use its shitty platform. The free games are just bribes to try to get us to use it. And it's still not working very well for them.
  Nobody would have complained (well ok, some would have, but few) if they just tried to make a better store than steam and get people to use it that way.
  They could still do the free games as a bribe, to get people to check out the store, but the store would actually need to not be garbage. The exclusivity payments really rankled people though.
They take nothing if you sell your game via keys on other sites like itch.io
The power of monopoly
Yeah, but it's still more profitable for indie game studios to put their game on steam, since they have a larger market to sell to, also valve doesn't just take the money and goes, they spend it to make really good products that aren't profitable and wouldn't be possible else like the steam deck and proton

If only Valve could learn to count to three they'd be the perfect game studio.

they already did! the steamdeck was released with steam os 3.0 (in the meantime they reached 3.5)
They are trying.

Tony Hawk, anyone? Remaster old game, then make it require a server ping to guarantee it won't work in the future when they decide to stop supporting it.

Well, not every company is shitting money like Valve.

They can afford to do this because of their technical monopoly.

- Activision Blizzard annual net income for 2022 was $1.513B
  In fiscal year 2022, EA posted GAAP net revenue of approximately $7 billion
  Epic Games revenue is $5.76 billion according to figures reported in 2021
  Valve generated around USD13 billion in total revenue in 2022
  Also,
  So what’s their excuse for not giving free games?
  Did you really ask this after including Epic?
  But these comparisons are ridiculous anyway. Neither of these companies are your friends, and trying to understand their behavior in terms of anything other than profit-seeking is only going to lead to you feeling betrayed. Gamers' obsession with defending Steam is so ridiculous that no one ever disputes the idea that Apple and Google are being abusive with their store policies, but calling out Steam for doing the exact same always brings dozens of people out of the woods who think it's a controversial claim.

I mean sure, but this is a great showcase of Source Engine 2 which is a product they will be selling

- I mean don't get me wrong, I am all for Valve's overall values compared to EA, Sony, Microsoft, Bethesda, etc. glad they're staying private.
Honest to god I don't remember the last valve game I bought. CSGO 10+ years ago probably.
I would say it is great showcase of their new map compilers, but anyway

Just few weeks ago everyone complaining about CS2

Since CS2 came out a ton of new people have started playing and a bunch of old school players came back. I am one of them and easily spent $60 on buying skins. Valve understands how to get people to love their games and spend money on something that is free.

Dead space remake was great, wasnt it?

It was. And so was RE4.
But on the other hand, they're already remastering The Last of Us 2 for some reason.
and at least they didn't remove the old one, even though that old one is $25 and gets put on sale less and less.

Best remake was AoE2 imo, the price is completely justified.

What game?

The og half-life

I know the documentary and the fact that game is free for now, but I am completelly out of the loop of what changed.

Did Valve upgraded graphics? Added new maps? I mean - for single player of original game? Someone please advise :)

they added a short bonus campaing for single player that was formaly on a demo disc that got lost to times. they added 4 new multiplayer maps they fixed graphic bugs and added widescreen support they dramatically improved controler support
so nothing game changing but nice nontheless
- oh and you can now invite friends through steam so they don't have to manually search the server you are on
I can't even figure out what game you're all talking about.
- Game: Half Life 1
  Get it here (currently free): https://store.steampowered.com/app/70/HalfLife/
  Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbZ3HzvFEto
They for sure updated rad(or whatever algo they are using now)