There’s plenty of choice. You can choose not to sell your game on steam, put it on the EGS exclusively and accept that you’re never going to reach the audience you’d do with steam. Now you just gotta figure out if the lesser sales at 12% are more profitable than the more sales at 30%.
Yeah, it won’t be more profitable. It isn’t a choice. There is a small choice for some games of distributing it yourself. This is incredibly cheap (which proves Valve’s profit margin is insane), but 99% of players won’t leave Steam. This means it isn’t a choice for all but a few niche games. Starsector, for example, distributes it on their own, so they get a 100% cut. The players who want to play that are generally more intelligent and can get it off of Steam. For something like CoD, that’s marketed towards mass appeal go the absolute minimum of technological literacy, you have to be on Steam. There isn’t a choice.
You make defending sound like I’m a company white-knight that’ll defend a company from any wrongdoing ever, which simply isn’t the case. Valve does some shitty things and I have called them out for it. I just don’t think the 30% cut is bad in any capacity.
You’ve already agreed it’s worse than it being lower. You don’t think it’s bad enough to be upset over, but you agree it’s worse than it could be. That’s the difference. I won’t stop at “better than it could be.” I’ll always argue for more from a company, and you should too.
You don’t think it’s bad enough to be upset over, but you agree it’s worse than it could be
Everything is worse than it can be. We’re not living in a utopia.
I’m not expecting a business to always act in the best interest of everyone, that is just completely unreasonable. I’m not even expecting individual people to always act in the best interest of anyone but themselves. And the fact that valve has never raised prices, never worsened their service (intentionally), never tried to shaft anyone and in general never attempted to extort their presumed “monopoly” is the highest bar I can reasonably set for any entity, business or personal.
Maybe you heard of don vultaggio, the founder and CEO of arizona ice tea. That company has never increased their prices since 1992. In an interview, when asked why, he said: “We’re successful, we’re debt free, we own everything. Why have people who are having a hard time paying their rent pay more for their drink?”. You’re not going to see me ask him to lower the price because clearly he “can afford it” (his net worth is 6 billion. Not quite gabe, but still extraordinarily wealthy). The man is doing everything I can reasonably expect from a business: Not squeeze consumers, not treat staff shitty and not worsen their product for profit. Valve is doing the same thing, just on a much much larger scale.
I feel you have completely unreasonable standards when it comes to businesses. Which is your right to have, I’m not gonna sit here and say your standards are wrong. I just think that, in a realistic world view, while your intentions may be good, your expectations are unreasonable. And I also think that is just something we’re fundamentally never going to agree on.
Yeah, it won’t be more profitable. It isn’t a choice. There is a small choice for some games of distributing it yourself. This is incredibly cheap (which proves Valve’s profit margin is insane), but 99% of players won’t leave Steam. This means it isn’t a choice for all but a few niche games. Starsector, for example, distributes it on their own, so they get a 100% cut. The players who want to play that are generally more intelligent and can get it off of Steam. For something like CoD, that’s marketed towards mass appeal go the absolute minimum of technological literacy, you have to be on Steam. There isn’t a choice.
You’ve already agreed it’s worse than it being lower. You don’t think it’s bad enough to be upset over, but you agree it’s worse than it could be. That’s the difference. I won’t stop at “better than it could be.” I’ll always argue for more from a company, and you should too.
Everything is worse than it can be. We’re not living in a utopia.
I’m not expecting a business to always act in the best interest of everyone, that is just completely unreasonable. I’m not even expecting individual people to always act in the best interest of anyone but themselves. And the fact that valve has never raised prices, never worsened their service (intentionally), never tried to shaft anyone and in general never attempted to extort their presumed “monopoly” is the highest bar I can reasonably set for any entity, business or personal.
Maybe you heard of don vultaggio, the founder and CEO of arizona ice tea. That company has never increased their prices since 1992. In an interview, when asked why, he said: “We’re successful, we’re debt free, we own everything. Why have people who are having a hard time paying their rent pay more for their drink?”. You’re not going to see me ask him to lower the price because clearly he “can afford it” (his net worth is 6 billion. Not quite gabe, but still extraordinarily wealthy). The man is doing everything I can reasonably expect from a business: Not squeeze consumers, not treat staff shitty and not worsen their product for profit. Valve is doing the same thing, just on a much much larger scale.
I feel you have completely unreasonable standards when it comes to businesses. Which is your right to have, I’m not gonna sit here and say your standards are wrong. I just think that, in a realistic world view, while your intentions may be good, your expectations are unreasonable. And I also think that is just something we’re fundamentally never going to agree on.