"Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming"

[Alby_da_Wolf]

Pemalite said:

pokoko said:
That being said, it is rather odd how many people see Value as "the good guys".

It's because they earned that.
Just like CD Project Red has earned allot of respect... And in essence was allowed to spend a little of that banked respect on the "Cyber Punk" trademark garbage.
If it was a company using the... I dunno... Scrolls name it would be a completely different kettle of fish. Shit would hit the fan.

Valve reinvigorated PC gaming.
They brought the cost of games down for PC gamers.
They made PC games more accessible.
They pushed a community-centric focus on games, allowing for things like mods and multiplayer to prosper.
And so much more.

They have also made some of the best games of all time and actively supported those games years after release.

Microsoft had abandoned PC gaming to focus on Xbox. EA and Ubisoft never gave a crap about PC gaming... The PC pretty much had Blizzard and Valve, so obviously PC gamers are going to rally behind those companies.
But once Microsoft, EA and Ubisoft realised there was 180+ million PC gamers and a 30+ billion dollar market... They have tried to claw themselves back into the market with mixed results.

shikamaru317 said:

That makes me want to buy digital games a whole lot less. I know physical has alot of upfront costs as well; the disc, the in-case inserts, the case itself, the cost of shipping the game to retailers, and the retailers cut of the sale, but there's no way they're losing 30% on physical sales, or else they couldn't afford to sell physical games at $10 late in their life. 

They get their 30% cut even with Physical.

The difference with Steam and PC is that... A developer can cut out the massive chunk that a publisher demands, allowing developers to sell directly to consumers via Steam, that can bolster profit margins by a good 30-50% or more per sale.

Or you could be like Blizzard, EA etc' and not have your games on Steam at all and sell it via your own stores. Blizzard keeps 100% of a sale that way on PC, meaning it doesn't need high volumes to print money. (Although, they tend to sell a bucket load of games anyway.)

Good points, and I suspect that at least 50% of these campaigns against Steam that regularly pop up are actually astroturfing stirred up by its competitors, paerticularly one that if left totally free to act would establish a true, horrible monopoly on PC.

Ka-pi96 said:

Cerebralbore101 said:

But physical games do have royalties on consoles. By putting the game on PC you are avoiding that. Steam's normal take on a $60 title is $18 or 30%. Most brick and mortar stores take $10-15 which is 16% to 25%. Steam doesn't have nearly as many costs as a brick and mortal store, yet they are charging more. Brick and mortar stores have to pay employees, and have to pay property taxes for example. Steam's take just isn't justified, given their low costs of operating. It's like they want to play the role of publisher, console maker, and middleman all at once.

You are right about the publishers still taking their share. It isn't just valve being greedy here. A lot of devs, and publishing companies are simply looking to have better profit margins on each game sold.

Oh yeah, digital prices on consoles are a lot worse like you said. At least steam has sales. At least with steam you can install your game to whatever computer as many times as you want. Digital on consoles is just a nightmare.

Physical games having royalties on consoles doesn't really matter though since that's not what Steam replaced. It replaced physical games on PC. I know there are some console devs now releasing games on PC too, but I expect the majority of Steam games would have been PC releases regardless of whether they were on Steam or whatever else.

Developers/publishers sure seem to think Steam's 30% take is justified though. If they didn't they'd go elsewhere or make their own online store where the take is lower. But Steam gives them what is probably the largest PC game storefront in the world to advertise and sell their games on and more often than not they think paying 30% of their sale is worth that.

You can say it loud, if I were a small but potentially successful dev, Steam would be an obvious choice to make someone else completely take care of the digital store stuff, and Steam quite big chunk would pay well in terms of total sales, my share on sales on Steam would almost surely be bigger, as income, than a larger percent share on any other store. Not to mention that I could sell on other stores too and not give Steam the exclusive.