naveHere’s how much Valve pays its staff — and how few people it employs
336 people
30% grabbed from every game
8.56 billion in profit
The service they privide to devs and customers is worth it, but valve doesn’t even really take 30% anyway. Watch pirate software’s video on it.
I love Steam and I love Gabe, but the system we have that let Steam extract so much money out of the gaming industry is broken.
And that’s true for software or online services in general, and I’m saying that as someone who benefit from that system as a software engineer.
It is broken in the sense that it’s absolutely insane that they can take 30% and nobody can build a competing product that only takes 20%.
It is not broken in the sense that they keep doing what they are doing and developers and customers consistently choose their offer.
It’s not a monopoly because they exploit their position.
It’s a monopoly because nobody else is trying hard enough.
It’s a monopoly because gamers go where games are, and developers go where customers are.
For the same reason Apple App Store / Play Store is a duopoly.