Ricky RigatoniSteam lawsuits in a nutshell
noname_yet2077Based
realitaetsverlustOne of the most accurate descriptions of this entire beef.
Steam does nothing and just keeps winning.
Skullgridit doesn’t just do nothing, it sticks to its core idea : we can’t do as much as the community can when it comes to making games, how do we maximise the community’s possible output?
People love to shit on valve working on lootboxes, but I was there to see how it developed. It was there as part of a way of getting money back to the people making stuff, which is why a shitload of the TF2 hats came from the community and steam workshop. The system came from a left wing greek economist, before , you know, he BECAME Minister of Finance for greece (for half a year)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yanis_Varoufakis
This is why they have steam OS, steam greenlight, SFM, etc etc.
Valve doesn’t make games anymore, because they know hobbyists can make shitloads of more games than them, they need a platform to shove them into.
Also, the other goal is to improve and extend the PC gaming space, which is why they are working on SteamOS, the deck, and all the other shit they are working on. Because of the work they put into making steam work to make game distrobution better than piracy (LITERALLY said by Gabe), PC releases became synonymous with “Steam”, which is why whenever you have a game announcement, you get “New game : Available on (XboxLogo : PS5Logo : SteamLogo)”
Valve is doing stuff. Just not, you know, making HL3 or nothing.
oh, what was the release date for deadlock?
Yes, valve do make some games, for special occasions. They just aren’t making genre defining single player games like some of us want them to… except for HL:A , but who has the money to get that VR setup and spare room to put it in?
To be fair to them, valve have released or kept updating several games recently, CS2 , DOTA2, HL:A, Artifact, and as you mentioned, Deadlock.
It’s just that the stereotypical person that liked Half Life 1, the game, aren’t being targeted as much by valve, and it’s because they want to save that kind of work for pushing new things they develop, which for now, is more hardware or games as a service oriented.
mozingo
AnUnusualRelicTIL a greek minister of finance is responsible for TF2 hats. Fucking wild.
I might be misremembering the timeline but I think he was brought on board after the market was created because Valve started to see the same economic patterns (and issues) Varoufakis had talked about. He was brought in to make sure the skin economy would have a solid foundation. So he isn’t really responsible for TF2 hats. CS skins however he could be considered responsible.
Oh, right. Well, I’m editing his Wikipedia page in that case.
AnyOldName3I’m baffled that I didn’t already know that lootboxes were created by the husband of the woman that the Pulp hit Common People was most likely written about.
agamemnonymousThe William Shatner song?
There’s a song “common people” performed by a band called “pulp” you philistine, the song is about a real person
I’m familiar, I don’t see how a song about a rich girl wanting to bang “common people” has something to do with a leftwing economist.
Varoufakis’ wife is Danae Stratou, and as the wikipage points out, it’s speculated she is the focus of the song Common People. Crazy world we live in.
I was kidding with philistine bit. I think it’s the girl in the song is just ridiculously out of touch, and the relevancy is probably “birds of a feather” or something
it doesn’t just do nothing,
Valve is a for profit company, one of their main goals is to make money and they work daily to do that. There are people at Valve who work 8h a day on how to boost profits.
People love to shit on valve working on lootboxes, but I was there to see how it developed. It was there as part of a way of getting money back to the people making stuff, which is why a shitload of the TF2 hats came from the community and steam workshop. The system came from a left wing greek economist, before , you know, he BECAME Minister of Finance for greece (for half a year)
I think you are confusing lootboxes with the items market which was there mainly to compensate the free to play model. If you were there i hope you remember too no DRMs and no third party software launchers to run games.
This is why they have steam OS
They have steam OS because microsoft become one of their competitors
“They have steam OS because microsoft become one of their competitors” Lmfao riiigght like Microsoft just got into the video game selling business, jfc.
Valve makes steamOS because windows fucking sucks and there needs to be an alternative OS for running game without a bunch of garbage like Windows or a completely locked down OS like Macs that they could use on their hardware.
running game without a bunch of garbage
Steam is part of the garbage, you don’t really need a third party launcher to run a software.
Microsoft just got into the video game selling business
In the past years microsoft made big and aggressive acquisitions in the videogames industry like bethesda and blizzard. The new xbox portable which is a direct competitor to the steam deck doesn’t have cd anymore, the only way to get games is through microsoft store.
Steam:
Valve is winning because they don’t enshittify
Valve is winning because the average gamer doesn’t care much about owning his videogames.
Steam is a great example of how a privately held company can out compete publicly traded and venture capital funded corps.
You mean like those paid mods they were trying to introduce together with Bethesda?
Valve does not always win. Users are just more tolerant towards Valve than any other platform because of the cheap games they can buy during a sale. Nothing more.
It’s funny that they tried to get indie devs paid for their contributions to these games (and therefore incentivizing more great mods) and gamers were like FUCK THAT SHIT! Typical, honestly. So now there’s no legal way to charge for mods and you get to do it only for fun asking people for coffee tips.
Imo this was Bethesda more than valve, anyways, and while it would make both of them too much money doing that it would have gotten regular people paid, too. Which they deserve, by the way.
They introduced a feature, the community didn’t like it, and they canceled it a few days later because of that feedback. What exactly is the problem? Making a mistake and rectifying it within days is not a bad thing at all.
Users are just more tolerant towards Valve than any other platform because of the cheap games they can buy during a sale
If that was the case, people would be extremely tolerant towards the epic game store which regularly throws out games for free, but they aren’t.
Seriously, we need more companies doing nothing and taking 30% fee, becoming super rich corporations making more money than any other company per employee, while devs wonder if they’ll break even
“doing nothing”
Global distribution of exabytes of data, handling the entire e-commerce side and offering great toolings with steamworks while requiring onyl 100 dollars upfront is now considered “nothing”. Yeah, we should definitely go back to a time when steam wasn’t a thing and indie devs were required to have a publisher to even get their games into stores, and those publishers often took 80% of the entire profits. I’m sure indies had a much better time back then when they didn’t have to pay steam!
You missed my point. I’ll repeat it.
30% cut was fine when infrastructure was just not there yet, but 64GB HDD no longer costs 100€ and internet is not metered in megabytes. Like I said, they’re making more money per employee than other corporations. If you genuinely think Valve and Gabe’s fleet of Yachts is not monopolistic pricing, then keep on defending corpos
30% cut was fine when infrastructure was just not there yet, but 64GB HDD no longer costs 100€ and internet is not metered in megabytes.
Steam isn’t just storing stuff and letting people download it. They’re an entire distribution network. There’s not just the tech (which is already expensive in itself), but also the entire legal stuff. Invoicing, legal compliance, fraud prevention, chargeback processing, the customer support (which actually got fairly helpful in the last 2 years) etc.
If you genuinely think Valve and Gabe’s fleet of Yachts is not monopolistic squeezing/pricing
It’s not. Valve has not adjusted their pricing once, at least not upwards. They have reduced the pricing for extremely high-grossing games, but other than that, the price has stuck at 30%. How is that squeezing? Wouldn’t that make them INCREASE the percentage point instead of leaving it where it is?
Also, it’s funny that you talk about “monopolistic”, because epic has probably engaged in more monopolistic behavior with the EGS than steam ever has. And if we compare the features of the EGS (which didn’t even have a shopping cart for the first year of it’s existence) with the feature set of steam, I can absolutely see that a 30% cut is fine.
Now, could they lower it? Probably. But 30% is still worth it for any indie dev and significantly less than any other entity with the size and reach of steam would take for all their services.
Also, it’s funny that you talk about “monopolistic”, because epic has probably engaged in more monopolistic behavior with the EGS than steam ever has
This is stupid. Valve telling developers “you can’t sell your game cheaper on other platforms than on steam” is taking the cake away alone. Textbook anti-trust lawsuit (which might be already happening?)
You somehow keep ignoring the fact that valve makes more money than any other corporation per employee. They are clearly over-charging and you cannot argue against this. Stop defending meg corporations.
This is stupid. Valve telling developers “you can’t sell your game cheaper on other platforms than on steam” is taking the cake away alone.
First of all, that’s not entirely true - valve is demanding price parity, meaning long-term undercutting steam is not allowed (something absolutely normal in almost any larger e-commerce scenario btw), but they have no problem if you have sales or value-added offers on other platforms. Now, you can think about price parity what you think, I’m not the biggest fan of it either, but it’s a very common practice, not exclusive to steam and has nothing to do with anti-trust.
You somehow keep ignoring the fact that valve makes more money than any other corporation per employee. They are clearly over-charging and you cannot argue against this
I ignored it because it’s a retarded metric. Yeah, guess what, if you automate a lot, you’re going to need less employees. I have no clue how that has any relevance in if a product is worth it or not. I’m pretty sure the v-servers I’m renting from hetzner involve nobody, it’s all automated, from purchase to setup - should I get it for free now? Would it be fine to have a 30% cut if valve employed like 1000 more people or what is the logic here?
Stop defending megacorporations.
I’m not defending megacorporations, I just don’t agree with your at all. Fundamentally, you are saying “making money bad” which is just a naive and highly uneducated argument to have.
Fundamentally, you are saying “making money bad” which is just a naive and highly uneducated argument to have.
Yup, you missed my point, but I really don’t think I’m capable of better explaining how what is valve doing is possible only because they essentially have PC monopoly.
I looked at the lawsuit details. Steam basically did what everyone else does. Apple, google, EA, everyone.
They charge 30% of the sale. They require that the steam price be the same as an external price.
It’s the most nothing of nothings.
To compare, what MS did when they got smacked with their monopoly lawsuit is bundle IE with the OS and they both made it hard to switch the default and they’d constantly try to switch you back to IE.
exu*steam price the same as external price only if the external sale is for steam keys. And you have some time to offer an equivalent sale on steam.
🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 This is the point everyone tends to gloss over, especially with the case brought against Valve from the Overgrowth dev where it’s pretty relevant to their case. Glad to see someone has actually read the friggin’ Steam TOS.
The problem is that, allegedly, there are threatening emails from Valve to developers who tried to sell for lower prices on other platforms (NOT Steam keys). If this is true, then there is actual ammunition against Valve.
I’ll point out, when I went to sell my book on Apple Books, they had this in their TOS as well - I wasn’t allowed to sell the same digital book for less somewhere else. It is not a new or unique agreement.
Anticompetitive behavior is tolerated much more from companies that aren’t the market leader, and Apple Books is far from the market leader.
But sweeny mad no one lieks epic store
Any of those places charging 30% on a product they’re only publishing electronically is using walled gardens and monopolistic practices to do so.
I’d rather they go after Steam last, but Steam belongs in that group with Apple, Google, and Microsoft. It’s extraordinarily difficult to sell your PC game without Steam. A few large studios can do it, but not many others.
Still notas egregious as Apple, and now Android with their restrictions on side loading.
catsarebadpeopleWhat do you propose Steam changes instead of 30%?
Even if Valve’s offering sucked, I still have not seen anyone point out a business practice I would call anticompetitive. They are not buying up studios or publishers, or even paying for timed exclusivity. I have not seen any hint that they are colluding with competitors on prices or fees. I haven’t seen then accused of stealing IP or poaching personnel. They readily welcome Microsoft and Sony to release games on Steam, and they have released their own games on consoles including the Switch. They let you install Windows or whatever else on the Deck, if you want to for some reason.
Billionaires should not exist, and Gabe Newell is no exception. He should be taxed more. I don’t love one company having so much control of this space. But I also don’t want to have a dozen different crappy launchers from different companies to deal with. There are a lot of benefits to the user to having everything centralized in one place.
hakaseHow do we tax Gabe that much without necessarily watering down his share in the company and ensuring that outside investors enshittify it in the process? Genuine question.
I don’t think this would solve the problem. Even if all of the outside investors are restricted to less than $1 billion in capital each, pooling their funds would easily be able to outweigh Gabe if he’s subject to the same restriction.
If we increase taxes on all companies across the board, the overall appeal of each individual corporation would likely stay about the same. In fact, since Steam is so profitable that might make them more appealing as an investment in a world where corporate taxes are much higher.
Corporate taxes are usually on profits, but in order to tax Gabe enough for him to no longer be a billionaire the vast majority of those taxes would have to come out of Gabe’s ownership in Valve. I’m not sure why you don’t think this would be an issue.
This seems pretty unrealistic/idealistic. I guess we are already positing an unrealistic world where billionaries are taxed out of existence, so imagining functioning regulation and antitrust suits isn’t that much more of a stretch. Still, that does seem to support my point that without significant other societal change taxing Gabe so much that he’s no longer a billionaire would likely significantly worsen Valve as a company.
I’m certainly not against taxing billionaires out of existence, but I still think that the question of what that would mean for corporate ownership is a difficult/complex one, and I don’t think your answers here really take that complexity into account.
Taxing billionaires is not some new and untested concept. In the US throughout the 1900’s the highest income tax brackets were often in the 70%'s, reaching into the 90%'s at times, and we did not see what you are suggesting.
Increasing the taxes on Gabe Newell’s profits from owning Valve would not suddenly cause him to lose money, just to gain less money. If corporate taxes and income taxes were increased across the board, then it is not as if he would benefit from selling Valve stock to invest elsewhere, and Valve would not be a more or less attractive place to invest relative to other options either. I am not sure why you think this would cause Gabe Newell to back out or investors to jump in. Heck, these rates have all changed pretty frequently within Valve’s existence and have not had a significant impact.
Also just to say, there is also the matter of jurisdiction as he lives in New Zealand while Valve is a US based company.
In the US throughout the 1900’s the highest income tax brackets were often in the 70%'s, reaching into the 90%'s at times, and we did not see what you are suggesting.
We did not see what I’m suggesting because that’s an income tax, and in order to abolish billionaires we’d need a wealth tax.
Increasing the taxes on Gabe Newell’s profits from owning Valve would not suddenly cause him to lose money, just to gain less money.
Yes, but if you slow the income of a person who is already a billionaire, you get a billionaire who is still getting richer, only more slowly. This does not get rid of billionaires.
In order to take someone who is already a multibillionaire and make them not a billionaire, you have to take away property that they already own. In the case of Gabe, since most of his wealth is tied up in Valve stock, in order to make him not a billionaire you’d need to make him sell stock in Valve, which would dilute his ownership and control over the company.
Do you understand the problem now?
You’re just proposing a much more drastic and rapid change than I am. I agree that a wealth tax would be a more immediate effect. It is also much more drsstixnand far less tested. The idea is interesting and I am neither opposed to it nor calling for it. I do not think it it necessary.
Increasing income tax rates and corporate tax rates would be a much slower approach. I didn’t mention them, but I would also add in property tax rates and capital gains. Luxury sales taxes, inheritancd taxes. In the US, make OASDI a progressive instead of regressive tax.
For existing billionaires, there are plenty of laws they’ve already broken to get where they are that just need to be enforced. Wage theft, antitrust, union busting, fraud. The SEC should have buried Musk in a dungeon years ago. So I see the answer to eliminating existing wealth being fines rather than taxes.
Of course, there is also room to increase the minimum wage and minimum benefits. That would hell redistribute wealth too.
I don’t know Gabe Newell, or even anyone who works at Valve personally, but every account I have ever read about Valve is that they usually treated and paid their employees well. Investigate all of these megacorps and prosecute appropriately.