Yeah, and their unknowable secret sauce to win capitalism was to not overdo it and enshittify. Wild stuff. Who could tell that keeping your userbase happy is more productive in the long term than chasing “growth” at every turn?
Give it a generation or three, but yes.
Companies that “haven’t gone evil” yet are like dynasties that aren’t ruled by a mad king, yet.
It usually comes after the original founder leaves or dies.
Valve didn’t “played capitalism”, capitalism played itself
Fixable? Whats broken?
Why do people even give clicks to this bullshit.
People were saying the same thing about Netflix, then netflix went to shit and look at that alternatives popped up.
And don’t forget Microsoft was the goliath that steam managed to take on.
Something feels different about that – i guess EA is big enough they could theoretically stop selling on the steam store. But idk other companies are big enough to make competing platforms the way all the Hollywood media giants did
What would happen is if steam started to piss people off. Netflix did, and this is what happened.
I think we have different opinions about what happened. The main problem with Netflix is all the rights holders pulled their content off of Netflix leaving it with mostly junk
They raised their rates and split dvd and streaming first. That was the opportunity that gave (Stars first I think?) a chance to split off, and then more followed.
And then netflix keeps raising rates, blocking family sharing AND not having much to watch.
Edit: and I just looked it up, they had already raised prices, but this one was about 60%.
The LA Times lead line captures what I am saying: “Netflix Inc., America’s largest video subscription service, is hiking prices as much as 60% in a move that has sparked outrage among its customers but brought smiles to Hollywood studio executives.”
Maybe I have it backwards ,-- thanks for sharing!
Just wanna comment that the use of play in his language is telling; really drives home the fact it’s all just a game to them and we’re just pawns or mobs to exploit
Jesus Christ I’ve seen so many posts about epic or it’s out of touch CEO fucking straight up whining about Valves success. How about using the powers of publicly held capitalism and making a product that’s worthwhile? You can’t. Take your loss and shut the fuck up already. Yes I fully realize I’m not talking to them. Just needed to vent because this shit that passes for news these days is just fucking garbage.
Anticompete laws are a thing, but I don’t know if they’re applicable at this point to anything valve does.
Epic could also just try to not be utterly shite. I personally won’t touch it as long as sweeny is involved and they are deep-throating AI.
Is there any way to replicate their success? Like ultimately giving their customers better deals than shareholders isn’t that what every mom and pop are trying to do?
If game devs just open source their games or we start reverse engineering more games, then what?
STFU EPIC
Like I enjoy a lot of what Valve does but people who simp to the extreme levels we see on Lemmy are honestly wild to me.
Two points to be contended with:
- Valve are getting 20-30% of every sale. Other marketplaces - notably Google and Apple - are rightfully despised for this level of rent seeking
- Valve popularized the concept of the loot box in Western games, making money off of children gambling
I think there’s something to be said between mobile app stores and what Valve offers through Steam though.
There’s an argument to be made that yes, developers are functionally giving up an entry fee to Steam’s userbase, but Steam also does run a very compelling platform. If it was just a storefront, I’d agree about rent seeking. But you get a pretty elaborate set of features that are legitimately what sets Steam apart from other stores:
- Steam community forums
- News feeds to make publishing patch notes easier
- Steam workshop for easy integration of community content
- A robust social network, with integration into the game for an easy means of inviting, hosting and joining games to meet parity with Consoles
- Steam’s whole CDN/versioning depot
- a swath of marketing tools, Proton for multi-platform compatibility, etc.
For both its users and the sellers, Steam is a consistently improving platform. I think they’ve made some less great decisions over the years, or fail to enforce their own guidelines, but largely they continue to innovate and make it clear there’s an interest in making it as complete and accessible am experience as possible.
To your second point, agreed. I despise the loot boxes and I think Valve is pulling some horseshit there. There’s also no forgetting they had virtually no customer support for longer than they’ve had it. Refunds weren’t even an option until 2015, and only came about as the result of multiple consumer rights suits. To their credit, they’ve made a point of doing that as well as they can too, but I still think there’s room for improvement.
Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, Google and Apple all take 30% to the point that it is accepted as the standard market rate. Epic points at Valve following the same standard and says they are greedy and now everyone parrots the Valve is bad claim. I’m sorry but I never bought this argument Maybe we should claim it’s a problem with the industry as a whole instead of pointing to just one company following what others have been charging.
Google and Apple both take 30% on everything, but that recently changed it to 15% for a developer’s first 1million dollars, and for subscriptions.
Steam… “broke” capitalism?
I think they mean “won.”
Valve wins by doing absolutely nothing
that’s what gets me. they just provide a simple, relatively unchanging service, that mostly just works.
I curse Microsoft daily for the shit I have to put up with just trying to do my job (it’s actually crazy to me how much wasted labour there is because of dumb changes from Microsoft) because they are endlessly searching for even more profit. and they could just… still be raking in cash if they just provided a service that worked. like Valve. but that’s not enough
Given the fact I used their OS all summer long as my sole business computer and then my sole gaming console tells me they are doing something.
Something nobody else seemed to be interested in doing.
i mean. they did just release a fantastic controller and a damn fine new vr headset. they aren’t doing nothing.
You can’t vibe code good leadership.
Valve’s software is not the reason for thier success. It’s the fact that they have stayed consistent, reliable, and forthright. When you buy a game on steam, you know exactly what the deal is, and what it will still be ten years from now.
If I buy a game on Epic, I feel no certainty I will be able to play it tomorrow, let alone in several years.
People are tired of being milked and anti consumer practices.
Steam is the only company doing what we expected.
As far as I know, caring for and listening to your customers and offer a great service isn’t capitalism, that’s just good business practice. Companies like Epic and Sony in the other hand they’re doing capitalism very well.
