Steam is a ticking time bomb.
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The piece about Mac makes no sense. That's purely a result of Apple's decision to drop support. In general, if you are interested in older games, MacOS is not a viable platform.
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Steam's 30% cut on each purchase has been criticized over the years, especially with Steam's market share being too large for many developers to ignore.
With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair. It gets lower when you reach a certain amount too
Steam's position in the market is a functional monopoly, but there have been challengers. The greatest example is the Epic Games Store, which started as just the launcher for Fortnite, then became a full-blown store in 2019 for third-party games. The Epic Games Store was light on features at first, and still doesn't have many of the community-centric features in Steam, but it has a Steamworks-like multiplayer framework and other core functionality. Epic also doesn't take as much money from game developers as Steam's 30% cut.
Epic a challenger? LMAO "The greatest example is the Epic Games Store" yeah sure, they have nothing, quite literally.
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This is by a Apple fanboy who is disgruntled that Valve broke up with Macs (Steam is still available but updates like the HL1 remaster aren't any longer). Yeah, send thoughts an prayers for a cult who buy overpriced computers with weak iGPUs that only recently learned to do some raytracing but understand no Vulkan or somewhat modern OpenGL.
Apple has decided that gaming on Macs is about iPhone games on bigger screens and not about supporting cross-platform APIs and frameworks. Don't blame any but Apple that your beloved platform is shit for gaming.
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Steam's 30% cut on each purchase has been criticized over the years, especially with Steam's market share being too large for many developers to ignore.
With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair. It gets lower when you reach a certain amount too
Steam's position in the market is a functional monopoly, but there have been challengers. The greatest example is the Epic Games Store, which started as just the launcher for Fortnite, then became a full-blown store in 2019 for third-party games. The Epic Games Store was light on features at first, and still doesn't have many of the community-centric features in Steam, but it has a Steamworks-like multiplayer framework and other core functionality. Epic also doesn't take as much money from game developers as Steam's 30% cut.
Epic a challenger? LMAO "The greatest example is the Epic Games Store" yeah sure, they have nothing, quite literally.
With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair.
It's not like the games are cheaper on other stores with lower cuts. Why would customers care if the lower cut just results in publishers pocketing higher profits.
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We had a discussion thread on this article here back when it was new, and the same criticisms of the article remain.
back when it was new
So a year later the time bomb still did not go off.
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With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair.
It's not like the games are cheaper on other stores with lower cuts. Why would customers care if the lower cut just results in publishers pocketing higher profits.
True. Not praising steam as the god digital store on PC because it has its own problems but it saved me from
️ and now I do it for devs that deserve it (Looking at you Sony and PSN requirement) or as demo damn I wish more games had a demo -
back when it was new
So a year later the time bomb still did not go off.
To be fair to the author, I knew the AAA game publishers were ticking time bombs too, and it took like 6-8 years longer than I thought for them to start seeing major declines in their increasingly homogeneous offerings.
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This coming from game journalism, which has just turned into a mouthpiece and constantly been used to lie about how good games are.
Funny how the date of this article comes out around the time that Amazon is failing, Epic is failing, Ubisoft is failing, and they're failing because they hate the people that they sell their products to, and they refuse to be user-friendly and user-focused.
Steam isn't perfect, but the reason why they're a monopoly is they actually give a shit about gamers, unlike all of their competition.
Gamers aren't a product, they're a user, and Steam understands that offering the voice to those people makes their product what it is. The more users they have, the more money they make. They don't need to nickel and dime and squeeze.
This is something that every single competitor they have had has just blatantly ignored.
Cross posted from: https://lemmy.world/comment/15611343
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The piece about Mac makes no sense. That's purely a result of Apple's decision to drop support. In general, if you are interested in older games, MacOS is not a viable platform.
Most the article makes no sense, but the Mac stuff is really weird. This 18 year old YouTube video is still accurate about the Mac part. https://youtu.be/2B-ekl_cEWk?si=xWJ43QEO48O9t2oY
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Steam's 30% cut on each purchase has been criticized over the years, especially with Steam's market share being too large for many developers to ignore.
With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair. It gets lower when you reach a certain amount too
Steam's position in the market is a functional monopoly, but there have been challengers. The greatest example is the Epic Games Store, which started as just the launcher for Fortnite, then became a full-blown store in 2019 for third-party games. The Epic Games Store was light on features at first, and still doesn't have many of the community-centric features in Steam, but it has a Steamworks-like multiplayer framework and other core functionality. Epic also doesn't take as much money from game developers as Steam's 30% cut.
Epic a challenger? LMAO "The greatest example is the Epic Games Store" yeah sure, they have nothing, quite literally.
Epic is the latest example that's trying. EA gave up that fight years ago, and probably had better shot than Epic ever will.
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Steam's 30% cut on each purchase has been criticized over the years, especially with Steam's market share being too large for many developers to ignore.
With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair. It gets lower when you reach a certain amount too
Steam's position in the market is a functional monopoly, but there have been challengers. The greatest example is the Epic Games Store, which started as just the launcher for Fortnite, then became a full-blown store in 2019 for third-party games. The Epic Games Store was light on features at first, and still doesn't have many of the community-centric features in Steam, but it has a Steamworks-like multiplayer framework and other core functionality. Epic also doesn't take as much money from game developers as Steam's 30% cut.
Epic a challenger? LMAO "The greatest example is the Epic Games Store" yeah sure, they have nothing, quite literally.
Little known fact Steam refunds the money you paid to get the game on the platform if you pass a certain % in sales
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Steam's 30% cut on each purchase has been criticized over the years, especially with Steam's market share being too large for many developers to ignore.
With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair. It gets lower when you reach a certain amount too
Steam's position in the market is a functional monopoly, but there have been challengers. The greatest example is the Epic Games Store, which started as just the launcher for Fortnite, then became a full-blown store in 2019 for third-party games. The Epic Games Store was light on features at first, and still doesn't have many of the community-centric features in Steam, but it has a Steamworks-like multiplayer framework and other core functionality. Epic also doesn't take as much money from game developers as Steam's 30% cut.
Epic a challenger? LMAO "The greatest example is the Epic Games Store" yeah sure, they have nothing, quite literally.
Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, doesn't steam host the game data? Push updates? Promote? Host Workshops if applicable? Use their bandwidth? Sync saves when applicable? Provide a community forum for the game? Allow players to connect easier?
Sounds like that 30% goes a long way.
Is that cut too much to cover all those things?
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Steam's 30% cut on each purchase has been criticized over the years, especially with Steam's market share being too large for many developers to ignore.
With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair. It gets lower when you reach a certain amount too
Steam's position in the market is a functional monopoly, but there have been challengers. The greatest example is the Epic Games Store, which started as just the launcher for Fortnite, then became a full-blown store in 2019 for third-party games. The Epic Games Store was light on features at first, and still doesn't have many of the community-centric features in Steam, but it has a Steamworks-like multiplayer framework and other core functionality. Epic also doesn't take as much money from game developers as Steam's 30% cut.
Epic a challenger? LMAO "The greatest example is the Epic Games Store" yeah sure, they have nothing, quite literally.
Dang I have more games in my epic library than I do my steam library.
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With all what they offer, 30% IMO is fair.
It's not like the games are cheaper on other stores with lower cuts. Why would customers care if the lower cut just results in publishers pocketing higher profits.
Good point
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Epic is the latest example that's trying. EA gave up that fight years ago, and probably had better shot than Epic ever will.
The problem is: Epic is shit and does nothing. What does it has more than steam? Free games? Eh can get them for free anyway without a launcher sooo without the games, what does it has?
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Little known fact Steam refunds the money you paid to get the game on the platform if you pass a certain % in sales
True! Like the 30% is lower after a certain % is passed
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Maybe I'm not seeing the whole picture, doesn't steam host the game data? Push updates? Promote? Host Workshops if applicable? Use their bandwidth? Sync saves when applicable? Provide a community forum for the game? Allow players to connect easier?
Sounds like that 30% goes a long way.
Is that cut too much to cover all those things?
I don't get if it's a negative comment or not (apologies) but for what you listed, I think 30% is fair
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Dang I have more games in my epic library than I do my steam library.
OK? I wonder how many of them you played and how many are there ¯_(ツ)_/¯ eh don't care
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I don't get if it's a negative comment or not (apologies) but for what you listed, I think 30% is fair
I think 30% is fair too, thats what I was asking. I don't know the industry, but steam takes on a lot of responsibility hosting a game and handling what I listed.
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The problem is: Epic is shit and does nothing. What does it has more than steam? Free games? Eh can get them for free anyway without a launcher sooo without the games, what does it has?
The problem is a second launcher or library is a pain in the ass for a user. I already avoid GoG unless it's massively cheaper, and there's the no drm benefits there. I'm not even interested in free games on epic.
