Yes, the Steam Deck is great, and Steam is definitely one of the best games platforms there is. And Valve has done great work supporting Linux and open source development, and forcing more transparency for sellers on Steam.

But I feel like people sometimes just love valve for everything they do. GabeN is still a billionaire, buying super-yachts and stuff. Valve makes a ton of their money from gambling on loot crates in CS2 and TF2, and have not done enough (imo) to stop even more predatory third party item gambling sites. And whenever I bring stuff like that up people keep defending Valve.

We should be able to praise their great games and hardware, at the same time as criticising other parts of the company.

  • Armok_the_bunnyEnglish
    52·
    1 day ago

    A 30% take is very standard, and is significantly better than the cut of sales stores took when everything was physical. I think it’s quite telling that the only store that brags about taking a lower cut is Epic, which also spends unreasonable amounts of money handing out free games to try to get people on their platform. You know what that reeks of? Enshittification; provide an unsustainably good deal to consumers to get them in the door before ripping it away, provide an unsustainably good deal to creators before ripping it away, and in the end you are left with both sides of the equation that hate you but feel trapped because they have so much stuff locked there.

    • SerinusEnglish
      2·
      18 hours ago

      Yeah, Epic took a dumb approach, and they’re not the good guy, but they’re also not wrong on this.

      • Armok_the_bunnyEnglish
        11·
        17 hours ago

        I don’t buy for a second that their 12% cut is actually sustainable, and if I’m right then it’s going to be raised at some point, probably up to 25% or so (which is also the cut steam takes after the first $10 million in sales IIRC)

        • SerinusEnglish
          22·
          16 hours ago

          Lemmy here is hosting about half of it for token donations. Bandwidth isn’t that expensive.

          AI Overview saying Valve's operating profit margins are near 60%

          • Armok_the_bunnyEnglish
            31·
            14 hours ago

            Fuck AI, find me a real source and I might believe you.

            • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
              2·
              13 hours ago

              I agree, this isn’t the way to get information, but all of that’s accurate as far as I can tell. This is all information that’s commonly known. They’re one of the most profitable companies per employee. They make insane profits. They absolutely don’t need the 30% cut, and that’s obvious. There is some limit to how low it could go, but it isn’t 30%. Sure, that’s the standard. Do you know how a standard is made though? People just accepting it. It can clearly be pushed lower, and people advocating for not doing so are arguing against their own best interest and in the interest of a company making billions in profit every year.