this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Convince other companies to be not shit competition then. Steam has its near monopoly because its competition is dogshit
No, Steam gained its near monopoly through anti-consumer practices as well: being mandatory for playing Valve games, even offline, as soon as 2004; being DRM-ridden; locking consumers out of their right to sell their games on second-hand market; still enforcing an old revenue share system that’s hurting devs; or putting micro-transactions everywhere with their collectible system that you can’t really disable at all. Just to name a few.
Steam is not better than others. You’re just used to its flaws.
Yeah, Steam has DRM. Its the least annoying DRM that exists entirely because they gave us one of the best shop fronts that exists on PC as a trade off. And all companies have the right to sell their own games on whichever store they wish. Unlike Epic, Steam doesnt buy the exclusive rights to OTHER companies games, its just their own games. Your imaginary competition utopian dreamland doesnt exist, and you're turning optional mole hills into mountains in order to pretend the best option we have is bad. If you don't like collectible trading cards and the least annoying DRM ever created, go buy on GOG, EPIC UBI and EA all have FAR WORSE practices
They bought out the Devs of portal to make portal for steam
Valve saw a demo and was impressed by it to the point they funded the full game, damn you guys get desperate to paint Valve in a bad light.
Steam is better than Epic at least. On top of all that, Epic makes itself mandatory for third-party games too.
Epic is worse on some points listed here, better on others.
The only one that goes on Epic's favor is the cut, but frankly I think the whole "old revenue share system that’s hurting devs" is nothing more than Epic's propaganda trying to get marketshare. 70/30 in favor of the devs while Steam handles hosting, community platform, multiplayer and modding tools, so forth, is neither unusual nor ripping anyone off, certainly not worth how maligned it was. I understand devs who prefer Epic's cut, but I don't think Epic is doing this out of fairness, nor that it can be relied on if they ever do gain ground.
In the other aspects, it's either equal or worse. It has as much DRM. Steam provides options for people to trade extra copies they didn't activate but as far as I know other stores don't. Neither allows people to trade away activated copies so that's no points for anyone.
I assume the microtransaction thing is talking about Steam Trading Cards and such, they are a bit of an iffy worthless addition to get people to waste money... but if the person is concerned over how much money the devs are getting, they do get a cut from every transaction, so under that perspective it should be counted as a plus. Which, by the way, is entirely up to the dev to add or not.
I don't really remember asking for your opinion on what a fair cut should be or what you think is a rip off. But the fact is that Steam takes more money from developers than other powerful competitors around (but 30% is barely enough to get servers running if I listen to you :D ). Okay. Sure. Yes. Right.
The microtransactions are so awful in Steam that with proposed laws in some countries (like the Netherlands) it would make the whole thing illegal. Some of the worst Valve practices already are, like the loot boxes (they're banned there).
I don't tell you that you should switch to something else than Steam. I don't tell you that there's a better choice (maybe GOG?). But what I'm saying is that Steam is indeed predatory and has been known for its anti-consumer practices, despite what some True Gamers™ seem to believe.
Too bad, this is a public forum. I don't need to ask for your permission to say whatever I want. But if that's how you are going to go about it, then feel free to think whatever you want on your corner.
What I was saying: "your opinion doesn't state a fact and some devs are indeed complaining about the 30% cut, maybe you should listen to them"
What you heard: MUUUUH FREEDOM OF SPEEEECH