In 2018 a group of Valve staff tried to figure out just how efficient they were being—and found they were making more money per head than Apple, Facebook, and nearly every tech giant out there - eviltoast
  • Vinnyboiler@feddit.uk
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    8 months ago

    It is misleading. It is 30% of the entire revenue of the game. And it is objective whether Valve deserves 30% of that revenue. It’s also true that games aren’t locked to the Steam platform and can absolutely make money outside of Valve’s influence. History has shown though that it is less profitable then being inside the Steam ecosystem.

    • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      19
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      8 months ago

      Except that Steam allow their keys to be sold on other platforms and don’t take a cut on those. So it is 30% on the key sold on steam, but 0% on the other storefront.

      So there is no reason to not go on steam because it doesn’t restrict you to steam.

      • CatTrickery@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        16
        ·
        8 months ago

        You still need Steam on your computer to install it which means if your computer no longer supports Steam you are out of luck.

        • Vryoptic@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          If your computer doesn’t support Steam, there’s really no reason to install Steam, because better chance than not your computer doesn’t support almost any game you’d want to play on Steam.

          • JohnEdwa@sopuli.xyz
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            edit-2
            8 months ago

            There are still plenty of stubborn people that cling to Windows 7, Steam dropped support a few months back when they upgraded the… Electron version, I believe? Had something to do with chrome/chromium removing win 7 support.

          • CatTrickery@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            8 months ago

            Steam is 20 years old so we have now reached a point where people have retro gaming machines where parts of their libraries come from Steam.

        • ky56@aussie.zone
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          ·
          8 months ago

          If your computer is incapable of even running Ubuntu. Then I don’t think it’s worth using.

        • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          8 months ago

          It is not a great trend, but you need a launcher anyway today be it Steam, Origin or any other launchers.

          Only GOG offers DRM free games but it is not the norm.

          Some games on steam are DRM free, meaning that you can run the game without opening Steam.

          I’d rather have physical copies of my games, but it doesn’t exist anymore unless you pirate it.

          With that said, Steam is the most convenient and feature complete and that is why it is so widespread. Epic games with their money printer Fortnite could not reproduce a fraction of Steam dev tools and functionality.