Court documents show that not only is Valve a fraction the size [only 336 employees in 2021] of companies like EA or Ubisoft, it's smaller than a lot of triple-A developers - eviltoast
  • Yamayo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    4 months ago

    Steam spends a lot of money convincing everyone Gaben is just a really cool dude and not your average billionaire.

    Or maybe he is a really cool dude…

    • Grimy@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      arrow-down
      12
      ·
      4 months ago

      Gaben owns 6 yatchs and spends between 70 million and 100 million a year maintaining them. He’s in the same club as Bezos and the rest.

      • Yamayo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        16
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        4 months ago

        Stop it with the fucking yatchs already, seriously. Just look at the differences between Vale and the other companys you mention. If you can’t see any, you are just a troll.

        You can’t say anything bad about Valve other than “they make a lot of money”. It gets boring.

        • Kecessa@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          11
          arrow-down
          4
          ·
          edit-2
          4 months ago

          Billionaires exist because you and me and people like us overpay for stuff, they accumulate wealth by making sure we don’t. Gabe’s wealth comes from the surplus generated by Valve, if they make that much surplus then they could lower their cut by a fucking lot and so could publishers that also enrich multimillionaire and billionaires.

          There are no good rich people.

          • Yamayo@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            11
            arrow-down
            2
            ·
            4 months ago

            A lot of indie companies would still be around if it wasn’t for this clear cut collusion

            Can you tell me how has Valve affected the indie industry? In a bad way of course. Most of my steam games are indie games that I assure you I have bought thanks to Steam’s shop visibility, review system, forums, easy refunds, cloud saves, and basically all the ease of use it gives. They don’t buy small teams and extinguish or terminate them, they don’t artificially inflate prices, they don’t install rootkits in your computer…

            How is the indie games industry worse because of Valve?

            • MudMan@fedia.io
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              4 months ago

              I was once in the room while a Valve rep told a bunch of indie developers to spend their own money localizing for the Chinese market or risk not getting store placement.

              Valve is a big, big corpo and their MO is to make other people work for them. The software they do make is amazing, but please stop thinking they’re a charity, they are extremely not.

            • Grimy@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              arrow-down
              9
              ·
              4 months ago

              The margins are thin in indie development, especially when they are usually offered at bargain prices. I’m going with the assumption that if these platforms had been regulated years ago, a good number of indie developers that shut their doors would have survived with the extra profit. It doesn’t seem like a wild assumption to make.

              • Yamayo@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                12
                arrow-down
                2
                ·
                edit-2
                4 months ago

                Steam doesn’t tell developers or publishers how much their games are worth. They only provide the tools for them to sell them, and they obliviously get a cut from it, but only if you sell. They don’t ask for money in advance, they don’t ask for any contract.

                Valve is a store front, not a publisher. I’m thinking you are just confused about how they operate.

                • Grimy@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  9
                  ·
                  4 months ago

                  Valve is a store front in a soft monopoly with other similar products and colluding with them. We would have more and better quality games if the government did its job and regulated the store front industry.

                  Instead of regulating, you seem to imply these costs should be passed down to us instead and the indie industry should just bring up it’s prices, just so Gaben can keep his six yatchs. I think you are confused about your own self interests.

                  • Yamayo@lemmy.world
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    10
                    arrow-down
                    2
                    ·
                    edit-2
                    4 months ago

                    you seem to imply these costs should be passed down to us instead

                    They already are.

                    I really think you know nothing about what you talk or how the market works, this isn’t even fun.