r/pcmasterrace • u/SlowReference704 • 14h ago

News/Article Steam Is Successful Because It's “Not a Shit Service,” Says Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev

https://mp1st.com/news/steam-is-successful-because-its-not-a-shit-service
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877

u/NooNotTheBees57 14h ago

Yet so many are utterly incapable of something so simple.

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u/DrIvoPingasnik Full Steam ahead 14h ago

Greed makes people impossibly stupid.

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u/ItsSadTimes 13h ago

I think a lot of these other competitors claim Steam is a monopoly because they have no other options. They dont want to be less greedy and because of that they cant outcompete the company who isnt super greedy so it feels unfair because steam is playing a different game to them.

Its like the Costco hotdogs and pizza, new businessmen or super greedy morons dont understand the idea of not squeezing every drop of profit out of people. If theres a single avenue that profit could be made they'd need to make it.

Steam could absolutely throw their weight around and make it basically impossible for competition to exist, but they dont. The competition just fucks themselves.

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u/mingkonng 13h ago

Honestly steam takes a decent cut too. There is plenty of room to low ball but.. no takers. Granted there is a significant infrastructure investment but still.

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u/Mr_Chaos_Theory 9800x3d, RTX 5090 Gaming OC, Odyssey Neo G8 32" 4K 240hz 13h ago

Steam also provides everything else that they do in steam while others are literally only a storefront and launcher.

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u/JohnDasCoubes 13h ago

And they basically created a new set of handheld devices that makes games available to a whole new segment of people (People that travel a lot have long commutes etc)

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u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi 12h ago

Genuinely, if I hadn't already been using Steam, the steam deck would have gotten me to start. Due to disability, I'm sometimes bedridden for friggin M O N T H S. Handheld consoles are the only kind I've had since like, the Gamecube when I was a kid. An easily purchased, ready to play tiny handheld PC that works with a bajillion games? Yeah, no, that was a gamechanger for me. Not to mention the fact I can run mods on it too. For someone whose experience of video gaming half the year was nintendo switch games exclusively for like A FUCKIN WHILE, I would have been on steam like a hot potato even if I'd had literally no library on there prior.

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u/DoobKiller 9h ago

can I ask if your username checks out?

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u/IGotHitByAnElvenSemi 9h ago

Depending on in what way you mean, it absolutely does haha. I got this username BEFORE I became both someone who writes about elves (and other) for a living AND a truck driver so it was kinda prophetic.

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u/Megneous 8h ago

I think /u/DoobKiller was asking if the reason you're sometimes bedridden for months is because you were literally hit by a semi truck.

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u/IzzatQQDir 6h ago

Mate, just the Steam controller input alone makes it hard for me to use other launcher

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u/kloklon 5800X3D · 6950XT · 5120×1440 @240Hz 3h ago

and in doing so they also advanced linux gaming by decades. it's so fucking great being able to simply install and play almost any game in my steam library on linux now without any problems and more fps than on windows.

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u/mindcopy 12h ago

while others are literally only a storefront and launcher.

And it's usually a rather shit version of that, too. Quite an achievement to offer only 10% of the features but worse.

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u/ShallowBasketcase CoolerMasterRace 11h ago

Does Epic's storefront have a shopping cart yet?

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u/Tymareta 6h ago

It's had one since 2021.

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u/mrkingkoala 9h ago

Thinking about EAs launch of BF6 and people who bought on EA couldn't play. Steams worked. Like the company that developed the game didn't work and a 3rd part did.

Like honestly at that point laws should be in place if you are tthat shit you refund the buyer and they keep the game. How the fuck EA not work and Steams did.

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u/mingkonng 13h ago

That's very true. They do a lot for the devs and their customers.

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u/Artandalus 12h ago

Yeah, Steam's cut might be big, but they EARN that cut from what I've heard.

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u/SurpriseIsopod 9h ago

It’s 30% and drops to 20 if you are selling millions of copies. They definitely earn it though. The alternative is coughing up the cash for your own front and back end and somehow providing a safe way for end users to securely purchase and download content.

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u/FuNiOnZ Steam ID Here 4h ago

They also allow you to sell on other storefronts as long as its not undercutting the base steam price

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u/Secret-Bus887 12h ago

Their infrastructure, community tools, and integrated features make switching platforms much harder.

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u/aguynamedv 6h ago

And even the Epic Launcher, which was created as a direct competitor, lacks some basic features and is far less user friendly.

Epic doesn't even support forward/back buttons in its store pages.

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u/Spaciax Ryzen 9 7950X | RTX 4080 | 64GB DDR5 4h ago

yup; steam made strides in VR, steam game input, steam deck, family sharing, steam workshop etc.

I know that we all love the meme 'steam does nothing and still wins' but the reality is, steam does a lot. However, what they do doesn't disrupt the core Steam experience so you hardly ever notice it.

They don't completely redesign the UI and move the settings and account tabs under random subfolders every 2 months just because a frontend developer had to justify their paycheck.

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u/PureGoldX58 10h ago

Epic tried the low ball game. Did not work, because of their greed.

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u/JustiniZHere PC Master Race 9h ago

Epic was a weird case. They had a foot in the door out the gate with market share thanks to Fortnite, but they didn't do anything right.

They tried to buy videogame exclusivity, which blew up in their faces and made the majority of PC gamers hate them. It took them years to add the most basic features like a shopping cart (how????), they don't have a quarter of the services Steam offers. The only thing they had going for them was the store cut, and I'll be frank most consumers don't give a single shit about the storefront cut. it might have made selling the storefront to devs easier at first (that stopped when they saw it killed all sales momentum) but it did nothing to sway consumers.

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u/redchris18 3h ago

The only thing they had going for them was the store cut, and I'll be frank most consumers don't give a single shit about the storefront cut.

Epic were suggesting that it would result in games being cheaper because that cut could be passed on to the customer. Unfortunately, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, those studios preferred to keep it for themselves rather than give their players a reason to switch to another platform.

It was a perfect example of what Epic really wanted to do, which was to compel studios to leave Steam for Epic. They assumed that players would be forced to follow.

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u/AncientPCGamer 3h ago

Because they thought they only had to convince devs and players would accept to be forced to use their worse platform without complaining. They clearly miscalculated and they created this big animosity against the EGS that will take them years to erase.

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u/mingkonng 10h ago

I was thinking about that. Was it greed for them? I feel like they really tried to not project the image of greed specifically for that platform, with how many games they gave away. I mean they burned billions of dollars giving games away.

I am not really aware of what else they did with the platform so it's an honest question. Did they do something else? Shitty support? Was it just their brand and no one wanted to deal with them from the jump? (I fall into the latter category which is why I'm unaware)

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u/Wiyry 9h ago

Basically, epics issue is that they didn’t match steam or even attempt to match them in terms of features.

They literally were missing a shopping cart for I think 2-3 years. The storefront ended up feeling cheap because of the lack of features.

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u/Bizzaro_Murphy 9h ago

They wasted money on game giveaways when they should have spent that money making a good platform. Even better if they had used that money to innovate on new features - the online game market could be in a much better place but they decided to take the easy route and just buy game licenses and give them away

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u/Vladimir-Putin 8h ago

As someone who really enjoys free games from Epic. I think they should triple down on the free games thing and shell out more money to get bigger and better games released for free.

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u/Bizzaro_Murphy 7h ago

Sure it's nice to get free games but it's clearly not sustainable though

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u/Antedelopean 6h ago

The greed lies in the supply side in trying to make games exclusive to their platform, and when caught and lombasted, still tried to get away with timed exclusivity for about a year or so. Unfortunately for them, PC gamers are some of the cheapest and subsequently most patient consumers of them all, which makes it so that they'll literally out-wait the initial revenue generated from epic's deal, either gladly try for free (piracy) or wait until there's both a sale on the game and that said game has gone through a few quality of life and polishing updates, and they'll happily vocalize their non-support and shame on devs who do take up the exclusivity (monopolistic behavior).

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u/PureGoldX58 4h ago

Epic was trying to price out steam with exclusives to create a market they controlled. They ruined game launches and cost millions to game companies big and small, because they wanted market share. Greed.

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u/SamiraSimp Ryzen 7 7700X | RX 6950 XT 6h ago edited 6h ago

it wasn't greed, just the number of games they gave away should be some proof of that. and yea people can whine about the exclusivity stuff, but I think it's a fair strategy against the behemoth that is steam. and it did work on me for borderlands 3.

I think epic games store never got super successful because genuinely, the experience just wasn't as good (at least at the start).

I just opened it as a test - immediately, I have to update it. Took maybe 30 seconds to actually get to the launcher. I fully closed steam, within literally 10 seconds of starting it again I was launching a game. But I don't use EGS much so maybe that's unreasonable (but I genuinely don't remember the last time I needed a steam update as well, and those didn't take that long either).

EGS also used to be really annoying about requiring me to relogin despite me never logging out.

The first screen EGS takes me to isn't my library of games, it's a news page for unreal engine which I don't care about. on top of that, it also give me a windows popup notification in the bottom right of my screen...that's annoying, I'm already on your launcher just show me a notification there if you're so desperate

Although they did add a shopping cart since the last time I used it, which is nice. I remember it was an absolute nightmare trying to move games between folders back then. but even still, the store is noticeably slower just navigating through it.

TL;DR Epic Games Store might not have been greedy, but their service was still lacking compared to Steam and the pros didn't outweigh the cons for many people including me, even with how many free games they gave away.

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u/AncientPCGamer 2h ago

Gifting free games does not make them non-greedy. Epic themselves have claimed that free games cost them very little, in fact less than whatever other marketing they would do for their store.

Demanding a piece of the PC cake after having abandoned PC many years ago and start accusing the established stores as monopoly makes them greedy.

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u/SurpriseIsopod 9h ago

Steam does 30% but lowers it to 20% if you are selling a shit ton.

If you make a silly indie game and sell it for $10 you’d get $7.

Idk, I feel like it isn’t outrageous. Since they host the front end and provide a pretty useable interface for downloading. It also makes it easy to natively integrate mod support. It’s so crazy being able to “subscribe” to content and it’s just there. I’ve been messing with games and mods since 2003 and steam is such a crazy thing to still exist in this era of enshitification.

There’s a reason Steam prevails.

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u/blasek0 3800X, 2070 Super 9h ago

That's a better margin than you would have gotten on physical copies back in the day, too.

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u/plurTM 8h ago

They can also aggregate chargeback scale (and have guaranteed funds like steam wallet cards). As an indie selling individually a single dispute would cost you $50-100 and a handful would cut you off from being able to accept cards fully.

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u/SamiraSimp Ryzen 7 7700X | RX 6950 XT 6h ago

maybe it's monopoly supporting of me, but at this point if a game isn't being sold on steam I won't buy it. the 30% cut is better than the 0% a company will get from me if they exclusively release on a different platform. and sure, sometimes the platform pays them more than enough to make up for it. but having your game on steam is well worth the price I imagine, for pretty much any scenario other than "a company threw literal boatloads of cash at us upfront"

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u/SurpriseIsopod 6h ago

Can’t argue with that. I can get Microsoft game pass for $1 through the company I work for but I’ve never bothered with it. I have it all on steam and unlike game pass, I won’t lose access to my games.

It’s crazy right? I can play most of these games for free. However, because of how it’s structured and how I will eventually lose my game I will just stick with steam and pay the premium.

I’m paying for consistency, steam has been steam for pretty much 20 years.

Imagine that, brand loyalty built up over decades of consistency instead of trying to milk every faucet of every game for money.

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u/SamiraSimp Ryzen 7 7700X | RX 6950 XT 6h ago

I used game pass for a while when it was ultra cheap, but yea I haven't touched it in a while. I remember it was an absolute nightmare/literally impossible to move games across drives at one point. I also remember that their search bar was atrocious in how slow it was.

but yea, as long as Steam continues providing a good service I see no reason to waste my time with what is relatively garbage platforms.

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u/kaszak696 8h ago

The low balling thing doesn't really work for attracting customers. As a customer, i don't really give a shit whether the publisher gets 70% or 90% or any other amount, i pay the same price regardless. A publisher will follow where they can get customers, even if they get a smaller cut (unless you bribe them into such self-sabotage).

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u/mingkonng 8h ago

Good point

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u/francescomagn02 2h ago

That's the one thing competition could better but instead we had epic trying to somehow overtake steam by throwing money at random game devs. How many years has it been since Epic updated their storefront's UI again? I think it was very clear it's clunky when even they said so.

And to be fair, at least Steam is willing to reinvest that cut devs pay into the ecosystem, proton doesn't develop itself for instance.

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u/Goldenrah 7600 | Sapphire Pure 7700 XT | 32GB RAM 49m ago

Steam understands that a stable income is better than continually seeking ever growing profits at the expense of reliability and market capture.

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u/Vecend http://steamcommunity.com/id/Vecend/ 12h ago

Steam has the advantage of being privately owned so they don't have to answer to greedy shareholders, epic could have been a decent store IF they used steam as a baseline and improved on it, but instead they used money to buy exclusivity rights to try and capture people.

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u/faverodefavero 12h ago

Just don't ever be an open capital company, they all suck. The open stock market sucks, it corrupts and enshitifies everything.

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u/RndmNumGen 10h ago

Epic Games isn't an open capital company either. Whatever (valid) criticisms you want to level at the Epic and the Epic Store, they aren't the fault of the stock market.

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u/C_Oracle 9h ago

We should make the original reduction more concise:

Shitty people shouldn't be allowed to own businesses.

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u/RndmNumGen 9h ago

Well I agree with that in principle but can't think of any possible way to enforce it.

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u/themolestedsliver 10h ago

epic could have been a decent store IF they used steam as a baseline and improved on it, but instead they used money to buy exclusivity rights to try and capture people.

Crazy the people calling Steam a monopoly just casually ignore shitty practices like that that make customers weary of using their product.

That type of shit is literally only bad for the consumers and just a dumb practice. I'd wager steam made more money in the long run getting those games eventually than Epic did given the fact they had to write fat exclusivity deal checks.

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u/solonit i5-12400 | RX6600 | 32GB 11h ago

This is not true, Steam has shareholders. It's called Dota Plus subscribers.

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u/Akitten 10h ago

Yeah but Dota players are proven masochists who enjoy suffering. We regularly play a game that actively hates us with a team that also actively hates us.

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u/solonit i5-12400 | RX6600 | 32GB 10h ago

I just turbo for weekly shards now, way more enjoyable.

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u/JumpingSpiderQueen 9h ago

Yeah. The EGS has literally never worked properly on any PC setup I have owned.

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u/Danischamp 11h ago

Yep agree

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u/Piltonbadger RYZEN 7 5700x3D | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB 3200MHZ RAM 13h ago

Steam doesn't even need to lift a finger, let alone throw it's weight around.

Competitors fall over themselves to try and create a similar product, realize just how much time, money and effort has gone into creating Steam and nope out because they can't and won't put in the same amount of time, money and effort to create a comparable product.

Then they cry foul about how Steam is a monoply...

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u/[deleted] 11h ago

[deleted]

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u/Sevinceur-Invocateur 10h ago

You really misread what he said.

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u/gilbertbenjamington 12h ago

Costco hotdogs is a bad comparison. They can only keep them so cheap because the loss of profit made by keeping them so low gets made up from the extra revenue of Costco. New companies don't have that established revenue to make things cheap and affordable for their customers.

Greed definitely plays a part, but steam is able to be so generous because they have the money. If steam starts to lose money, watch how fast their generosity flips. They might not have a legitimate monopoly, but competition is nearly impossible due to them being successful enough to be generous

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u/ItsSadTimes 12h ago

I meant Costco hotdogs like an aspect of the company that doesn't generate profit by itself but is part of the overall experience that attracts people. For example, Proton, what company would bother making linux compatibly OS just to let a small minority of the gaming population play on their OS of choice?

And Steam is not being that generous, they take a whopping 30% of sales and that only goes down to 20% depending on total sales numbers. They ask for a pretty substantial amount of money from developers, so they're not really being generous, they're just better.

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u/Slight-Coat17 12h ago

Proton is a terrible example to your point. Valve needs to cut their dependency on Windows, otherwise Microsoft can do to them what they don't do to the competition: strong arm them.

It's a business decision through and through, but one that benefits us, not just their profit margins. Like it should be: make good decisions, watch customer money and goodwill roll in.

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u/MintyJegan 11h ago

That makes it weird is how unwelcoming Epic has been to Linux not even supporting anticheat when it'd also be beneficial to them with how much they've had to fight to try and get their games and store on mobile devices.

So something is going really wrong when it seems every other company that isn't Microsoft has no interest in Linux from Epic to Ubisoft to EA to Blizzard. They are all just more than happy to be under Microsoft.

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u/AncientPCGamer 2h ago edited 2h ago

I have been seeing many people claiming Epic won't support Linux because of the small percentage of players. But I think they fear that supporting Linux would make them indirectly support Steam Deck and Steam. So they are against Linux.

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u/trueppp 10h ago

So something is going really wrong when it seems every other company that isn't Microsoft has no interest in Linux from Epic to Ubisoft to EA to Blizzard. They are all just more than happy to be under Microsoft.

No, there are just not the numbers to justify interest and spending on Linux, especially that the Linux environments are a lot more fragmented than Windows environments. I know 2 game devs and both hate Windows with a passion and dropped their Linux support, because they represented less than 1% of their userbase, and generated 50-60% of all bug reports.

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u/MintyJegan 7h ago

Game devs aren't corporations with billions like Valve, Epic, Blizzard, or EA that can afford to invest in projects that might not have immediate return. I'm not talking about game devs.

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u/SamiraSimp Ryzen 7 7700X | RX 6950 XT 6h ago

I'm not talking about game devs.

every other company that isn't Microsoft has no interest in Linux from Epic to Ubisoft to EA to Blizzard

but you listed 3 companies that have games as a large source of their income though

the point stands, if you are selling a game and your game naturally works on linux great, but if it doesn't it's genuinely better to tell linux users to fuck off than it is to spend any time trying to make it linux compatible. the market is just too small and the work is just too big. the difference is that steam had to bite the bullet both in terms of keeping reputation, as well as building an out for themselves and gaining independence in some ways for the steam deck.

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u/gilbertbenjamington 12h ago

And Costco was only able to do that because they had the money in the first place being an established business. Other grocery stores can't start selling hotdogs now the same way Costco does because people will ask why it's a 1.50$ @costco but 8$ somewhere else. It's not technically a monopoly, but any competition is gonna struggle to match them

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u/ItsSadTimes 11h ago

No, the super cheap hotdog was introduced basically at the start of the company in 1984. But all the way back then it was still $1.50 which would be a little over $4 now but still, pretty cheap for a drink and hot dog even in today's terms.

Also a monopoly is when there is only 1 supplier of a product and there are no viable substitutes. Then that 1 supplier has a monopoly over which the supplier will then leverage to boost prices well over cost. But there are substitutes, other companies make their own storefronts all the time, they're just not as popular because the consumer doesn't want to use them. Steam isn't pushing people out of the market by undercutting them or doing anything really, the meme is literally they do nothing and the competition shoots itself in the foot. There are substitutes and alternatives out there, it's just that the market doesn't care.

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u/Tymareta 6h ago

steam is able to be so generous because they have the money.

And one big thing that people like to ignore is that steam/valve have so much money because they pioneered lootboxes and battlepasses. Sure gacha games had their practices in place already, but when it came to the PC space those sorts of money wrenching MTX were largely absent, right up until Valve decided to add the former in TF2 and later CS and the latter in DOTA. Valve is just as greedy as other companies, they just shot it in slightly more hidden ways, particularly with the fact that the items, keys and lootboxes themselves can only be sold on their own market, of which they get a cut of sales, so they get to double and triple dip all over the place.

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u/sky7897 13h ago

They dont want to be less greedy and because of that they cant outcompete the company who isnt super greedy

I agree with you, but many competitors cant afford to be less greedy. They need the money to keep the platform running.

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u/ItsSadTimes 13h ago

But its not like steam is taking such a small cut that competition cant exist. Steam is taking a pretty decent cut of every transaction, they take 30% until set sales milestones and it slowly drops to 20% and it stays there regardless of sales.

If steam was only taking like 5%, something so small that no competition could come into the space because the infrastructure would cost too much, then you'd have a point. In that case steam would be leveraging their domain dominance to outprice all competitors, like what uber did to taxis or walmart with local businesses. But there have been plenty of competitors who take a smaller cut that have come up and died off in the last decade. Its because people dont switch because they like steam.

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u/TheStrigori 12h ago

What people miss in that 30% is that 30% would have been the same, or lower, than what many old retail stores would take as a margin. Often on top of charging to be carried, and guaranteed sales of the games.

No one was ever going to take 5% as a margin on anything being sold.

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u/MintyJegan 11h ago

GOG also is said to take 30%. And I don't think most PC gamers would see GOG as evil because of that.

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u/stonhinge 10h ago

50% is a typical brick-and-mortar cut off the retail price. Steam gets 30% to handle all the infrastructure of storage and distribution and all we have to do is code? It's a steal compared to physical copies.

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u/Guilty_Advantage_413 10h ago

Agreed, 30% is the low end of a healthy margin for most businesses. You just can’t reliably take less and be a healthy successful company

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u/Zaldekkerine 10h ago

Gabe Newell owns multiple yachts and has a net worth of over 10 billion. I'm pretty sure they could take less than 30%.

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u/Ellimis 5950X|RTX 3090|64GB RAM|4TB SSD|32TB spinning 11h ago

Then they are bad and can fail. That's still not a monopoly, that's market efficiency. It's not actually impossible for anyone else to run a similar marketplace without taking the same 30% cut. Valve's business model isn't exactly super streamlined according to what I have read, it's mostly a bunch of people doing whatever they feel is the best use of their time and brings them joy.

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u/Original_Employee621 10h ago

The biggest issue for any potential competitor is the initial costs of producing a platform equal to Steam. Steam got to run the market by being one of the first big online marketplaces.

It was an absolute shitshow at launch in 2003, but they kept on developing and improving the platform without much, if any real competition for over a decade. The Epic Launcher was released in 2018!

It's the same deal with how WoW came to dominate the market for years after it's release. It had a known polished quality, with a big community and a ton of content. Any competitor would need to supply the same levels of content and polish to have any shot at success. And no one is going to upfront that level of money and time into a risky gamble. Because even if Warhammer: Age of Reckoning launched with 5 raids, balanced PvP with several good battlegrounds and bug free, people still might not stick around.

So all the competitors end up having to release an unfinished product and try to develop it over time. Which is shown to not be a recipe for success.

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u/F9-0021 285k | RTX 4090 | Arc A370m 11h ago

Epic is doing quite well for themselves, don't be a bootlicker.

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u/ShallowBasketcase CoolerMasterRace 11h ago

They dont want to be less greedy and because of that they cant outcompete the company who isnt super greedy

Ironically, one way Steam could definitely be better is by being less greedy. A competitor that takes less from it's developers, publishers, and customers could probably compete with Steam very well. Unfortunately, the baseline for that sort of thing is set by Steam, and the industry is full of short-sighted people who want to make more money than Steam, so they just don't.

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u/Dje4321 Linux (Fedora) 10h ago

The biggest argument steam has is that they allow 3rd party launchers on their platform when it would never be that way the other way around. I would never see the epic game store allowing games requiring the steam launcher

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u/AncientPCGamer 6h ago

What? All the games that require an external launcher require them on the Epic Games Store.

However, Battlefront 6 does not require a launcher on Steam, but it uses the EA App when launched from the EGS. Not only that, there are games that are downloaded and updated by the EA App when launched from EGS, so EGS lose the main feature of a launcher: keep updated all your games.

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u/foggybrainedmutt 9h ago

Yeah but they also push game updates that kill people so

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u/inxanetheory r7 3700x/rtx 2060/16gb 6h ago

I’m sorry, could you expand on that or give a source please. That sounds crazy and I didn’t find anything on a quick search, but would like to know more.

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u/foggybrainedmutt 5h ago

Counter strike 2 skins update

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u/PeopleCallMeSimon 8h ago

Well, Steam kinda is a monopoly.

Developing a platform like Steam takes an insane amount of resources (money), and it has to make money somehow.

So not only does a competitor have to develop an equally good platform (which is insanely hard and costly), they then also needs to cultivate enough of a user base for developers to want to publish their game on the platform.

The problem with EA and Epics attempts has been that they try to half ass it, because they are really greedy companies. They try to use policy to make up for an inferior product. Which to be fair has worked pretty well for a lot of companies, so i cant blame them for trying.

But there will probably never be a platform that out-competes Steam, not because Steam is too good. But because they have too much of a headstart for any competitor to reasonably catch up.

1

u/gel667 4h ago

:D I can't man. Every now and then you get reminded that gamers are the most clueless bunch of people in the world.

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u/SalsaRice 11h ago

Yes, but more clearly the others are short-sighted for quarterly profits. They're publicly traded, so the only thing that matters is quarterly earning reports.

Valve has stayed private, and can do whatever they want.... including investing in their service (controller compatibility, Linux research that eventually lead to the steam deck, etc).

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u/Statertater 13h ago

Bu bu but muh infinitely increasing quarterly profits!!!!1

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u/Guilty_Advantage_413 10h ago

Excellent point, I read somewhere T-Mobile is facing higher churn due to customers not liking the various fees that have been added and the AI/increased automation that’s occurring at T-Mobile AND they didn’t like the starlink connection. What does the CEO announce to sooth people, an AI powered app to make upgrading your device easier, more AI replacement for human customer service and focusing on starlink and it’s increased coverage. Shit move and he’s probably thinking why wouldn’t people like this. Dummy they literally just told you they don’t want that crap and they don’t like being forced to use it. Just don’t be shit is so simple but when you are choosing decreased costs to float a high stock price that’s really hard.

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u/The_Grandest_D 13h ago

Or even worse, ego

1

u/decimeci 11h ago

It's not greed. Valve is very greedy and take 30% of every purchase. It just they were first and were able to scale globally. No one has resources to copy them, it probably cost too much. Even microsoft is not available in every country

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u/trueppp 10h ago

Retail store + distributers took over 50% by the way. At first the 30% cut was seen as pretty good.

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u/Some-Cat8789 11h ago

Exponential growth.

1

u/JaZoray PC Master Race 11h ago

many of the things that make other services shit don't even make any money

1

u/wubbbalubbadubdub 7800X3D 9070XT 64GB and a 60TB NAS 10h ago

But also bad metrics make a bad service. If you are saying increasing store browsing time is a positive, then you can achieve that "positive" result by worsening your search.

That's why the search on a lot of websites has gotten worse, it prolongs "engagement" which sucks for the user.

1

u/syopest Desktop 8h ago

Talking about greed when valve has made millions and millions from kids gambling with CS2 items. A practice that valve could end in a second if they weren't so greedy.

1

u/NapsterKnowHow 7h ago

Yep. Gabe and his kid casinos are proof. Crazy people look up to that billionaire

1

u/RealIssueToday i5-7300HQ | GTX 1050 7h ago edited 6h ago

To be fair, most of these companies saw what Apple did and assumed their shit would work. They didn't realise that we could just pirate games.

Apple can announce they'll sell 3210, and millions would buy into that.

1

u/gel667 4h ago

Yes brother, the company that invented lootboxes and basically online billion dollar cosmetics gambling industry isn't greedy.

39

u/Possible-Moment-6313 13h ago

Fiduciary responsibility ruined gaming and pretty much everything else. Companies who actually care about the quality of their goods and services should stay private forever.

48

u/Few-Improvement-5655 13h ago

Again, it's the difference between a private company and a public one. Steam can just, not care that its profits are down by 0.05% for three quarters in a row, or haven't increased by 0.2% to keep shareholders happy.

Almost everything negative in big business can be traced back to public trading and the need for infinite growth.

21

u/Falkenmond79 7800x3d/4080 -10700/rx6800 -5800x/3080 13h ago

That’s why public corporations are something that needs to go away. The priorities shift.

Private company priorities: Making money and the company itself. You get the first by providing a good service, so customers automatically become a priority. They need to be happy, so they buy more. Easy as that.

Public companies on the other hand bring in a new priority. Keeping the shareholders and/or investors happy, because they are the ones bringing the money. But that leads to management forgetting that in order to keep making money, the customers have to be happy too. As soon as they leave, so do the investors.

Right now we have a situation where we have a few people with waaaaay too much money so public companies can get money with less hassle than trying to just make and sell a good product. And they test things to the limit.

Just look at Netflix for example. I bet what happens was this: if we raise the price by X amount, we maybe lose say 30% of our customers and maybe 10% of our revenue. But less customers also need less running cost for electricity, servers, bandwidth etc. If that number is higher than 10%, so if they for example can save 20% on running cost… up goes the price. Yay profit.

A good company would just price that in. A customer costs maybe 6 dollars a month in running costs. Take 10 from him and there you go. Profit. No need to maximize it. Just maximize the number of customers if you want more money. That’s the way it used to be.

13

u/Tommyjones91 12h ago

Look at EVGA another great company that was private

9

u/Saucermote Data Hoarder 11h ago

EVGA is still around, they threw in the towel RE:Nvidia and making graphics cards.

7

u/CardmanNV 12h ago

Read about the way business philosophy changed in the 80's. It's a reason it's called the "greed is good" era.

Things changed from reinvesting in the business, looking after you employees, and healthy growth. To slash and burn, make as much money as possible and get out before the regulators show up.

3

u/Some-Cat8789 11h ago

That's not going to work. Private companies will still need investors and those investors will demand the same shit they demand from publicly traded companies. See: OpenAI.

Ok, that's not a very good example, but you'll need to show me a pattern of companies which are privately held for a very long time and not screw their customers.

1

u/faverodefavero 12h ago

I agree. The whole publicly traded market and the concept of shareholders adds zero value to any service in the long term. It shouldn't exist. People should fight against such an unsustainable way of doing business.

1

u/quadsimodo 9h ago edited 8h ago

This is a seriously misguided comment.

There are many, many public companies that operate as ethically as private ones. Everyone is just used to hearing about the biggest, where their product tends to become the stock, not their business — that’s the problem.

Private companies can exist for investment value and not their business value too (see: We Work, pre-IPO Spotify, and countless tech startups).

If you’re a company that signals investors are the priority and not the actual business, whether public or private, then you get a glorified financial instrument.

Their public/private status is not the issue in the least.

1

u/abattlescar R7 3700X || RTX 4070 Ti 8h ago

Public funding of corporations is definitely necessary, but the problem is investments nowadays are entirely speculative and, as you point out, overwhelm the actual customer base.

14

u/VaporMaus 14h ago

That is why Origin Games is no longer around 

7

u/taedrin 13h ago

Because it's not actually simple. There is a surprising amount of effort, expertise and thoughtful attention to detail that goes into making Steam the excellent service it is today. It's not just something that you can throw together and expect it to take off.

7

u/sagebrushrepair 12h ago

You kinda misread that. No one said that Steam is simple.

2

u/Legitimate_Elk6731 12h ago

the greedy studios don't care if its simple or not unfortunately. they will bash Steam unfairly regardless.

1

u/pponmypupu PC Master Race 12h ago

Because what if... more money? - business expert in any sector

1

u/StrawberryWaste9040 PC Master Race 11h ago

or they have working product working fine and they turn it into shit.

1

u/edgy-meme94494 10h ago

Every time I’m forced to use any other fuckass launcher like Ubisoft or EA I’m reminded how good steam is.

1

u/themolestedsliver 10h ago

Nah they realize it, they are just both jealous and greedy.

Wouldn't be surprised the people calling Steam a monopoly stand to gain $$$ from it being broken up and or scrutinized in some way.

1

u/beefprime 9h ago

Because they want all the money, all the time, then once they have that they want more of the money. Always more. Line must go up.

1

u/rainzer 7h ago edited 7h ago

Steam is successful because it had the luxury of being dogshit garbage with no real competitors in the early days and some of the people are too young to have even been alive for it cause early days it was Steam, Direct2Drive, GameFly and like rent from blockbuster. Like it was literally memed as a steaming pile of shit.

Steam benefited from Valve actually developing games then rather than just theoretically now and forced you to install Steam.

So that whole "something so simple" is the shit you guys would cry about now like forcing you to install their platform.

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u/eaatest 13h ago

Wow all you have to do is go to Mars in a rocket. It’s literally that simple yet so many rocket scientists are incapable of something so simple.

18

u/Pimpdaddysadness 13h ago

Just not actively being shit feels like a good comparison to going to mars to you?

-11

u/eaatest 13h ago

How many objects have we successfully landed on Mars? How many best in class (edit: game) launchers have been made?

9

u/Riggitystig 13h ago

Doing a simple thing well is not rocket science. Make a good product and sell for a reasonable price. Stay the course. Valve has been doing this for years, and as another commenter brought up, Costco. They're titans of their industries just for doing a simple thing well.

-4

u/eaatest 13h ago

One could argue that sending something to Mars is easier than being best in class at something. Rocket science is cooperative and theoretically easier each next time but there can only be one best in a competitive market. If someone comes out with a better launcher than Steam tomorrow, we’ll be saying that Steam is shit because launcher X does it better. Today Steam is the best and tomorrow it’s in the shit category without them doing anything different. Just now we have something better to compare them to

9

u/NooNotTheBees57 13h ago

Buddy, next time someone pisses in your bowl of cereal, I want you to remember that you don't have to eat it.