Sad Affleck
Member
I have no strong feelings one way or the other. I don't know the situation well enough to offer a useful opinion, I do worry though that this might lead to Valve taking a cut from Steam key generation.
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Valve will no longer automatically honor requests for STEAM keys for developers
- Thread starter Tripon
- Start date
D
Deleted member 325805
Unconfirmed Member
Why? CDKeys allow people on lower income to still enjoy their hobby. If sites like CDKeys weren't a thing people would just pirate the games instead.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
I distinctly remember several posters who I was arguing with about the dangerous nature valves grip hold over digital distribution of pc gaming and that options such as Origin gog etc should be embraced. Rather than hoping they fail and for everything to be on steam that valve won't and continue not to limit the amount of keys they sell to which will allow a healthy marketplace.
Well, life comes at you fast.
Well, life comes at you fast.
So are you going to discuss the topic or use the thread as your soapbox? Did you even read the link in the OP?
Especially considering none of your named stores even allow for keys like Steam?
firehawk12
Subete no aware
So all indie game bundles are dead now?
Why should Valve have any obligation of giving its services (forums, cloud saves, bandwidth...) to clients and transactions that nets them 0.00?
They are not stopping you from selling the games somewhere else to any given prize. Bundles can still be done, but you will get the game eventually somewhere else.
It's like if I book a night in a cheap hostel and in the morning I decide to go the Hilton to have a shower.
They are not stopping you from selling the games somewhere else to any given prize. Bundles can still be done, but you will get the game eventually somewhere else.
It's like if I book a night in a cheap hostel and in the morning I decide to go the Hilton to have a shower.
It also allows devs to get my money since I refuse to pay full price for denuvo games.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Of course I read it this exact scenario has been discussed numerous times over and over again. It's not good for consumers or developers. That's basically the long and short of it.
Valve's not walling off digital retail. It has always denied particularly or relatively large key requests if it believes they'll be used to frequently undercut the store. All that has changed is that developers that have raised such a red flag can no longer use smaller requests -- like, say, requesting 1,000 keys under the guise of beta testing upcoming content -- to add to their stockpile.
Abilidebob
Member
What a weird thread. What's with the hot-takes?
Why should valve give their service away for free? They don't see a penny from those sales yet bare all the cost. Can't blame them for clamping down on thosr practices.
So devs should abandon Steam because a feature that only Steam really does is being audited to combat abuse.
And they should leave Steam to go to other stores that don't even have the pro-deveoper or pro-consumer features that are being talked about.
So have you campagined for Orgin to develop pro developer and consumer features?
Principate
Saint Titanfall
The ability to significant undercut the store is how the "marketplace" works that why they allowed it to happen up to this point.
Do you honestly think they just came to this realisation yesterday? All those and you believe they had no idea?
balladofwindfishes
Member
Probably not. This seems targeted at cheap asset flips that put their games up for 10 dollars on Steam, but 5 cents on key selling sites.
Quadraphonic
Member
This isn't going to affect Humble Bundles as much as it's going to affect shit-tier code sites like Groupees, Bundlestars and IndieGala.
When you're dumping DOZENS of games for $1....
https://www.bundlestars.com/en/bundle/dollar-mega-bundle
Yeah, Valve needs to stop that shit.
? The only one that allows free key generation continues to be Steam. There is no change here
This won't affect Humble Bundles. Not that facts ever stopped you from shitposting, anyway.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
They have no choice valve is in way too much of a dominant position. That was my point about people who wished for every game to be on steam and (an important and) for all the of it's competition to fail.
These exact scenarios were what I as warning against.
No but they can control the price based on how many they allow to be released. Very easily in fact.
BasilZero
Member
Yeah bundle stars does that a lot, hopefully this will lead to better bundles on bundle stars and indie gala though indie gala's anime bundles for the most part have been somewhat decent.
I'm not presenting a theory. I'm telling you that key requests have always been manually fulfilled for the very reason Valve states and nothing has changed aside from smaller ones now having the same level of scrutiny as larger ones. Valve hasn't suddenly decided that developers can no longer occasionally take part in indie bundles or discount their games outside of Steam.
Steamworks Documentation said:
I am uncomfortable with this. Obviously steam can do whatever the hell they want with their platform.
Edit: I guess this isn't new reding jasec posts? Steam decides who it's worth losing money to gain customers (like Atari) and who they're not willing to support in a similar way (small indie devs) and it has been this way all along. I apparently misunderstood steamworks. I thought it was free and available to anyone.
Edit: I guess this isn't new reding jasec posts? Steam decides who it's worth losing money to gain customers (like Atari) and who they're not willing to support in a similar way (small indie devs) and it has been this way all along. I apparently misunderstood steamworks. I thought it was free and available to anyone.
So you ARE just here to soapbox and not even talk about the subject.
You are worse then the Reddit hottakers that can't even read beyond a title, you turn every thread into your personal 'i know best' campaign.
Abilidebob
Member
Show me one post here.
Just one. A single non sarcastic post of someone "wishing for all its competition to die".
Just one.
Bundle Stars has tons of legitimately good sales on top of the shovel ware bundles. If it is a visibility or shithose problem that has major publishers doing business on third party sites, Valve should improve the storefront.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
I'm sorry I do admit that that part of reason for stating this is to say that the event I predicted would happen did in fact happen like I warned. The other part is my my diasapointment and disgust that Valve validated it.
Not at all actually. That's not how it works.
No, you don't even know anything about this topic and pretend you are some prophet 'THIS TIME VALVE IS EVIL, I AM SURE OF IT'
You aren't saying anything special and many before you have claimed that this is the new slippery slope that will bring down PC Gaming.
You aren't worth talking to anymore.
Valve does not control the prices on Steam.
What does this mean? I googled it and it shows just you using it many times, always in a spoiler.
I'm not sure why people think this is only going to affect grey-market sites, not that I'm complaining.
In BundleStars' defense, they do quite a few solid bundles, but those $1 ones are almost always nothing but shovelware.
Colossal Moo
Member
Incoming press release from GoG, Origin, or Windows Store about how they won't limit keys?
Doubtful. It sounds like some developers basically made Valve pay for the distribution costs for their games (i.e. download costs, customer service costs, etc.) while the developer pocketed the profits by selling the keys on a different (not Value owned) site. Why would any store want to be in the position of paying their competitor's software distribution costs? It sounds like Valve did the right thing and stopped letting slimy game developers and/or publishers take advantage of Steam.
spindoctor
Member
The people complaining about this do not even understand enough about the Steam ecosystem to realize why this is happening.
This is going to affect developers (and I use that term in it's most liberal interpretation) who request half a million keys and sell (or "sell") them on Russian sites you've never heard of for 3 cents a piece.
How does it work?
Suppose I'm a developer. I fire up the free version of Unity, browse the Unity asset store and download some free assets, package them together and put it up on Steam. It costs me $100 for the Steam Direct fee. These are the low quality, trash asset flips that bother everyone except Jim Sterling who loves to shine a spotlight on them. So, no one is going to buy my crap game. No way to earn money from sales. What do I do now?
I request 300,000 keys from Valve. Once I have them, I activate those 300,000 keys on 300,000 bot accounts that are used for only one purpose; card farming. Suppose I added 6 Steam trading cards to my game. That means each of the bots will idle 3 cards per key, which is 900,000 cards in total. I then go and sell them on the Steam market. It does not even matter what price they sell at. The absolute minimum price for a card is 3 cents and the developer gets 1 cent from every sale. There are people on Steam who are in love with their Steam profile level and will buy any badge to increase that level. These people will buy up all my 900,000 cards and even if I got 1 cent per card, that's $9000 earned. For a $100 investment.
This is the reason Steam is plagued with all these asset flip games. Nobody is buying them or playing them. It's the developers putting up anything on Steam so that they can earn money on the backend with card sales.
What Valve is trying to do here is to stop this trend. If they stop giving out keys in bulk then this sort of 'business practice' hopefully dies and that in turn will mean all these trash games stop getting onto Steam because it's not worth it to do this anymore.
But of course this won't stop some from crying out about how Valve is abusing their 'monopoly' and how terrible it is for consumers and developers and how evil they are. So, carry on with that I guess...
This is going to affect developers (and I use that term in it's most liberal interpretation) who request half a million keys and sell (or "sell") them on Russian sites you've never heard of for 3 cents a piece.
How does it work?
Suppose I'm a developer. I fire up the free version of Unity, browse the Unity asset store and download some free assets, package them together and put it up on Steam. It costs me $100 for the Steam Direct fee. These are the low quality, trash asset flips that bother everyone except Jim Sterling who loves to shine a spotlight on them. So, no one is going to buy my crap game. No way to earn money from sales. What do I do now?
I request 300,000 keys from Valve. Once I have them, I activate those 300,000 keys on 300,000 bot accounts that are used for only one purpose; card farming. Suppose I added 6 Steam trading cards to my game. That means each of the bots will idle 3 cards per key, which is 900,000 cards in total. I then go and sell them on the Steam market. It does not even matter what price they sell at. The absolute minimum price for a card is 3 cents and the developer gets 1 cent from every sale. There are people on Steam who are in love with their Steam profile level and will buy any badge to increase that level. These people will buy up all my 900,000 cards and even if I got 1 cent per card, that's $9000 earned. For a $100 investment.
This is the reason Steam is plagued with all these asset flip games. Nobody is buying them or playing them. It's the developers putting up anything on Steam so that they can earn money on the backend with card sales.
What Valve is trying to do here is to stop this trend. If they stop giving out keys in bulk then this sort of 'business practice' hopefully dies and that in turn will mean all these trash games stop getting onto Steam because it's not worth it to do this anymore.
But of course this won't stop some from crying out about how Valve is abusing their 'monopoly' and how terrible it is for consumers and developers and how evil they are. So, carry on with that I guess...
Principate
Saint Titanfall
I'm not talking an out that I'm talking about the about a factors of factors determine by supply and demand which affects Valves revenue from their storefront basically and in depth economics argument I've had with a few other posters on this topic.
zeorhymer
Member
I'm not understanding what Steam is saying. They are saying that they have to reduce the amount of keys given because they are bearing the cost. The cost of what exactly? Everyone who registers keys into steam has an account, the game is already in their FTP servers or where ever they are stored, and perhaps I can see about bandwidth issues.
I'm sure it's great to cull the shovelware that's out there, but I can't wrap my head around these costs that the person mentions.
I missed this while typing:
I'm sure it's great to cull the shovelware that's out there, but I can't wrap my head around these costs that the person mentions.
I missed this while typing:
Linkstrikesback
Member
Yeah, and how much free internet space are you giving out to people to use all at cost to yourself?
fakeedit: Oh, it's a gafneo post, yeah, explains it.
Sad Affleck
Member
Thanks for the explanation, it makes sense.
FinaruDensetsu
Member
Something that I've never understand is how Valve makes money when people sell their games through Humble Bundles?
Can someone explain that? I'm totally in the dark.
Can someone explain that? I'm totally in the dark.
They don't, they just get more people using Steam and being on the ecosystem because of it. Key generation is 100% free.
Sad Affleck
Member
They don't.
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Now this is just random raving I'm working under the assumpton that valve is malevolent in fact they'be shown themselves to be one of the more consumer friendly business in this sector. I working under the assumption that valve is a business and like all business profitability is the end goal. Which is why will fully hoping for a business any business to have a monology or close to it will inevitable have a negative effect on consumers as has been shown by numerous examples I'm practices. Valve does have a monopoly and frankly they enacted a lot of positive changes in the industry. My issue us always been with the people hoping they do achieve a monopoly and that all their competitors fail as eventually these sorts things bite the consumer in the ass
FinaruDensetsu
Member
Oh wow. That's pretty damn generous.
I wonder what percentage of Humble keys actually cause people who have never used Steam to try it. I guess it must be a good enough percentage to make it worth it.
Like could you ever imagine Sony, Nintendo or Microsoft doing that just to get people into the ecosystem?? Crazy.
They don't from that key. But whoever buys that key has to use steam to play the game. If there is dlc maybe they'll buy it on steam. Or maybe they will impulse buy a game next time they login to play the game they bought elsewhere.
So they don't make money off the key, but in general it's still very good for their business.
Abilidebob
Member
Completely free, they make 0 money off of it. I sincerely don't think there's any other platform, consoles included, that let developers just generate free keys like that. Those free keys have the same features as a Steam-bought copy. So it uses the same bandwidth, the same support resources, the same Steamworks features at no cost to the developer. So Valve in this case "eats" the cost. Problem is if that is used to abuse the store.
Say I have a game on Steam, and that I set its price at 60 bucks.
At the same time I sell those free generated keys for 10 cents everywhere else. Say that this game becomes a hit, with a million players. In this absurd, but possible case, Valve would "eat" the cost of 99% of the players, as the vast majority wouldn't buy it on Steam. Can you see how that can be considered an abuse of the system?
Jesus Christ, again?
WHERE are those people?
Principate
Saint Titanfall
Pretty much which why this specific policy hasn't been in place for all this year's. It benefits everyone a great deal.
Also as mentioned before, the abuse is mainly cards farming for just 3 cents sales but you add enough of them and you make a bunch of money.