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IGN: Steam's 30% Cut Is Actually the Industry Standard

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
It doesn't do much to talk about the difference in features and services some may offer for the differing fee. They only hint at that almost by accident when they mention for example gog's manual invoicing from devs vs Steam's automatic payouts. Have some surface scratching examples:



screenshot69unjx8.png
screenshot703aklu.png


Well, all that's been said before and trollers still ignore it all and handwave it as trash but as you say at least this article also agrees it's not just a "Valve/Steam are mean to devs" issue like Epic and its shills try to make it to avoid real debate/competition/burning bridges they still need.
 
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Kenpachii

Member

A good article by IGN? Anyway, it isn't anything we did not know but it's a good reminder for those who complain ONLY about Valve. Also it's worth noting from the article that Publishers can also get quite a bigger percentage out of those sales, up to 70% which is fucking ridiculous.

Trash article really dude doesn't get PC gaming in the slightest.

No car is the family standard if you look at the world population. Doesn't mean its the standard on your own platform.

30% cut made sense when physical was still a thing, now not so much anymore.

What other platforms do isn't much of a issue and what amazon takes for physical copy's etc isn't much of a thing also when physical is dead on pc.
 
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Trash article really if that's there title.

No car is the family standard if you look at the world population. Doesn't mean its the standard on your own platform.

30% cut made sense when physical was still a thing, now not anymore.

I don't think you got the point. It's not about being ok but more like everyone should optimize or improve not just Valve and Valve is not the biggest out of them. Sony, MS, Nintendo are all in the same boat but again again people only throw shit at Valve. If Valve lowers it or improves it further will the others as well? Unlikely.
 

Boss Mog

Member
I don't think you got the point. It's not about being ok but more like everyone should optimize or improve not just Valve and Valve is not the biggest out of them. Sony, MS, Nintendo are all in the same boat but again again people only throw shit at Valve. If Valve lowers it or improves it further will the others as well? Unlikely.
Valve doesn't really provide anything other than some basic features, they're nothing but a middleman born out of convenience of having all the games in one place, with some online features similar to consoles. Sony MS and Nintendo are hardware manufacturers, the consoles are their own closed platforms, they own them, they're entitled to 30%. Valve don't own PC, nobody does, it's completely open so it's ridiculous for a company to come in and demand 30%. And since it's open any other company has the right to put a storefront up and choose to charge devs/publishers less because there's almost no costs to them, compared to console manufacturers who have tons of hardware related R&D costs that hardware sales don't make up for.
 

Kenpachii

Member
I don't think you got the point. It's not about being ok but more like everyone should optimize or improve not just Valve and Valve is not the biggest out of them. Sony, MS, Nintendo are all in the same boat but again again people only throw shit at Valve. If Valve lowers it or improves it further will the others as well? Unlikely.

I don't think you get his point.

He tries to make up arguments to defend 30% cut on digital goods which is ridiculous in todays age. He doesn't even understand the market and just starts to grab numbers to make a point that profiles steam in a good light.

Sony and microsoft also have physical copy's for there consoles, steam does not provide anything physical. Hell if you buy a deluxe edition with a map its a freaking PDF file that u have to go out of your way to press 10 buttons to even get access towards. ( It cost them nothing ).

They are different businesses on different platforms. They have to spend a huge amount of money to push copy's into shops before it even sells and have to deal with retailers / returns / broken copy's / second handed markets etc.

Then consoles also have to deal with paying people to get content on there boxes. Do you think microsoft just makes a box and everybody is hyped and shows up "yes we now going to spend a couple of millions to make it work on your machine because we hate money?" no you gotta bribe them with cash. Even nintendo has to do this.

Expenses are far higher and not comparable towards digital. And specially when you realize valve does absolute nothing to get devs on there platform, they just sit idle and cash in while pc misses games after games because of it even while they get paid in comparison even more then those console businesses as they have lesser expenses.

The only thing he had to look at for proof that 30% cut is to high for valve is for the fact that every single company is making there own platform and leaving steam. Yet he ignored that entirely because it doesn't fit his bill or he was just to dumb to realize this or simple doesn't understand the PC market like i said. Which makes the article completely ridiculously bad or can even been seen as driving a agenda.

30% made sense in the past and no matter how much junk features they add towards steam that nobody cares for anyway besides a select view is going to make up for higher prices. As people just want to play the game and that's it.

The future of clients should be:

1 client that everybody can maintain and access and get 99-98% of the profit out of a sale with 1-2% going towards transaction towards the platform holders that are holded by a company like gog for example that isn't interested in being bought out or anything. Or even a future steam form.

So we don't have to deal with 10 clients, we don't have to deal with 10 different platforms and devs are not losing out on a lot of cash which makes them go yea lets get our own client to do stuff. Give them full control over there own section etc.

That's the future, and epic is moving in a direction towards it even while its a midstep its a shake up on the digital market place that is highly needed. Others are already busy making a 5% platform from what i read a while ago in a article. which i think is still to high.
 
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I don't think you get his point.

He tries to make up arguments to defend 30% cut on digital goods which is ridiculous in todays age. He doesn't even understand the market and just starts to grab numbers to make a point that profiles steam in a good light.

Sony and microsoft also have physical copy's for there consoles, steam does not provide anything physical. Hell if you buy a deluxe edition with a map its a freaking PDF file that u have to go out of your way to press 10 buttons to even get access towards. ( It cost them nothing ).

They are different businesses on different platforms. They have to spend a huge amount of money to push copy's into shops before it even sells and have to deal with retailers / returns / broken copy's / second handed markets etc.

Then consoles also have to deal with paying people to get content on there boxes. Do you think microsoft just makes a box and everybody is hyped and shows up "yes we now going to spend a couple of millions to make it work on your machine because we hate money?" no you gotta bribe them with cash. Even nintendo has to do this.

Expenses are far higher and not comparable towards digital. And specially when you realize valve does absolute nothing to get devs on there platform, they just sit idle and cash in while pc misses games after games because of it even while they get paid in comparison even more then those console businesses as they have lesser expenses.

The only thing he had to look at for proof that 30% cut is to high for valve is for the fact that every single company is making there own platform and leaving steam. Yet he ignored that entirely because it doesn't fit his bill or he was just to dumb to realize this or simple doesn't understand the PC market like i said. Which makes the article completely ridiculously bad or can even been seen as driving a agenda.

30% made sense in the past and no matter how much junk features they add towards steam that nobody cares for anyway besides a select view is going to make up for higher prices. As people just want to play the game and that's it.

The future of clients should be:

1 client that everybody can maintain and access and get 99-98% of the profit out of a sale with 1-2% going towards transaction towards the platform holders that are holded by a company like gog for example that isn't interested in being bought out or anything. Or even a future steam form.

So we don't have to deal with 10 clients, we don't have to deal with 10 different platforms and devs are not losing out on a lot of cash which makes them go yea lets get our own client to do stuff. Give them full control over there own section etc.

That's the future, and epic is moving in a direction towards it even while its a midstep its a shake up on the digital market place that is highly needed. Others are already busy making a 5% platform from what i read a while ago in a article. which i think is still to high.


Here's the thing. Sony, MS, Nintendo owning their hardware and digital stores, means they can easily adjust their prices accordingly. Ignoring the physical aspects, they can easily lower only their digital stores percentages while leaving everything else the same. It's an example, not a solution and I think that's the articles point.

If Epic is the future, then the future is dark. Buying off publishers is not a good start. Having a flexible percentage, allowing products to be sold anywhere, features, etc is a good start. I understand the best case for devs would be stores taking less and less but that's never going to happen. We live in a Corporate world and Valve, Sony, whatever will always seek out profit. And I can guarantee you, clients care about features and accessibility more than what devs or publishers earn from their stores or how much big bucks Corporations used to buy them off.
 
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Mattyp

Gold Member
Completely false. As for the rest, just because they have their own hardware platform doesn't mean its ok for them to charge 30%. It has nothing to do with being entitled or not.

What the fuck, its okay for them to charge whatever they want because its their hardware that they invested billions in. You don't want to shop at the Xbox and Sony store with exposure to their customers that's fine.

Because Microsoft set up another store down the street with free rent (Steam and EPIC decided to host their shops here) and can charge whatever percentage they like to be competitive without the overheads of console deployment.
 

JoduanER2

Member
That doesnt mean its the correct percentage, 30% of your profits just for the "rent", way to much. Us gamers would benefit from a smaller cut. Companies taking more risks creatively, not as many sequels as nowadays.
 

Herr Edgy

Member
No shit the industry leaders are following the industry standard. They set those standards.

Don't use the status quo as a justification for its naturality.

As for the Sony, Nintendo and MS, they have to produce and distribute devkits, as well as provide support for the devs that release on their platform. Whether a 30% cut on their stores is justified or not, they are more integrated into the development process of the games they release than Valve is regarding most games that release on Steam. It's easy to look at issues superficially and conclude one thing over another.

Also, Valve gets criticized more over that because the entire EGS vs. Steam fiasco primarily involves..well, EGS and Steam. I don't see why you need to point at another thing and complain about the lack of complaints if the current situation is about a specific thing. Let's handle one thing after the other.
 

sol_bad

Member
Valve doesn't really provide anything other than some basic features, they're nothing but a middleman born out of convenience of having all the games in one place, with some online features similar to consoles. Sony MS and Nintendo are hardware manufacturers, the consoles are their own closed platforms, they own them, they're entitled to 30%. Valve don't own PC, nobody does, it's completely open so it's ridiculous for a company to come in and demand 30%. And since it's open any other company has the right to put a storefront up and choose to charge devs/publishers less because there's almost no costs to them, compared to console manufacturers who have tons of hardware related R&D costs that hardware sales don't make up for.

Do you pay for PS+ or Xbox Gold?
 

Boss Mog

Member
Do you pay for PS+ or Xbox Gold?
Yes, because I enjoy playing online without the rampant cheating that is present on PC and which Steam does nothing to protect against contrarily to the console makers which thanks to their closed platforms and networks make cheating much harder if not impossible. Not to mention that I get 24 free games a year, which includes plenty of AAA titles. Sorry if I launched a pre-emptive strike on the point you were going to make about online play being free with Steam, well I should hope so, what would they be charging for exactly? They don't run the game servers or even protect from cheating and they don't give any free AAA games.
 
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Three

Member
I don't think you got the point. It's not about being ok but more like everyone should optimize or improve not just Valve and Valve is not the biggest out of them. Sony, MS, Nintendo are all in the same boat but again again people only throw shit at Valve. If Valve lowers it or improves it further will the others as well? Unlikely.
Sony, MS and Nintendo sell hardware. They have a stranglehold on their own hardware. Steam doesn't sell hardware even though they tried. PC is not owned by Steam, when I own a PC I can download from anywhere. Devs and publishers choose to create their own launchers and would rather not give 30% of their income away because you hit buy somewhere else. People shouldn't be mad that Epic is getting publisher and dev support for offering them more of the pie and customers. They shouldn't even be mad at steam for not lowering their cut but they shouldn't act surprised or call the dev or publisher some kind of evil sellout for choosing the store that takes less.
 

Helios

Member
... cherry-picking and an if.
How is that cherry-picking? I was pointing out that Valve is also offering tools and guidance for developers.
And the "if" is because PC is an open platform and devs can decide whether or not to use Valve' tools.
 
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Herr Edgy

Member
How is that cherry-picking? I was pointing out that Valve is also offering tools and guidance for developers.
And the "if" is because PC is an open platform and devs can decide whether or not to use Valve' tools.
It's cherry picking because it doesn't add or refute the point, which you also didn't address. I was stating that there is inherently more dev support going into the console manufacturer's platforms than what we see from Valve. Of course Valve offers some amount of support, too, but in comparison there is less of it.
The argument was that 30% for Nintendo might be better justified than 30% on Steam's part because there is, on average, more work on Nintendo's part regarding games on their platform in comparison to what Valve has to put in.
 

Ballthyrm

Member
Maybe we should tell IGN what a protection racket is.
Because that the way i see most "store" nowadays.

im-going-to-make-him-an-offer-he-cant-refuse.jpg


Bunch of thugs who cornered the market and don't want to go over each other territory.
As long as the money is flowing and the customers are buying, who care about the small businesses.
 
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Helios

Member
It's cherry picking because it doesn't add or refute the point, which you also didn't address.
Your point was that we shouldn't look at things superficially because these platforms are different, which I agree. After that you claimed that consoles have to provide support for the devs, making it sound like Steam doesn't. Which is wrong.
Not only that but you mention MS in the original post, which has a store on PC too and they take 30% there too, with 20% cut down after a certain amount of sales
 
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Generic

Member
Not sure what is the point of the article. Of course it's the standard, which is why the EGS is offering 12%.

Of course epic can afford to take less peace of the cake. Why? Chinese Money. They get a lot of Chinese money.
Valve will soon join the party with the chinese version of Steam.
 
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What the fuck, its okay for them to charge whatever they want because its their hardware that they invested billions in. You don't want to shop at the Xbox and Sony store with exposure to their customers that's fine.

Because Microsoft set up another store down the street with free rent (Steam and EPIC decided to host their shops here) and can charge whatever percentage they like to be competitive without the overheads of console deployment.

You're saying store fronts like Steam is not an investment and they have no rights? Ridiculous. It really ain't okay but hey gotta blame someone. As much as I hate Epic Store, that one is also a pretty big investment, they paid millions to publishers for exclusivity. The excuse that the big 3 sell hardware is shit. If you want digital stores to evolve, all of them have to evolve, not JUST STEAM.
 
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Gamezone

Gold Member
It doesn't really matter that it's the industry standard when publishers are able to create their own clients and take 100% of the revenue themself.
 

ethomaz

Banned
So IGN list to me the others store front that ask 30% like Steam? I'm curious because most 30% come from platform holders.
 
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Valve doesn't really provide anything other than some basic features, they're nothing but a middleman born out of convenience of having all the games in one place, with some online features similar to consoles. Sony MS and Nintendo are hardware manufacturers,

Ehm, can't take your post seriously with that underlined part. Steam has much more than basic features, which is why EGS is absolute shit and can't easily get up to Steam's level. There are tons of features on Steam that you won't even see on your consoles. No one even thinks about beating Steam on features. The best effort I can remember is GoG's, by trying to circumvent Steam as the library front of PC gaming. And Steam is constantly experimenting, whether it's experiences or games or features, in order to bolster their platform and benefit publishers, developers and consumers.

That Sony, MS and Nintendo are hardware manufacturers is irrelevant as well, as they're also a storefront. That they produced a console doesn't somehow need to have any relevance to the storefront. How they operate in that space is up to what financial model they have, whether they try to take a bigger part of the revenue from sales in their stores, or if it's mostly in the hardware. No matter, how that relates to developers would be the big issue, because naturally you'd have thought that the natural thing would be to pass those costs over to the consumer, but they don't, which puts it all in line with consoles. That's without considering Playstation Plus/Nintendo Online/Xbox Live Gold which makes you shell out money every month/3rd month/year. And that consoles, like PC, didn't always have their own digital storefronts.

There's at least nothing "greedy" about the 30%, as it's been pretty much a part of a standard, just as you have standardized pricing where the savings of digital publishing aren't passed onto you the consumer. EGS is just trying to use that issue and financial incentives to try to push games onto the platform, hopefully as exclusives, in order to through that get consumers to the platform. Problem is that they're not really solving the problem of consumers that way, because unless it's perpetual platform of exclusives from big publishers, it won't really beat out steam with consumers, and furthermore they have no competition on pricing either to attract consumers. The sales have been interesting and a better means of getting people invested in the platform. However, exclusives aren't really cutting it in the same way as it does on console. That's because buying an expensive piece of hardware means you're dedicating yourself to it, to that one platform, unless you of course spend even more money to access the other. That's how you get funneled to one or the other through exclusives as incentives. That same idea doesn't work on PC, because your platform is open to storefronts. Even as people hated it, there were people that went through EA's Origin to play their game, but they didn't move over to Origin as their main platform. Anyone can order a game from EGS because they absolutely need to play it, but then they'll just hop back again to where they have their hundreds/thousands of games in a library.

Of course its the industry standard, hense why you didnt hear a peep from devs and studios until scumbags Epic came along.

I wouldn't call Epic scumbags for the shaking up the percentage cut of the storefronts, though I understand why gamers feel uneasy about it. Only scumbag thing is shark tactics like grabbing exclusives. They could have easily done it through some forethought and invested in the games somewhat so it felt justified to keep their own produced games on their platform. Instead it seems like Epic has just done everything as an afterthought and been in hurry to establish themselves, seeing growth potential if they manage to establish as a storefront. So instead they're being sharks and trying to play as if they're somehow saints doing something good for the developers and publishers. Lacking completely in terms of their storefront and their road map seems sketchy.

Problem is that publishers/developers have already a solution for their woes long ago, namely micro-transactions and DLC. Of course cutting that is a benefit and it might alleviate pressure on games that don't follow a micro-transaction and DLC model, allowing them to survive longer. Though in this respect there are tons of developers that expect storefronts to work as a marketing arm and who don't understand that with ease of access to development and resources to develop games, it'll just be more and more games on the market. Meaning that ultimately creating a game needs to be understood as something that requires a large overall work for your company and you can't expect people to buy something just because you've built it. A lot of developers will fail and that's just the reality of the large influx of games we have. You'll see the same things with books. There are a lot of successes, but so many failures that you can't imagine it. Generally the publishers push for certain books to get fronted at bookstores, meaning there are a lot of books that are just hidden in the shelf, if they even get in. On Amazon they're hidden all over, until an algorithm perhaps shows it to you in the corner of the screen, if the writer is lucky.
 
Yes, because I enjoy playing online without the rampant cheating that is present on PC and which Steam does nothing to protect against
I hate to break it to you...it ain't Steam's job to ensure people aren't cheating in games that they did not develop when the developers opted not to use Valve Anti-Cheat...which works rather well.
 

Generic

Member
Nothing wrong with taking a 30% cut. Don't like it, fuck off.
This is exactly what some developers are doing. The problem is, apparently they aren't allowed to make this decision without leaving a trace of outrage behind them.

Of course its the industry standard, hense why you didnt hear a peep from devs and studios until scumbags Epic came along.
There were others stores with lower cuts, but Epic was the first big one to expose this. Someone had to do the first move.
 
This is exactly what some developers are doing. The problem is, apparently they aren't allowed to make this decision without leaving a trace of outrage behind them.
Just because they're allowed to do it doesn't mean we're not allowed to criticise them for being greedy shitbags.
 

Generic

Member
Ehm, can't take your post seriously with that underlined part. Steam has much more than basic features, which is why EGS is absolute shit and can't easily get up to Steam's level. There are tons of features on Steam that you won't even see on your consoles. No one even thinks about beating Steam on features. The best effort I can remember is GoG's, by trying to circumvent Steam as the library front of PC gaming. And Steam is constantly experimenting, whether it's experiences or games or features, in order to bolster their platform and benefit publishers, developers and consumers.

That Sony, MS and Nintendo are hardware manufacturers is irrelevant as well, as they're also a storefront. That they produced a console doesn't somehow need to have any relevance to the storefront. How they operate in that space is up to what financial model they have, whether they try to take a bigger part of the revenue from sales in their stores, or if it's mostly in the hardware. No matter, how that relates to developers would be the big issue, because naturally you'd have thought that the natural thing would be to pass those costs over to the consumer, but they don't, which puts it all in line with consoles. That's without considering Playstation Plus/Nintendo Online/Xbox Live Gold which makes you shell out money every month/3rd month/year. And that consoles, like PC, didn't always have their own digital storefronts.

There's at least nothing "greedy" about the 30%, as it's been pretty much a part of a standard, just as you have standardized pricing where the savings of digital publishing aren't passed onto you the consumer. EGS is just trying to use that issue and financial incentives to try to push games onto the platform, hopefully as exclusives, in order to through that get consumers to the platform. Problem is that they're not really solving the problem of consumers that way, because unless it's perpetual platform of exclusives from big publishers, it won't really beat out steam with consumers, and furthermore they have no competition on pricing either to attract consumers. The sales have been interesting and a better means of getting people invested in the platform. However, exclusives aren't really cutting it in the same way as it does on console. That's because buying an expensive piece of hardware means you're dedicating yourself to it, to that one platform, unless you of course spend even more money to access the other. That's how you get funneled to one or the other through exclusives as incentives. That same idea doesn't work on PC, because your platform is open to storefronts. Even as people hated it, there were people that went through EA's Origin to play their game, but they didn't move over to Origin as their main platform. Anyone can order a game from EGS because they absolutely need to play it, but then they'll just hop back again to where they have their hundreds/thousands of games in a library.



I wouldn't call Epic scumbags for the shaking up the percentage cut of the storefronts, though I understand why gamers feel uneasy about it. Only scumbag thing is shark tactics like grabbing exclusives. They could have easily done it through some forethought and invested in the games somewhat so it felt justified to keep their own produced games on their platform. Instead it seems like Epic has just done everything as an afterthought and been in hurry to establish themselves, seeing growth potential if they manage to establish as a storefront. So instead they're being sharks and trying to play as if they're somehow saints doing something good for the developers and publishers. Lacking completely in terms of their storefront and their road map seems sketchy.

Problem is that publishers/developers have already a solution for their woes long ago, namely micro-transactions and DLC. Of course cutting that is a benefit and it might alleviate pressure on games that don't follow a micro-transaction and DLC model, allowing them to survive longer. Though in this respect there are tons of developers that expect storefronts to work as a marketing arm and who don't understand that with ease of access to development and resources to develop games, it'll just be more and more games on the market. Meaning that ultimately creating a game needs to be understood as something that requires a large overall work for your company and you can't expect people to buy something just because you've built it. A lot of developers will fail and that's just the reality of the large influx of games we have. You'll see the same things with books. There are a lot of successes, but so many failures that you can't imagine it. Generally the publishers push for certain books to get fronted at bookstores, meaning there are a lot of books that are just hidden in the shelf, if they even get in. On Amazon they're hidden all over, until an algorithm perhaps shows it to you in the corner of the screen, if the writer is lucky.
"Grabbing exclusives" is a pretty common thing in every market.
 
"Grabbing exclusives" is a pretty common thing in every market.

"Grabbing" exclusives isn't as common as you think and it certainly isn't viewed upon well by a big part of the consumers. Even SFV got a lot of shit, despite it apparently - if one believes the communication - existing due to funding help from Sony. Saw the same thing with Bayonetta 2. Paying to keep titles on a single platform or off a platform is generally viewed negatively. Which is why any company that are smart should at least frame it as providing funding for a project, though it needs to be believable, which of course felt harder for people with SFV.
At least consoles also have the excuse that they are a platform in themselves, meaning that developers can choose to focus on one version over the other as a strategy as well, which doesn't work as well on PC. Meaning that not only is grabbing exclusives seen as pretty bad on consoles, but you can imagine how even more scummy it is on PC where you only exists as a storefront with features and can't use the numerous excuses console manufacturers have.
 

Kadayi

Banned
Yes, because I enjoy playing online without the rampant cheating that is present on PC and which Steam does nothing to protect against contrarily to the console makers which thanks to their closed platforms and networks make cheating much harder if not impossible. Not to mention that I get 24 free games a year, which includes plenty of AAA titles. Sorry if I launched a pre-emptive strike on the point you were going to make about online play being free with Steam, well I should hope so, what would they be charging for exactly? They don't run the game servers or even protect from cheating and they don't give any free AAA games.

Console drive by much? Steam uses a system called VACs which bans online cheaters all the time: -

 

Generic

Member
Just because they're allowed to do it doesn't mean we're not allowed to criticise them for being greedy shitbags.
Dude, if developers think a 12% sharecut and secured funds are a great deal, they have the right to pursue them. It's a free market, companies aren't forced to make decisions based on the entitlement of a vocal minority.

Maybe Valve should counter the situation by giving more incentives to developers?
 
Dude, if developers think a 12% sharecut and secured funds are a great deal, they have the right to pursue them. It's a free market, companies aren't forced to make decisions based on the entitlement of a vocal minority.

Maybe Valve should counter the situation by giving more incentives to developers?
Dude, if I think publishers are being greedy, money grubbing, shitbags, at the detriment of my user experience, I have a right to criticise them. It's a free market, that means the consumers hold the power.

Maybe people should stop defending these decisions and making excuses as to why they can't, or shouldn't, boycott and start voting with their wallets.
 

Generic

Member
"Grabbing" exclusives isn't as common as you think and it certainly isn't viewed upon well by a big part of the consumers. Even SFV got a lot of shit, despite it apparently - if one believes the communication - existing due to funding help from Sony. Saw the same thing with Bayonetta 2. Paying to keep titles on a single platform or off a platform is generally viewed negatively. Which is why any company that are smart should at least frame it as providing funding for a project, though it needs to be believable, which of course felt harder for people with SFV.
At least consoles also have the excuse that they are a platform in themselves, meaning that developers can choose to focus on one version over the other as a strategy as well, which doesn't work as well on PC. Meaning that not only is grabbing exclusives seen as pretty bad on consoles, but you can imagine how even more scummy it is on PC where you only exists as a storefront with features and can't use the numerous excuses console manufacturers have.
The outrage about exclusives is due to brand loyalty. Bayonetta 2? People who hate Nintendo were angry about it. SFV? Xbox owners were angry about it.

Console exclusivity is worse because it locks people away from the games if they don't own the console. A EGS exclusive is still a PC game, you don't need to pay 300$ to play it. Plus consoles have paid online.

Dude, if I think publishers are being greedy, money grubbing, shitbags, at the detriment of my user experience, I have a right to criticise them. It's a free market, that means the consumers hold the power.

Maybe people should stop defending these decisions and making excuses as to why they can't, or shouldn't, boycott and start voting with their wallets.
Sure, you have the right to say and do whatever you want, just like the developers.

"It's a free market, that means the consumers hold the power"

And they chose to buy Borderlands 3. It's up to Valve to counter the situation.
 
The outrage about exclusives is due to brand loyalty. Bayonetta 2? People who hate Nintendo were angry about it. SFV? Xbox owners were angry about it.

Console exclusivity is worse because it locks people away from the games if they don't own the console. A EGS exclusive is still a PC game, you don't need to pay 300$ to play it. Plus consoles have paid online.

It's not due to brand loyalty. It's due to a sense of frustration with love for a game series. Plenty of people didn't hate Nintendo, but hated a series that was available on one brand suddenly getting shifted over to another in the sequel. More so, Bayonetta 2 made sense, because Nintendo actually funded its development. Generally, outside of the small group of console warriors at the beginning of a generation, you'll have people just wanting to play as much games as possible. However, exclusives rarely benefit the consumers, unless they're partially funded by the company's investment.

Also, the reason exclusives work on console is because of that locking mechanism, which is why they are more effective and have more excuses to justify them, unlike a mere storefront that's easy to put up. People are generally okay with investing into the development of games. It's actively working to screw over the consumer, that they dislike. It's just scummy overall and doesn't seek to bring benefits to the consumer. Heck, even the justifiable exclusives, like on the publisher's storefronts, rarely have much effect, because it's not cultivating a community around the storefront, but is just a means to an end. For the publisher it's nice of course, but it's not giving much in terms of being an actual storefront for games all around.
 

sol_bad

Member
Yes, because I enjoy playing online without the rampant cheating that is present on PC and which Steam does nothing to protect against contrarily to the console makers which thanks to their closed platforms and networks make cheating much harder if not impossible. Not to mention that I get 24 free games a year, which includes plenty of AAA titles. Sorry if I launched a pre-emptive strike on the point you were going to make about online play being free with Steam, well I should hope so, what would they be charging for exactly? They don't run the game servers or even protect from cheating and they don't give any free AAA games.

Did you know that all the features you are paying for are free on Steam? FREE! They also have more features then what the consoles have. The features you are paying your hard earned dollars for are probably 50% of what Valve offer. As for online cheating, I'd argue that you have barely played online with PC. I'be been playing online on PC since the 90's and barely ever have any issues, if ever. And if you have played online with PC and experienced cheaters and hackers, it probably had nothing to do with Valve or Steam to begin with, it was probably a game outside the Steam eco system.

Rather then sit they complaining about how "evil" Valve are, maybe you should complain to Sony/Microsoft and demand that the features you are paying for should be free. Since, you know, they are free elsewhere. PS+ and Gold are just a crappy money making scheme and you are falling for it.
 
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