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Polygon: Valve is not your friend, and Steam is not healthy for gaming

The problem with Steam is that there aren't any better, comparatively large competitors. If given the choice, I'll go with a DRM free GOG or Humble code. Often enough, it isn't really a choice. I'll take Steam over Origin/Uplay/MS anytime.
 

10k

Banned
Origin is a good platform. I don't get the hate. I actually prefer their GUI. If only they'd have steam's library. They also beat valve by a year or so with refunds.

That's why when I read all these steam threads with Gaben gifs I cringe. Steam is the most popular fish in the backyard fountain.
 

patapuf

Member
The workshop stuff sucks, but steam not being healthy for gaming is a funny accusation given the alternatives like XBOX live, PSN, and the publisher service where doing and to some degree are still doing.

Steam has been and still is the most consumer friendly platform aside from GOG and has pushed tons of things people take for granted in PC gaming today.


Origin is a good platform. I don't get the hate. I actually prefer their GUI. If only they'd have steam's library. They also beat valve by a year or so with refunds.

That's why when I read all these steam threads with Gaben gifs I cringe. Steam is the most popular fish in the backyard fountain.


Origin only has refunds for EA games and a handful of others. You also can't refund DLC on Origin.

It's also really feature poor.
 

Sulik2

Member
This was an excellent article, the Steam Workshop stuff is despicable. Valve is succumbing to the same issue as any big corporation, once you get too big customers as individuals stop mattering and service starts to decline.
 

McDougles

Member
There is an embarrassing amount of people who don't know what an op-ed is when they see one.

And no, this isn't a typical Polygon op-ed where they hire someone with explicit interests in whatever the opposite of what they're trashing is.

Seriously, this article is the broken watch that happens to be telling the correct time. Actually read it first.
 

Akronis

Member
As many problems as they have, they are still the best in the business and they'll remain that one until they either fuck up badly enough or another company decides to really step it up.
 

prag16

Banned
I've never liked Valve and think Steam is outdated in many ways but I'm a sucker and want all my games in one place so here I am buying almost exclusively from them.

And herein lies the issue. A lot of people have a "Steam or gtfo" attitude, basically because they're lazy. We're our own worst enemy sometimes.

GOG is great. And Origin is a perfectly serviceable platform (I prefer it to Steam in some respects).

Yeah yeah we hate EA, etc, etc, but it's probably a good thing in the end that they did not bend to Valve's will, and are out on their own in the PC space. They're one of the few companies with enough clout to prevent a total Valve monopoly.
 
interesting that the author is a trade union officer. i wonder why they decided to avoid mentioning capitalism/exploitation, and use polygon as an op-ed instead of say waypoint or a socialist website
 
I would gladly move to GoG for a DRM free library but they don't have nearly enough games that I want, so that's that.

They added regional prices and that's a huge plus for me, but that's not enough.
 

orava

Member
The steam is monopoly talk is always a bit strange. They aren't anti-competition or aren't actively trying to stop anyone else doing the same things they do. They usually encourage their competition to do the opposite and prefer open standards for example. There's plenty of other stores around but most of them are just incompetent or try to do their own walled gardens. People start complaining if a game is not in steam.
 
Like, the "VALVE TAKES 30%-THAT'S THIRTY- PERCENT OF SALES! THIIIIIRTY PERCENT!!!!!" that's said a few times in the article. I mean, sure, they do, and? That's literally the industry standard.
Also when the author talks about how The Compendium of DOTA 2 is a "donation" that players buy to support the game, while forgetting about all the stuff it gives to players. Oh no, only 25% of that goes to the prize pool! Instead of the 0% of other games!
He also keeps talking how workshop creators are "working for free".
Also this
Valve sells your work to other people, and they take the overwhelming majority of the money from each transaction. Everyone's a winner ... but Valve, whose running costs for the store are essentially zero
Valve has lost nothing other than the sunk cost of the employee time spent maintaining the store, while gaining a lot of revenue.
Oh come the fuck on. There's a LOT of things to berate Valve for, you don't need to exaggerate and make up stuff to try and prove your point.
 
They're not my friend, they are however the least intrusive platform to gather my games on on my PC. Look at Origin or UPlay, those platforms are complete ass by comparison.

Maybe the competitors should step up and try to create an open marketplace instead of just building a wall around their own PC products, but thanks for the Hot Take of the Day, Polygon, good stuff.
 
GOG is great. And Origin is a perfectly serviceable platform (I prefer it to Steam in some respects).

I'm sure they are, but I'm not interested in installing multiple clients and juggling to specific ones for certain games. Hell, I won't even buy blizzard games because I am just not interested in having a client installed for 2-3 of them. There's already more games on steam then I will ever play so I just get no value out of multiple storefronts.

Now if someone developed some sort of universal client that would as seamlessly as possible combine all the distributors into a single client then that'd be another story. But I don't know if that's even possible.
 

Dec

Member
They made 25% of the sale price at best according to the article so no?? what the hell

Listen, I'm not going to explain to you how the cosmetic system in Dota 2 works and the history of the workshop and why it's even possible. That is what it would take to further the conversation apparently, I'll just tell you that your conclusions are ill informed and move on.

Edit: Also that line is referring to the old way their cut of the Battle Passes worked, they received some percentage of 10s of millions of dollars for that work, and that is what I was talking about in that sentence. If you're going to take one line from my reply and only reply to that entirely out of context and incorrectly, then I'm just wasting my time. The 25% cut has been around years and workshop artists were very happy with it and still are. None of the workshop stuff was about the 25% cut, only the Battle Passes. People earned a livingly making Dota 2 items with that 25% cut and since we don't know what back ground work went into enabling the item system to work that way and what goes into chopping up heroes to be compatible with player made items, how can we say what cut is fair.
 
Valve has taken a turn the last few years and the Steam strategy seems more focused on making Valve the maximum money possible instead of creating a ecosystem where developers (and in some cases modders) big and small can make a living.

Opening the floodgates and doing away with curation has resulted in less money spent per game but more money overall. So valve is happy because they get 33% of a larger pie but a developer steam would be annoyed because now the slices are smaller.
As mentioned Valve recently slashed the money Dota workshop creators get.



They know they are the only game in town so I guess they can fuck with things like that. Personally been making the effort to shop elsewhere in recent months though. Maybe in time GOG and Amazon will become bigger players.


Dont get me wrong. I know Valve was always a business but a few years ago at least they seemed like they had some tact about it and seemed to do just fine.
 

jelly

Member
This was an excellent article, the Steam Workshop stuff is despicable. Valve is succumbing to the same issue as any big corporation, once you get too big customers as individuals stop mattering and service starts to decline.

They don't have shareholders to please which makes it way worse. Valve are just awful for no reason.
 
Of course Valve is in it for the money and is not our friend. It doesn't change the fact that I trust Valve with my business much more than EA, Microsoft or Ubisoft. The article makes the case that Valve is evil but it doesn't make the case for any of its competitors. Even if everything the article says is true, Valve is still by far the best choice.
 
I am your friend.

That's still not good. Valve does not have incentives to ever improve.

Yeah, since they have the better service they really have no incentive to improve, but they still do, they added in-home streaming, created steam link to play on the living room, made a easy to use stream service inside Steam, have the better download speeds compared to every single service I use for the same service (Eshop, Psn, Origin, Battle.Net).
Let's hope the competition actually does anything to over top Steam, that's not Valve's fault.
 
The drive to be on the bleeding edge of technology powers the PC gaming community. We want nothing more than to run our ridiculously powerful rigs on barely stable beta drivers, with our CPUs overclocked to speeds that are neither advisable nor guaranteed to be safe for our systems.

Okay. He's definitely not talking to me. Or to any of my PC-gaming friends. So, bad start.

"Valve is not your friend." This is true. They're a business running a store. Their policies are generally good for consumers and the frequent sales and discount amounts make PC gaming a viable, long-term investment in the hobby. But they're not my friend.

"Steam is not healthy for gaming." Jesus I hope the rest of the argument is better than the opening paragraph.

Good Guy Valve worked hard to make us believe that willingly installing surveillance and control software onto our computers was a morally benevolent, perhaps even righteous act — and we swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Now there's a pretty serious allegation, he surely isn't referring to things like auto-updater, steamworks, customized store recommendations and VAC as 'surveillance and control software,' right? Because that would be incredibly stupid. And surely he's not insinuating that there was zero resistance to the very idea of requiring steam to run half life 2, because there absolutely was a lot of resistance to it.

This article is written from the point of view that the PC Gaming Community is completely blinded by satisfaction with the platform to some fairly common criticisms of their business practices, and that might be true. I wouldn't expect the majority to know about or care about how they've been increasingly stiffing creators of Dota 2 items, or the sludgy uncertainty, inconsistent quality and awful signal/noise ratio in the Early Access section, or how their client is in desperate need of a renewal, etc. But the tone of the article is just a bit too smug, taking time to explain how unfair we all were to EA Origin (while ignoring the reasons EA didn't have anywhere near the good will Valve had) and overselling the nefariousness of what is a very common viral marketing vector for Steam Sale promotion. It's just unconvincing when fully 2/3rds of the column are 'look at that bitch over there eating crackers like she owns the place,' burying legitimate grievances like the Steam Workshop mess and their stubbornness with granting consumers the right of first sale in all the hand-wringing about relatively inoffensive things like Steam's DRM.
 

Paz

Member
This is the first time I've ever felt like GAF posts approached the Youtube comments quality tier, the folks responsible for that should feel ashamed they are fostering that level of discourse.

And to the others pointing out that it's 'news at 11' that companies are not your friend - Read this very thread for proof that people do not understand this concept.

It's a provocative article but by the end it makes its case very well, especially for the community driven aspects of Steam (custom assets/localization/etc). Personally I feel that Valve still does an excellent job overall for developers and players (or 'consumers' if you're thinking that way) when aligned against their competition in the PC and Console spaces, but the level of reverence is certainly extreme and often leads to people glossing over their larger faults.

The way they've dealt with Australia (my country) in particular is a bit ridiculous, we still can't purchase things in $AUD presumably because of the lawsuits which are ongoing (though they did lose, they didn't show up to accept it iirc), but Valve lets publishers set custom pricing in $USD for Australian customers, essentially sidestepping the issue of being an Australian store while still being able to exploit us with regional pricing. We even get double screwed because we have to pay conversion fees on top so games like Prey end up costing folks 110-120 depending on the bank over here.
 

Admodieus

Member
You don't have an issue with windows store which only sells keys through itself and allows no completion (Devs can't gen keys), actively blocks mods through the way it encrypts content and you complain about Steam?! Yeah...

Again, anyone, name a store platform for a huge variety of games that easily integrates modding and social features amongst other dev functionality for free and lets you gen keys for free. Here is the thing, it doesn't exist beside Steam, yet everyone conviniently ignores those points because "and I don't have any issues with the Windows Store for my Play Anywhere titles".

Was referring more to the fact that I haven't had any technical issues with the store like so many posters claim to experience on a frequent basis.

Also I never buy a non-Microsoft game there. It's just a play anywhere tool for me.
 

tomhan

Member
Disagree. They don't have a fiduciary duty to try to make as much money as possible as every public company does. Of course they're trying to make a profit, you're acting like being a for-profit company is an inherently bad thing.

Most of the shit I own on Steam I bought elsewhere for cheaper, idled it for card money which I then used that for Steam purchases. I can't think of another company which would allow such an arrangement.

I'm definitely not saying that being a for-profit company is a bad thing, I just think it's naive to think that because they are a private company that they are more scrupulous than a public corporation. If anything they can be much less transparent about what they are doing.
 

patapuf

Member
Valve has taken a turn the last few years and the Steam strategy seems more focused on making Valve the maximum money possible instead of creating a ecosystem where developers (and in some cases modders) big and small can make a living.

Opening the floodgates and doing away with curation has resulted in less money spent per game but more money overall. So valve is happy because they get 33% of a larger pie but a developer steam would be annoyed because now the slices are smaller.
As mentioned Valve recently slashed the money Dota workshop creators get.



They know they are the only game in town so I guess they can fuck with things like that. Personally been making the effort to shop elsewhere in recent months though. Maybe in time GOG and Amazon will become bigger players.

GOG who constantly stops good and established indie developpers from selling on their store is better for small devs?

And there is nowhere but steam for modders to earn money. Valve are the only ones even paying out money to modders.
 

Ikuu

Had his dog run over by Blizzard's CEO
Opening the floodgates and doing away with curation has resulted in less money spent per game but more money overall. So valve is happy because they get 33% of a larger pie but a developer steam would be annoyed because now the slices are smaller.

That's one way to spin a more open platform as a negative.
 
At any point does the article justify the comparison to Uber, et al? Seems like a ridiculous stretch, and I don't want to click Polygon's Hot Take Of The Day to find out.
There's literally a quoted segment from the article a few posts above yours that makes a pretty clear connection between the two cases, specifically with how they take advantage of labor.
 
This is the first time I've ever felt like GAF posts approached the Youtube comments quality tier, the folks responsible for that should feel ashamed they are fostering that level of discourse.

And to the others pointing out that it's 'news at 11' that companies are not your friend - Read this very thread for proof that people do not understand this concept.

It's a provocative article but by the end it makes its case very well, especially for the community driven aspects of Steam (custom assets/localization/etc). Personally I feel that Valve still does an excellent job overall for developers and players (or 'consumers' if you're thinking that way) when aligned against their competition in the PC and Console spaces, but the level of reverence is certainly extreme and often leads to people glossing over their larger faults.

The way they've dealt with Australia (my country) in particular is a bit ridiculous, we still can't purchase things in $AUD presumably because of the lawsuits which are ongoing (though they did lose, they didn't show up to accept it iirc), but Valve lets publishers set custom pricing in $USD for Australian customers, essentially sidestepping the issue of being an Australian store while still being able to exploit us with regional pricing. We even get double screwed because we have to pay conversion fees on top so games like Prey end up costing folks 110-120 depending on their bank over here.

It's pretty easy to spot ITT who considers Valve their friend, lol
 

Not Spaceghost

Spaceghost
I have been saying this forever now but no one cares, it's a shame.

Valve does so much fucked up shit regularly but everyone gives them a massive pass because they hold 800+ dollars of your video games ransom on their service.

If I am to get ridiculously cynical I would say all the recent changes to CSGO have just been to sell more skins. CSGO was at its most balanced before the r8 patch almost 2 years ago, since then they have tried to make nearly every gun have their moment in the sun.. Why? Because every time a gun gets stronger people buy a shit ton of skins for it. The current UMP / pistol meta is part of that.

These aren't changes that are influenced by a desire to make the game better, but ones that shake things up to make people buy skins.

Same reason why they opened the floodgates on the steam store, the store isn't exactly easy to navigate anymore but more games means more chances for valve to make money on people who compulsively buy things just because they're on a front page.
 
Listen, I'm not going to explain to you how the cosmetic system in Dota 2 works and the history of the workshop and why it's even possible. That is what it would take to further the conversation apparently, I'll just tell you that your conclusions are ill informed and move on.

Ohhh I just don't get it. That is so convenient! I'm sure Valve would go bankrupt if they paid their workshop creators fairly, or even communicated openly with them about what they were entitled (which you did not address because it doesn't suit your narrative), or made transparent how much they actually sold. But they don't do any of those things, and I'm pretty sure no part of your Inside Baseball knowledge would change those facts.

This is the first time I've ever felt like GAF posts approached the Youtube comments quality tier, the folks responsible for that should feel ashamed they are fostering that level of discourse.

Mentioning "Polygon" really is like lobbing a stinkbomb into a crowded room around here, no matter the context.
 

Brinbe

Member
The amount of upfront Valve/Steam defense going on without even reading the piece is making the point clear already, Christ.
 

orava

Member
GOG who constantly stops good and established indie developpers from selling on their store is better for small devs?

And there is nowhere but steam for modders to earn money. Valve are the only ones even paying out money to modders.

GOG being completely curated by them is a good thing. The library is pretty small but the quality stays high. As opposed to steam.
 

patapuf

Member
The amount of upfront Valve/Steam defense going on without even reading the piece is making the point clear already, Christ.

It's an article that complains that Valve makes 30% of every game sold - something which literally every digital store does, even outside the gaming industry. Complains about refunds Valve didn't do. But somehow Steam has Refunds now and Aside from Origin for a few selected no other Downloadable service does. (it's coming soon to xbox).

There's a few good points hidden in a wash of hyperbole.

Claiming Steam is not healthy for gaming being the most hilarious one.


GOG being completely curated by them is a good thing. The library is pretty small but the quality stays high. As opposed to steam.

The claim was that this is good for small devs. Explain me how it is?
 
Posting in a thread to basically just say they're not going to read the OP should be some type of offense to be honest.

The OP has almost nothing of worth from the article.

Just read about 80% of it, and it's a rather heavy-handed bit of whining. The most damning parts are Valve dodging the EU requirement for refunds for so long, and them taking a % on each game sold and each bit of content creation they sponsor. The former took ages for all companies in the digital space to eventually get around to, and the latter is ...business. They created a store front that increased visibility, they created a feature-set that standardized things (voice chat, screenshots, playtime stats, universal friend lists) that MS and Sony would end up charging people to access on console, and there are of course, the sales.

Polygon's biggest gripe with the sales is apparently that they are too popular, and that we (the community) help Valve advertise and hype the sales because they're so evil.
 
I think GoG is slowly becoming a great Steam competitor. It offers cloud saves (not for all old games) and matchmaking with Steam players. If given the choice, I'd prefer GoG since its all DRM-free but with a client wrapper so I don't lose the Steam functions I typically take advantage of.
They have GOG Galaxy which is an optional client like Steam.
 

Venfayth

Member
Valve is slightly better than a corporation but that doesn't mean they're not doing the things that make corporations not your friends.

Valve has done incredibly little to earn my admiration
 

Lime

Member
I agree with the article in how exploitative Valve is where they monetize everything and rely on the free labor of their users to sustain their monopoly. They also engage in tax fraud with accounting in Luxembourg.

Steam has tons of great features and it's by far the best service out there bar none, but that doesn't excuse the practices that Valve often engages in.
 
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