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Hey kid, wanna pirate switch games?
(lemmy.world)
Community for memes about the goldsrc/source engine and Valve games.
You are both correct, and way off the mark in what you've said.
Valve is mostly a store platform for the last like 15 years. They're also privately owned, so no appeasing share holders and releasing all of their data and everything else that goes with going public, so they have a lot of freedom to do what they want, but they still do things that make them money, and that GabeN likes.
Valve takes a 30% cut of any game purchase on steam. That's their bread and butter/huge revenue source. All the sales you talk about aren't valves, so much as they're the game license holders choice. If No Man's Sky is 80% off It's because Hello Games made it 80% off. Not Valve.
The Steam Deck is Linux because Gabe likes it and there's no license fee to worry about paying to windows. If gaming becomes easy for PC based systems and doesn't require a paid OS like windows, more people will go to PC gaming, which means more people will buy games through steam and make Valve money.
The Steam Deck works so well because unlike every other handheld PC manufacturer, Valve doesn't have to or even likely really care to make a direct profit on its sale. Again, they're a storefront that gets 30% of anything sold on steam. Steam Decks mean more game purchases through steam.
It's also why Valve has offered up free use of Steam OS to any other hand held PC. An Asus Rog Ally isn't competition against Valve. It's a free revenue source to sale more games on Steam, and you're even more likely to buy games through the steam store if you're using Steam OS because a lot of customers like easy with no setup needed.
So it doesn't matter if their product sales wane. It's not their revenue stream. Selling other people's PC games is their revenue stream. Their competition isn't Microsoft. It's other game stores like Origin, Amazon, Gog, and Epic. Thus far Valve seems to be crushing the competition.