Technology

It feels like all the other corpos are mad and want to sue Valve to force them into enshittification.

I'm all for holding companies accountable - when legal pressure forced Valve into creating a return policy, I was happy for that. But this is a $900 Million nothing burger imo. Publishers are mad they can't get the exposure and sales numbers on a cheaper platform. Cheaper platforms are mad that they still can't get people to switch to them by significantly under-cutting Steam. That's (publishers) customers mad they have to pay a 'premium' (basically the 'market rate' for the service before epic decided to start under-cutting btw) for a better service and the competition mad that a LOT of (publishers) customers are willing to pay that 'premium'.

Their store UI could be better, searching the database by conditions and clearly seeing why something isn't available in your region\country\demographic would be good.

But at the same time it's good enough for me to even be thinking about such conveniences.

Also I've remembered recently my dad saying some 6 years ago that nobody makes convenient UIs because it's bad for commerce. A UI filled with suffering allows you to charge for directed solutions. And if a UI isn't filled with suffering, there must be something else. Like Telegram and VK which are convenient to use (compared to WhatsApp and Facebook and ...), but are Russian special services' honeypots.

Convenience is a weapon. And a very expensive one, if Steam store's UI were more convenient, the load on servers would probably be 10x what it is, for a similar structure of purchases, except probably harder to direct.

I am pretty sure they only do in attempt to attract devs. Once Epic were to get a majority position in the market they would quickly raise it to 30% too. None of these companies are “good guys” or actually care about the end consumer.

“They charge developers too much!”

So you should be able to undercut them, right? Right?

It's only too high if they demand exclusivity.

And they don't.

They are providing PLENTY of value to anyone who is listing their games there.

Would I like to see them do more now for small and independent outfits? I would! but 30% isn't that much comparatively to the old days of buying physically distributed things in a brick and mortar store.

I remember buying final fantasy 2 (4) on snes and it cost 95$ US this was 1988 or 1989

Which was about 129 CAD (the exchange rate is between usd then and now is about the same conveniently for this tidbit)

Today after years of inflation it would cost about 250-260 USD or 340-355 CAD

I don't fucking miss those days at all. And while there are multiple factors here in play, this is entirely fair to charge silksong 6 dollars ish per sale on a 20 dollar sale whilst the failing AAA games 30 dollars on a 90 dollar sale. There is a cost involved and it is because of steam, specifically steam, that made digital distribution what it is today. And by that I mean they have set the standard for what is a healthy location to sell your digital goods.

And to give an example of what garbage (yes you Tim Sweeney you giant whiny fecal faced fuck) digital distribution for games would look like if steam didnt actually do a great job, look at books.

Buying books on through amazon you pay more for them then you used to for a physical copy of the book itself.

Tim Epic might not have gotten rich enough early enough to be noticed by Epstein