I think you are forgetting the other reason Valve cornered the market;
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue… The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
Gabe Newell, CEO Valve - Speaking at the Washington Technology Industry Association’s (WTIA) Tech NW Conference.
Yeah, no I definitely agree they’re good to gamers. I also love how they have a flat structure, and I think Gabe seems like a smart guy. He’s given some interesting talks about economics. They’ve made a great platform for gamers, but it doesn’t quite change that their business model is based on taking a cut of the profit of work done by others. In most other scenarios, it’s easy for us to recognize when companies do this – amazon, Walmart, etc, but in Valves case they have such a great reputation among gamers and a fanbase of their own, I think the escape a good amount of warranted scrutiny (game dev side, not gamer side)
it’s really undercutting the value that Valve provides developers who utilize steam for distribution
I think I’d actually disagree here. In a classical sense Valve offers no value to the product (game). They just own the digital marketplace. It’s like saying, “well, the Lord does maintain the roads and walls and the square, and he does a good job. He adds a lot of value for the craftsmen and peasants who use the roads and are protected by the walls.” But in the end, the Lord is still extracting a rent from the workers actually producing the goods.
That’s how taxes work, yes, and I consider them valuable. There’s a lot of work in actually deciding what work needs to be done, finding the people to do it, negotiating prices, things like that. So yes, I do think “the Lord” is adding a lot of value and making the whole operation possible in a way that probably wouldn’t work if you had everybody just trying to agree on how to spend the money and split the costs.
I will also point out Valve provides not just the platforms, but also some libraries for game development, including a networking library with NAT punchthrough (which is why on steam you can right-click a friend and join them, even on small indie games, without the game devs hosting their own servers for that) and a library for input handling (though less mandatory, but if used it makes input remapping in steam better integrated).
Another thing to note is that the value provided can be experienced more directly - if you want to try a great website/store that, to my understanding, doesn’t take any cut while providing hosting, try playing some games from itch. Depending on your gaming habits you might not notice much of a difference, and more of your money would go to the devs, but you might sorely miss some features like cloud saves, steam networking, steam input, proton, automatic delta/incremental updates.
I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying valves infrastructure isn’t valuable, or what they offer to gamers isn’t good. Again, Steam is not a product to gamers. It’s a marketplace that charges rents to game devs. I’m saying it’s not value added to the product that is produced. The product that’s produced by the game dev is the same regardless of whether they put it on steam or not.
Most of your points are about how much value Steam offers to gamers in a colloquial sense. Of course, its a lot. But it’s not in an economic sense value added to the good produced. Valve taking a 1/3rd cut is more akin to an extractive feudal lord than a collaborator in the making of the good (the game) and sharing in the profits.
So, host a game on your own website, with its own patching process, payment systems, and forum. See how long it takes you, and how many sales you get out of it.
Once you do that, you may start to realize where that 30% is going. Sure, once you have the game and are playing it, you can say, “gee, it’s weird that Valve took a 30% cut of this work”. But it’s like seeing a long list of credits at the end of a movie when you were only aware of the signature voice of the lead actor.
But it’s like seeing a long list of credits at the end of a movie when you were only aware of the signature voice of the lead actor.
It’s not like this, because most (not all) of those credits actually worked on the movie, itself. Their labor went into the thing that was produced in the end. I’m not arguing there’s no cost to distribution. It’s just not value-adding and so it ends up being extractive imo.
So, host a game on your own website, with its own patching process, payment systems, and forum. See how long it takes you, and how many sales you get out of it.
I’m also not trying to claim there’s no productive work involved with maintaining a distribution platform, or that they aren’t necessary. That’s one of the issues, they are necessary, and there is one big player, and anyone who wants to sell their good is beholden to them. Valve still has a feudal-lord-like position in relation to the people who actually make the games, themselves.
Edit: also, im sensing some indignation. hope i didn’t push your buttons or anything, just saying things as i see them and if you don’t see it that way, that’s fine.
If you’ve ever watched those credits, you’d know that’s not true. Credits don’t just go to people who assembled lighting rigs or held the boom mic - they also go to the offices that negotiated with local governments to arrange on-sight shooting, or production studios that fronted funding, or people who provided QA and support for the animation software the CGI studio is using. Much of it becomes distantly disconnected, and that’s exactly what the relation to Steam becomes.
You’re also perhaps being disingenuous about the “one big player” thing. It is possible, and achievable for individuals to write their own launcher. I teased it as being more work than an indie dev often wants, but it’s still doable. Factorio and Minecraft famously did this a long time ago AND got initially popular as a result. Many Asian games run their own Windows launcher. As a result, they collect 100% of revenue, but forfeit some Steam exposure. Notably, some large publishers can cut better deals with Steam based on that popularity; “We don’t need you, but we both gain a bit more from working together”.
Some indies have even learned about this the reverse way, in seeing that merely because Steam is popular, publishing there doesn’t necessarily cover advertising for them; and even a good game can fade into obscurity. There’s some pretty heavy misconceptions relating Steam alone to a game’s level of success.
On the other hand, people have tried to argue Epic, Origin, and others failed because they “weren’t as popular as Steam”, but they’re also generally not as good a product as Steam - not just due to poorer programming, but choosing to not even offer certain core features like reviews.
the offices that negotiated with local governments to arrange on-sight shooting, or production studios that fronted funding, or people who provided QA and support for the animation software the CGI studio is using
But these are value-adding things too, wouldn’t you say? They end up being integral to the making of the thing itself. Different from distribution which is just, as I see it, granting access to a market that you control so the good can be sold.
I’m definitely not being disingenuous – I’m not a Valve-hater out here trying to convince people they’re evil. I use Steam and would rather use it than any other platform. It’s simply better. But that’s not really relevant to what I’m saying, besides it’s implication that it makes Steam more attractive to potential buyers of games. In relation to me, these platforms aren’t a product at all. They’re marketplaces devs have to pay a tax to access. As you note, it’s possible to bypass them – but I’d wager that makes things much much harder for the dev. I’d guess Factorio and Minecraft are exceptions to the rule.
But yeah, you do have a point that are others out there. I’d consider them extractive, too. As I see it, theyre less so a service and moreso based on ownership and control of infrastructure that probably should be common property.
Why is it fair that only the Factorio developer gets to sell Factorio? I have a copy of the game myself, and even built my own mod where the engineer says “lol” and you can go around to other engineers and say “lol” to them. It’s just that the Factorio dev has ownership and control of the base game, and restricts how people sell modded versions. It’s basically feudalism where he has complete control over Factorio versions.
Okay, that was a full paragraph of sarcasm. There ARE some industries where ownership of one thing, like a river or limited capacity for internet wiring, causes monopolistic control. But when we’re not reliant on a limited resource, except for the main one of “user attention”, you can’t justify it as “monopoly control”. It’s just “Bob makes the best pies, so everyone goes to his store instead of Alex’s.” If Alex wants the same attention, they need to build their own incredible pie recipe from scratch - they have access to the same street, the same apples, and the same flour.
I think you are forgetting the other reason Valve cornered the market;
“One thing that we have learned is that piracy is not a pricing issue. It’s a service issue… The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates.”
Gabe Newell, CEO Valve - Speaking at the Washington Technology Industry Association’s (WTIA) Tech NW Conference.
Yeah, no I definitely agree they’re good to gamers. I also love how they have a flat structure, and I think Gabe seems like a smart guy. He’s given some interesting talks about economics. They’ve made a great platform for gamers, but it doesn’t quite change that their business model is based on taking a cut of the profit of work done by others. In most other scenarios, it’s easy for us to recognize when companies do this – amazon, Walmart, etc, but in Valves case they have such a great reputation among gamers and a fanbase of their own, I think the escape a good amount of warranted scrutiny (game dev side, not gamer side)
“Is based on taking a cut of the product of work done by others.”
That seems like a fair trade off for game developers in turn getting to use the platform who’s work was done by… Valve.
I understand why people make this argument but it’s really undercutting the value that Valve provides developers who utilize steam for distribution.
I think I’d actually disagree here. In a classical sense Valve offers no value to the product (game). They just own the digital marketplace. It’s like saying, “well, the Lord does maintain the roads and walls and the square, and he does a good job. He adds a lot of value for the craftsmen and peasants who use the roads and are protected by the walls.” But in the end, the Lord is still extracting a rent from the workers actually producing the goods.
That’s how taxes work, yes, and I consider them valuable. There’s a lot of work in actually deciding what work needs to be done, finding the people to do it, negotiating prices, things like that. So yes, I do think “the Lord” is adding a lot of value and making the whole operation possible in a way that probably wouldn’t work if you had everybody just trying to agree on how to spend the money and split the costs.
I will also point out Valve provides not just the platforms, but also some libraries for game development, including a networking library with NAT punchthrough (which is why on steam you can right-click a friend and join them, even on small indie games, without the game devs hosting their own servers for that) and a library for input handling (though less mandatory, but if used it makes input remapping in steam better integrated).
Another thing to note is that the value provided can be experienced more directly - if you want to try a great website/store that, to my understanding, doesn’t take any cut while providing hosting, try playing some games from itch. Depending on your gaming habits you might not notice much of a difference, and more of your money would go to the devs, but you might sorely miss some features like cloud saves, steam networking, steam input, proton, automatic delta/incremental updates.
I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying valves infrastructure isn’t valuable, or what they offer to gamers isn’t good. Again, Steam is not a product to gamers. It’s a marketplace that charges rents to game devs. I’m saying it’s not value added to the product that is produced. The product that’s produced by the game dev is the same regardless of whether they put it on steam or not.
Most of your points are about how much value Steam offers to gamers in a colloquial sense. Of course, its a lot. But it’s not in an economic sense value added to the good produced. Valve taking a 1/3rd cut is more akin to an extractive feudal lord than a collaborator in the making of the good (the game) and sharing in the profits.
Okay.
So, host a game on your own website, with its own patching process, payment systems, and forum. See how long it takes you, and how many sales you get out of it.
Once you do that, you may start to realize where that 30% is going. Sure, once you have the game and are playing it, you can say, “gee, it’s weird that Valve took a 30% cut of this work”. But it’s like seeing a long list of credits at the end of a movie when you were only aware of the signature voice of the lead actor.
It’s not like this, because most (not all) of those credits actually worked on the movie, itself. Their labor went into the thing that was produced in the end. I’m not arguing there’s no cost to distribution. It’s just not value-adding and so it ends up being extractive imo.
I’m also not trying to claim there’s no productive work involved with maintaining a distribution platform, or that they aren’t necessary. That’s one of the issues, they are necessary, and there is one big player, and anyone who wants to sell their good is beholden to them. Valve still has a feudal-lord-like position in relation to the people who actually make the games, themselves.
Edit: also, im sensing some indignation. hope i didn’t push your buttons or anything, just saying things as i see them and if you don’t see it that way, that’s fine.
If you’ve ever watched those credits, you’d know that’s not true. Credits don’t just go to people who assembled lighting rigs or held the boom mic - they also go to the offices that negotiated with local governments to arrange on-sight shooting, or production studios that fronted funding, or people who provided QA and support for the animation software the CGI studio is using. Much of it becomes distantly disconnected, and that’s exactly what the relation to Steam becomes.
You’re also perhaps being disingenuous about the “one big player” thing. It is possible, and achievable for individuals to write their own launcher. I teased it as being more work than an indie dev often wants, but it’s still doable. Factorio and Minecraft famously did this a long time ago AND got initially popular as a result. Many Asian games run their own Windows launcher. As a result, they collect 100% of revenue, but forfeit some Steam exposure. Notably, some large publishers can cut better deals with Steam based on that popularity; “We don’t need you, but we both gain a bit more from working together”.
Some indies have even learned about this the reverse way, in seeing that merely because Steam is popular, publishing there doesn’t necessarily cover advertising for them; and even a good game can fade into obscurity. There’s some pretty heavy misconceptions relating Steam alone to a game’s level of success.
On the other hand, people have tried to argue Epic, Origin, and others failed because they “weren’t as popular as Steam”, but they’re also generally not as good a product as Steam - not just due to poorer programming, but choosing to not even offer certain core features like reviews.
But these are value-adding things too, wouldn’t you say? They end up being integral to the making of the thing itself. Different from distribution which is just, as I see it, granting access to a market that you control so the good can be sold.
I’m definitely not being disingenuous – I’m not a Valve-hater out here trying to convince people they’re evil. I use Steam and would rather use it than any other platform. It’s simply better. But that’s not really relevant to what I’m saying, besides it’s implication that it makes Steam more attractive to potential buyers of games. In relation to me, these platforms aren’t a product at all. They’re marketplaces devs have to pay a tax to access. As you note, it’s possible to bypass them – but I’d wager that makes things much much harder for the dev. I’d guess Factorio and Minecraft are exceptions to the rule.
But yeah, you do have a point that are others out there. I’d consider them extractive, too. As I see it, theyre less so a service and moreso based on ownership and control of infrastructure that probably should be common property.
Ownership of infrastructure THEY BUILT.
Why is it fair that only the Factorio developer gets to sell Factorio? I have a copy of the game myself, and even built my own mod where the engineer says “lol” and you can go around to other engineers and say “lol” to them. It’s just that the Factorio dev has ownership and control of the base game, and restricts how people sell modded versions. It’s basically feudalism where he has complete control over Factorio versions.
Okay, that was a full paragraph of sarcasm. There ARE some industries where ownership of one thing, like a river or limited capacity for internet wiring, causes monopolistic control. But when we’re not reliant on a limited resource, except for the main one of “user attention”, you can’t justify it as “monopoly control”. It’s just “Bob makes the best pies, so everyone goes to his store instead of Alex’s.” If Alex wants the same attention, they need to build their own incredible pie recipe from scratch - they have access to the same street, the same apples, and the same flour.