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 may be focusing a little too hard on the monopoly thing. Tbh I only said that in the initial reply to mirror the OPs comment in my response. Sorry, I shouldve been clearer in my other comment where I said they’re the only big player. I’ll grant you there are others in the market of distributors, and that Valve is one of the few big players, rather than the one big player. My bigger point is more that their business practice is extractive and more like feudalism than traditional capitalism.
And I hear what you’re saying. I think you probably make total sense particularly in the eyes of neoclassical economics, maintaining Valve is totally justified and completely in the bounds of acceptable business practices-- particularly according to our current economic system and notions of private property. But I, personally, just don’t buy them (pun, erhm, intended?)
For one thing, I think there are several good examples of infrastructure going public. And the other, larger thing, is that this passage from Pyotr Kroptokin kinda illustrates my attitudes toward private property.
The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers–in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.
The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only a half of what was their due.
Moreover–and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring–the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town possessing bridges, quays, and fine public buildings, and affording to its inhabitants a thousand comforts and conveniences unknown in villages; a town well paved, lighted with gas, in regular communication with other towns, and itself a centre of industry, commerce, science, and art; a town which the work of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful.
A house in certain parts of Paris may be valued at thousands of pounds sterling, not because thousands of pounds’ worth of labour have been expended on that particular house, but because it is in Paris; because for centuries workmen, artists, thinkers, and men of learning and letters have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day–a centre of industry, commerce, politics, art, and science; because Paris has a past; because, thanks to literature, the names of its streets are household words in foreign countries as well as at home; because it is the fruit of eighteen centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations of the whole French nation.
Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage?
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.
I think you may be focusing a little too hard on the monopoly thing. Tbh I only said that in the initial reply to mirror the OPs comment in my response. Sorry, I shouldve been clearer in my other comment where I said they’re the only big player. I’ll grant you there are others in the market of distributors, and that Valve is one of the few big players, rather than the one big player. My bigger point is more that their business practice is extractive and more like feudalism than traditional capitalism.
And I hear what you’re saying. I think you probably make total sense particularly in the eyes of neoclassical economics, maintaining Valve is totally justified and completely in the bounds of acceptable business practices-- particularly according to our current economic system and notions of private property. But I, personally, just don’t buy them (pun, erhm, intended?)
For one thing, I think there are several good examples of infrastructure going public. And the other, larger thing, is that this passage from Pyotr Kroptokin kinda illustrates my attitudes toward private property.