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.
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.