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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

> Valve does not engage in anti-consumer practices

Yet. Imagine how PC gaming would look if tomorrow you woke up and Valve said, hey, our cut is 50% now. The problem with monopoly capture is once a company has it, it can choose to abuse it at any time in the future. And even if you have complete faith in Valve's current leadership, those people get old and die or retire, and the next guys may not run things the same way.

> But it's also fairly standard within gaming.

One of the things uncovered by these lawsuits is largely than everyone settled on the 30% cut because Steam picked it and got away with it. We should definitely blame Steam for this abusive tax on the game industry, even if many others have now copied it.

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> Imagine how PC gaming would look if tomorrow you woke up and Valve said, hey, our cut is 50% now.

I would expect a bunch of bright, freshly-laid-off engineers would get together and try to seriously compete either through a single platform offering, or a system of integrated services. I'd love to see Valve's platform advantages a little more democratized; but you can't deny the level of engineering that goes into their products. SteamVR, Steam Play, streaming, Steam Deck, Proton, it goes on and on.

> We should definitely blame Steam for this abusive tax on the game industry, even if many others have now copied it.

No more than we blame anyone else who followed suit, as a gain, Valve chose a number that was already massively standardized in many industries. If the 30% cut is too much, someone should seek to disrupt them at a 5-20% margin.

> If the 30% cut is too much, someone should seek to disrupt them at a 5-20% margin.

And we have come full circle: Epic's cut is 12%.

Epic is absolutely not competing with Steam in any meaningful way for me as a consumer until they compete on several more fronts, or at least integrate with services that allow them to do so.

If Steam was just a store frontend, I wouldn't use it. I just established their competitive offering above.

In fact, EGS's primary way of competing, exclusives, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It's anti-consumer, and a poor substitute for engineering a competitive feature offering.

I actively avoid their store for this reason, and have passed up on their exclusives in the past, despite being interested in the IP.

> In fact, EGS's primary way of competing, exclusives, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

You're only noticing because of the competition. Without it games would be exclusive to Steam and you would never notice. Anything from The Finals to Lethal Company, PUBG to Destiny 2. Are these any less anti-consumer because they're only on Steam? I don't think so.

I'm speaking of exclusivity deals. None of those games had exclusivity deals with Steam.

You're blaming Steam for not having worthy competitors, but that isn't their job. Valve/Steam doesn't engage in exclusivity deals, EGS does. And Valve-published games obviously don't count, there's no deal, they just decide not to publish elsewhere.

And remember: the closest competition is literal piracy. I'm not only noticing that Steam provides a quality service worth paying for because of EGS. I don't think you understand how many would-be pirates instead have gigantic Steam libraries.

And I'm asking you how exclusivity deals are more anti-consumer than exclusivity without deals. I'm not saying they have exclusivity deals with Steam and I'm not blaming Steam for anything, but that doesn't change the fact that as a consumer I'm forced to use Steam to purchase those games. In the same way I'm forced to used EGS to purchase their exclusive games.

So why does a deal between a publisher and Valve or EGS make a difference to me, the consumer? Why aren't all exclusives anti-consumer regardless of a deal that might or might not exist?

> I don't think you understand how many would-be pirates instead have gigantic Steam libraries.

I don't understand your point though. Are you saying no one should compete with Steam because users will pirate the games? I don't think that's a good reason to give Steam a monopoly.

> And I'm asking you how exclusivity deals are more anti-consumer than exclusivity without deals.

The former are in Valve's control, the latter are not. Valve can't help it if they're the best in town and no one else is able to compete at their level.

> I don't understand your point though. Are you saying no one should compete with Steam because users will pirate the games?

My point is that Steam offers a better service than piracy, which is very hard for a digital storefront to compete with. They achieve this by being more than a storefront. The way they conduct business is reasonably open and any funded competitor could emulate their success over time with careful design and engineering. Part of that is being consumer-friendly and having an open culture.

> I don't think that's a good reason to give Steam a monopoly.

No one gives them a monopoly. I don't follow your argument here, because you seem to be suggesting that we should handicap Steam in some kind of Harrison Bergeron scenario.

Well let's stick with the exclusive discussion because I'm not sure where the other is going either.

>The former are in Valve's control, the latter are not.

Why does this distinction make a difference in how anti-consumer it is? The store owner or Valve's (lack of) control doesn't make it any better for me as a consumer.

To summarize my position here to avoid more confusion: Exclusives deals don't make exclusive games any more anti-consumer. Because the deal or lack thereof doesn't effect me as a consumer.

So my original reply is that all of these exclusive games are the same level of anti-consumer. But you only notice when it's not Steam exclusives, because that's your platform of choice. I'm not blaming Valve for anything, I'm just using games on their store as an example of games you don't think of as exclusives or anti-consumer.

Valve doesn't do exclusive deals. Even some of their best first-party titles made it to consoles. I don't know how you can blame them for not having more competitors.

I don't know how you keep thinking I'm blaming Valve for anything when I've reiterated that I'm not multiple times.

I'm just using games on their store as an example of games you don't think of as exclusives or anti-consumer.

Your argument just makes no sense. Exclusive deals are extremely different from a game simply releasing on one store out of convenience.

I'm not arguing about the differences, just that they're the same in one aspect. You're saying one is bad because it is anti-consumer. I'm pointing out that the other is the same level of anti-consumer, and that you have just not noticed.

Deal or no deal is not relevant to the consumer so it doesn't change how anti-consumer it is.

> And we have come full circle: Epic's cut is 12%.

Epic's cut is 12% because they can afford to lose money on it: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2023/11/07/tim-sweene...

EGS is in "growth-mode", which, among other things, means they have to provide a current service that offers better terms than the service they intend to provide once they reach Sweeney's ideal 50% market share.

They spend a ton of money on exclusives, enticing offers and other substitutes for attractive features.

We should blame them and everyone else abusing platform economics to take a 30% cut. Not a 30% margin. Their margin is much higher

Steam do the same pseudo-ownership crap Sony have just been lambasted for. The cart page explicitly says 'purchase' but you have no right to sell, trade or lend them. Steam only reluctantly added refunds due to legal obligations and if you have a justified reason for a refund outside of the 2 hour/2 week window, you have to communicate with Google-esque customer service.

Years before Half Life: Alyx, Valve said they would never make single player games again. It made sense - TF2 was making silly money selling silly cosmetics. Presumably, the economics have now changed to make single-player viable again: any further player-base goodwill means a few more years of getting away with predatory BS.

>communicate with Google-esque customer service

This is a strange allegation; While I have little personal experience with Steam's consumer service, the typical report I hear is that it is excellent and very helpful, while Google more or less doesn't have it at all. I've even successfully refunded some games that were a bit over the 2 hour window.

They promised to fix my damaged Steam Deck LCD screen for free 8 months ago, and I still haven't sent it in because I was on the move a lot.

Twice I have renewed the ticket with staff deeply apologizing and asking for them to print a new RMA, offering to pay this time, and they just send me a new RMA free of charge, which I have twice disregarded. I can't think of another digital business off the top of my hand which would put up with my shit.

Well if it's any motivation you should go get on that haha

> Presumably, the economics have now changed to make single-player viable again

I think alyx/deskjob primarily exist to sell hardware rather than make silly money on their own. You even get a free copy of the former with any index hardware.

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