• Cethin@lemmy.zip
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      5 hours ago

      You can agree that this is great without being stupid. 12% would be great for developers. This is great for consumers. They’re different things. It’d be nice for Steam to take less of the developer’s money. I hope you can agree with that.

      • realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip
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        4 hours ago

        I’ve had a long-winded discussion about that a few days ago. Yes, 12% would be great for devs, but guess what, 0% would be even better.

        Steam takes care of the entire e-commerce and distribution side, which is very expensive. Just look up what publishers used to take back in the day for taking over game distribution, that was like 70%. Not exactly a time you want to go back to as indie dev.

        If you think a 12% cut would be viable, idk. However, epic just recently laid off 1000 people so idk how financially successful that company currently is.

        • Cethin@lemmy.zip
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          1 hour ago

          I’ve had a long-winded discussion about that a few days ago. Yes, 12% would be great for devs, but guess what, 0% would be even better.

          Yes, 0% would be better. What’s your point? Valve is charging 30%. That’s worse than 12%, correct? It’s better. Why do people like you always have to defend what a company does all the time?

          Steam takes care of the entire e-commerce and distribution side, which is very expensive. Just look up what publishers used to take back in the day for taking over game distribution, that was like 70%. Not exactly a time you want to go back to as indie dev.

          No one is saying we want to go back to that. Them being better than that does not make them good. Hitler killed a smaller percentage of the population than Genghis Khan, but that doesn’t make Hitler not evil, right?

          If you think a 12% cut would be viable, idk. However, epic just recently laid off 1000 people so idk how financially successful that company currently is.

          They make an incredible amount of money. Their employees are extremely generously rewarded. This means the 30% is well over what is required. I can’t give a number of what they need, and neither can you. Notably, the Epic layoff was for Fortnite, because of a reduction in players, not the Epic store team. It has nothing to do with distribution or engine development. Even still, Fortnite was profitable. It was just less profitable.

          Why do we have to defend every action Valve takes? Why can’t we criticize them? Why does anyone still have loyalty to any corporation in the modern day? That was a fairy tale that I thought people here were over.

          I’m a Linux gamer. I appreciate what they’ve done. I’ve been on Steam for I don’t even know how long at this point. That sure as hell doesn’t mean I’m not going to point out what they do that’s wrong. If anything, it should be the opposite. I don’t want them to become bad, so I need to call out when they’re doing the wrong thing.

        • artyom@piefed.social
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          4 hours ago

          Laying off employees is not a sign of being unsuccessful. In fact, in many cases it’s the opposite. Also Epic as a storefront is horrific, and Tim is a cunt, so it shouldn’t be any surprise that very few people actually buy from them.

    • artyom@piefed.social
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      4 hours ago

      Steam is a multi-billion dollar company and Gabe owns like 4 yachts. They can easily afford to lower their commission.

    • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 hours ago

      I agree. We need more kids being exposed to gambling. Steam earning money from ruining children is very important for those neat features. :3 Steam FTW. Amirite g*mers? <333

      For real though. This is just long term business strategy. They are not your friend. They can do things things that are good and things that are very bad. Stop defending big corporation that doesn’t know or care about your existence. I can’t even discribe how sad it is to be a person that needs to get defensive about a corporation because their service is alright for the most part.

      • realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip
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        4 hours ago

        We need more kids being exposed to gambling

        I’m honestly tired of debating that point again and again. However, to summarize my stance on this: If parents are unable or unwilling to monitor what their child is playing or spending money on, that is not the problem of steam - or any platform for that matter. It’s also not EAs fault if a child is spending thousands of bucks in ultimate team. If my child stole my credit card and did that, I would refund the money immediately and get his account locked. It’s honestly tiring of hearing people demanding companies to “protect the children” when many parents do fuck all to protect or educate THEIR children.

        I can’t even discribe how sad it is to be a person that needs to get defensive about a corporation because their service is alright for the most part.

        Saying that a 30% cut is justified for everything steam offers isn’t “defending” steam, it’s just stating my opinion, but yeah whatever, you do you.

        • artyom@piefed.social
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          4 hours ago

          It’s honestly tiring of hearing people demanding companies to “protect the children” when many parents do fuck all to protect or educate THEIR children.

          That’s exactly why they need to do more… Children shouldn’t suffer because corporations exploit them and their shitty parents.

          • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            4 hours ago

            And I was talking about literal casinos running on steam and not the exploitative games in there. There’s absolutely no reason for steam virtual market (don’t remember the name) to exist (besides it making valve money) and they could crack down on casinos easily but again, that makes them money. Also steam popularised lootboxes and they have this dumb case + key psychological trick in cs to drive more purchases. As for the 30% cut, the indie devs already have it rough. Developing a game takes a lot of effort and time. Taking 30% cut while publishers take another cut on top makes it hard for indies to sustain themselves and so they often close down. Not to mention the insanity of steam actually lowering the cut for really big studios (the more you earn the lower the cut) to keep them on the platform when corporations will do just fine and the indies need the money the most.

          • realitaetsverlust@piefed.zip
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            4 hours ago

            Disagree. Not because I don’t want corporations to do something, but because the ways they’d need to implement are a net-negative overall.

            There’s a huge discussion going on right now about age verification on OS level. That’s exactly the kind of shitty results we get when we have other entities being responsible for child safety than the parents. And that’s not a world I want to live in. I don’t want to have to upload my government ID to any service I want to use and live in a borderline surveillance state because parents aren’t able to pay attention to their children.

              • Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                3 hours ago

                They were also the ones to bring out the 30% cut mocking the people talking about it in general and when I called them out they doubled down saying that sharing an opinion is not defending a corporation. Lmao

                I see so many bad takes from them in this thread and it’s wild to see people upvote them. I thought the users here would know better about tech instead of getting parasocial with a corporation and thinking it can’t do bad…

                • artyom@piefed.social
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                  2 hours ago

                  It isn’t. There are lots of other ways. Gambling is a heavily regulated industry. Valve just sidesteps this by not being designated as such.

                  I do want parents to do their job. The problem is they don’t. And who suffers when they don’t? Not me, not you, and not the parents. Its the children.

            • warm@kbin.earth
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              4 hours ago

              Yup. People forget that the internet is adult by default. A child cannot buy an internet connection.

              The “protect the children” crowd, while they think they mean well, are fucking clowns. Let’s start with actually protecting them, you know what the biggest killer of children is? Cars. Let’s ban them first, shall we?

              We should never have to show ID to use the internet, it’s crazy dystopian, giving governments and corporations more and more control of our lives.