I’m assuming Steam’s shotgun is the Steam Machine price? Not shotgun-worthy at all. They’ll make money regardless of how it does.
I mean it’s closer to a pellet gun because afaik the Steam machine isn’t subsidized by game sales unlike some consoles, still engineering and setting up manufacturing still probably cost a lot so it’s probably still a gun just not a shotgun.
I look at the Steam Machine being a proof of concept device leading to third party development.
There is now a lot of interest in computer markers to make their own machine and Valve is more than happy if they do it at no cost to Valve.
The damn thing sold out immediately.
No surprise there, there are plenty of people with expendable income that will want Valve’s newest thing. But even their biggest success, the Steam Deck, only managed around 5 million sales at a reasonable price. The Steam Machine is doubly niche at that price.
While I agree there with the Machine being more niche and would probably not sell as much as a Deck, the deck also has availability issues. Can’t sell more than exist 🤷♂️ (or well, I guess you could, but then you’d be an asshole lol).
The Deck was available and at a decent price for years. But you’re right, every one they made did get eventually get sold until the new and “improved price” versions came out.
To me, its the price fixing allegations (e.g. dictating the prices of other stores).
Nintendo is going to make money no matter what
Yup, especially once they start putting out their heavy hitter franchises.
Let me buy the same game 5 times, damnit!
“I’ll stop making them when you stop buying them.”
You joke, but Japanese Twitter is full of corpo simps.
What did valve do?
I prefer the version that has OpenAI and Anthropic shooting Valve.
Valve started it. Valve invented the “we can violate copyright laws because it’s on a computer”. Your purchased games will be digital downloads where you have no actual ownership rights.
It is illegal to stop you from reselling copyrighted work you bought at whatever price you can get. Book publishers tried that over 100 years ago and were smacked down by the Supreme Court and followed up with laws passed by Congress.
Your purchased games will be digital downloads where you have no actual ownership rights.
show me evidence that they took games away from users after they were purchased and didn’t give refunds back to.
It’s about reselling them. You cannot sell your game on steam. EU made a law that requires is and then Steam converted everyone’s purchases into licenses.
I’ve never resold games. I still have Kings Quest 3 in the original box, disks, and paperwork.
why would I sell games?
You might not sell games, but other people do especially if they don’t like a game.
Now the game just sits in a virtual library unplayed. If there was a way to sell, or loan, a game license to a friend or something, that’d be cool.
guess I just don’t care about the cost. I don’t buy launch titles. if I don’t like a game I just give it away to someone and chalk the cost up to learning to never buy from that developer again.
And how do you give away a digital game?
Any time someone gets an account ban. Now sometimes those are for a good reason, but it still removes access to purchased content, as steam is the gatekeeper to access them.
don’t be a scrote then?
They did not invent that lol. Music companies did.
Music companies weren’t selling games.
What a blind distinction
In a legal sense, media is media. The laws were established for music before digital games were mainstream, and were then applied to games.
The iTunes Store is older than the Steam Store.
Itunes didn’t sell games.
The argument is about digital goods not just video games, but for the record they absolutely did.
You didn’t read your own link. From your own Wikipedia link: First game released in 2006. 2 years after Steam.
“the argument isn’t about games”? Then where is the non gaming publisher in the OP gif above?
They most definitely did. Maybe you should learn about the stuff you’re talking about before posting things that are completely wrong.
Maybe you should look up history before downvoting:
https://www.macworld.com/article/181577/ipodgames-2.html
First game on itunes was 2006- 3 years after Steam.
What did Steam do?
Probably mad about GabeCube price.
I can’t really blame em for that. I blame Sam Altman and the army of Clankers that spawned from it
They‘re a de facto monopoly, and they pretty much started the whole drm protected license tied to account thing for video games. They also charge quite some fees for devs.
But they haven’t been in the news for anything specific lately, besides maybe the price of the stream machine, which definitely isn’t their fault.
Steam did basically invent the digital games marketplace, but that’s not a bad thing in my eyes. It brought games to many many more people, and helped make the industry what it is today. Without Steam, PC gaming might still just be an obscure hobby, and there might not be many games there at all. People forget what it was like before Steam, console gaming was extremely more popular than PC gaming. Like the numbers aren’t even close.
PC Games up to 2003 (Steam release date) were like: SimCity, Age of Mythology, Neverwinter Nights, Civ 3, Zoo Tycoon, Baldur’s Gate, Unreal Tournament.
Notice what these games genres and playstyle is like. You had to use a mouse and keyboard because game controllers didn’t even plug into your PC, even Microsoft Xbox used proprietary connectors not USB. My computer didn’t even have an USB port back then. The games had to be basically completely remade for PC, and game dev tooling was bad, so most didn’t bother porting at all. “Console-type games” were rare or extremely delayed PC releases.
This all changed after Steam made PC gaming popular, especially with the Orange Box. I remember thinking Steam was stupid back in the day. Like why do I have to make a dumb account just to use the CD I bought? And the interface was hot garbage. But of course it got better over time.
So is iTunes and they’re still around
Of course Steam charges fees they provide a service! Why is Valve the only game company expected to work for free?
hard not to be a monopoly when you make a decent service and your opponent is (gestures vaguely)
How are they a monopoly when you can buy most of the games on Steam elsewhere if you want? Most people just choose not to.
From what I remember, individual publishers started it, but they used a combo of cd-based drm (which would install rootkits on your pc and sometimes kill your cd drive) and online activation of your key to your account. Steam just made a much less invasive system that lets you access your purchases easily instead of making it risky and hard.
Ive had this argument with people multiple times and it ALWAYS boils down to, Steam is too successful and no one else wants to compete with what steam is actually doing right.
