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.
And so will all the others, maybe except Ubisoft.
I think this is about losing fans/customers, not necessarily losing money. Which is still a stretch with Steam. The Machine isn’t the best product, but it’s not harming anyone.
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.
Why do you think it’s more niche? It’s a pc, priced reasonably for a pc this size at this time, while the deck is a handheld. Are you saying that PCs are more niche than handhelds nowadays?
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.
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.
Yeah valve wins regardless of who builds the machines, arguably they win more if someone else builds the machine but regardless they win.
Nintendo is going to make money no matter what
Yup, especially once they start putting out their heavy hitter franchises.
To me, its the price fixing allegations (e.g. dictating the prices of other stores).
Is that other joycon up it’s butt?
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.
Valve invented the “we can violate copyright laws because it’s on a computer”
That stunt was invented by the music industry first. It was a hit with publishers. Valve helped the publishers do the same shit with video games and it’s still awful, but they weren’t the inventors.
It boils down to the same issues of predatory copyright laws that have been perverted into a twisted mockery of the good intentions they were initially supposed to serve.
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.
Books aren’t games, either, but you brought them up. Why are different forms of media valid when they support your argument but not when they don’t?
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.
I do not see what your link has to do with your comment. iTunes did sell games, your comment was factually incorrect.
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.
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?
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?
Looking at your comments intellectual quality you also never sold a house. That doesn’t mean it would be ok to convert everyone’s property into leasing.
I’m genuinely sad for you.
not only did you waste your time reading through my comment history, you also thought that your weak attempt at wit would somehow inflame or irritate.
it’s clear you didn’t learn anything about me because if you had, you would have known that I need to care about your opinion for it to matter to me.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
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?
What did Steam do?
Alright, fuckit, I’ll be Devils Advocate.
Bellular News reported on some emails that came up in Discovery from a recent lawsuit. Many people have heard the story “They just don’t want devs to sell Steam keys below their price.” This was not that. There is E-mail evidence of Valve preventing Ubisoft from selling a version of Siege for $10 on their store, while the Steam price was $15; and there may be similar examples coming up.
This is more important for indies than a shitty AAA store, but basically a dev should be allowed to run their own store and skip Valve’s fees if they are committed. Minecraft did it, for instance. Part of the issue is, while I’m pretty sure people can come up with counterexamples, Valve doesn’t seem perfectly consistent with any one policy.
I still love Steam and I consider most “monopoly” claims to be Epic-paid astroturf. But I won’t default to defending them on all fronts when they also tacitly allow child gambling.
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
Sam Altman’s AI Slop did it, not the godly Gabe.
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.
A digital marketplace for games existing is indeed in no way a bad thing.
Neither is Steam, per se. I use it myself happily and valve has done a lot of good for gamers, even more so as someone gaming on Linux.However: That doesn‘t make it better that they’re still at least partially responsible for online drm (although ea, ubisoft and microsoft aren’t exactly innocent either).
Platforms like gog, which sells games without drm, get way more goodwill from me though.
Also, I find it a bit naïve to think that steam singlehandedly made PC gaming popular. There were a lot of AAA games, even well into the 2010s, that used either disc based drm, no drm or – starting around 2010 – other, non steam online drm.
I didn‘t have the need for a steam account with more than goat simulator until like 2016 or 17 and I did play a lot of games.What I do give steam credit for is making indie games popular. Prior, those just weren’t really a big thing. Thanks to steam, you didn’t need a big publisher.
Also: I do have gripes with the gaming community hating drm and other game launchers (and especially here on Lemmy being anti capitalist and anti billionaire) but then pulling out the pitchforks of anyone points out that Valve maybe isn’t perfect either…
Of course Steam charges fees they provide a service! Why is Valve the only game company expected to work for free?
No one is expecting them to work for free. But they’re expected to not use their market dominance to collect significantly higher fees than the competition, while pressuring game devs to not make their games cheaper on platforms with lower fees, which is something they’re currently being sued over.
The only distributor that has lower fees is Epic.
If you believe, in a Steamless world, Epic wouldn’t raise their fee to 30%, I have a Half-Life 3 to sell you.
So is iTunes and they’re still around
People still use iTunes?
hard not to be a monopoly when you make a decent service and your opponent is (gestures vaguely)
Yeah, somehow I feel like this claimant never saw the original variation of this meme.
I‘m not saying there isn’t a reason they’re in the position they’re in. They provide a good service and – so far – haven’t made a notable faux-pas. But I‘d still rather buy a game on gog than on steam.
and you can, is steam was a monopoly you wouldn’t be able to
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.
That’s why I said „de facto“. They have the power of a monopoly. They can do whatever the fuck they want, like charging developers more fees than almost any other PC games storefront. Because what can the devs do? Not use steam? Who’s gonna play the games then?
And valve is currently getting sued for abusing their market dominance for anti competitive behavior, pressuring devs into not offering their games for cheaper on other platforms, which do offer a lower cut, for example.
So yea, they aren’t a monopoly. But, at least within the PC games market, they do act monopolistic.
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.
But doesn’t gog especially show, that you can do completely without drm and not have any issues?
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.
Steam is doing a lot right, don’t get me wrong.
But, there are enough other platforms who are trying to get a foothold and valve doesn’t exactly make it easy for them.
They’re currently being sued for anti competitive behaviour by pressuring devs into not offering cheaper prices on platforms with lower fees.
