this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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Agree with most you say. Just two things
Steam doesn't own the market place, as said, gog and itch.io do their stuff, epic is also there (nobody with a brain likes them but they still have a share) and then a publisher could just make a website for their game, Minecraft for example.
They don't decide either, the algorithms within steam work very clearly and their seasonal sales are from my knollage open sign up for the devs and publishers. The player specific feeds also work according to tags, play a lot of builder games recently? Steam recommends similar games you might like, sometimes mixes between tags you haven't played like that.
In reality it's almost exclusively up to the devs/publishers and the players what gets sold steam does push indie stuff a little more in recent years but I don't see the downside of that.
And secondly.
"Leftist" real left people would be happy that steam is how it is and would bring constructive criticism. The people screaming Steam bad, are the same people that scream everything else when they get cloud from it.
I see what you're getting at, and I agree to an extent. Steam doesn't own the whole marketplace, but they do own their whole marketplace, which is the biggest. So I think the issue for leftists that I'm referring to is the rents aspect -- profiting off of the value of other people's work.
You could argue steam adds some value to accessing games in one place, or that they need to be able to maintain their servers in order to maintain efficient distribution for publishers. But in terms of classical economics Steam doesn't produce a product, I think it's arguable they provide a service, and I think their capital is mostly a product of their ownership of cloud capital. When a company makes money based mostly on the ownership of an asset, be it land or machinery or computers, that's where leftists take umbrage. Not liberals or Democrats necessarily, just leftists.
But that all said I still like Steam and Valve overall.
These "leftists" have a screw loose. Servers are a money sink, especially regarding electricity costs. Its not a property they own its a service they provide that costs a lot, servers have gigantic upkeep compared to real estate or similar.
These "leftists" as said aren't actually left, they are identity political cloud farmers and no life trolls. Actual left people don't hate on reality for the sake of it. Shit costs money and actual left people know and accept that. Shure you could argue that steam needs to pay more taxes around the world and I would even agree, that's a leftist take, but brain rot morons shitting on people doing business isn't left, its dumb.
Sorry dude, you have a right to your opinion -- but most of what you just said isn't true. I understand you think it's ridiculous, but being against rent extraction is a classically leftist political philosophy. You're right that it costs money to operate servers, but that doesn't mean those servers are not the property of Valve. They utilize that property to collect rent from publishers.
That fact is not well liked by leftists. By liberals? Sure, go nuts. But I think you're in the process of finding yourself in the latter camp, at the moment. I'd definitely encourage you to look up leftists vs liberals because I think you may have a misunderstanding.
Regardless, I agree the hate/vitriol can go overboard coming from these types of people. I agree with the political and philosophical underpinnings of their frustration, but we are all born into a rat race and taught that we should do anything to get out of it, so no one actually thinks about whether things like "passive income" are right or wrong. We are taught that's what you gotta shoot for, and I'm not going to blame someone for still believing that.
I came to think of a good analogy!
Steam is the guy that build up a stand on a farmers market and sells his goods and the goods from the people in his village that don't want to brother with the work to drive a hour to the city and set up a stand and stay there all ray long.
The steam guy does a service and keeps a agreed upon portion of the sales for his needs.
Its not rent, rent is what the steam guy has to pay as a stand fee.
Yes, being against RENT is left, but steam is a store not a property that is rented, a real store also needs to pay its employees and profits from selling stuff. Its not rent. Its not passive income either, steam as a store is under constant maintenance and upkeep.
And i know what liberal means, liberal means less government involvement, however liberals opposite is authoritarian, not left. Left doesn't need to be authoritarian even though it tends to become in real life.
I'm a liberal, moderately conservative, leftist, and yes all these terms have separate meanings that don't excluded each other. Liberal = Less state and government involvement, Conservative = doesn't like cultural change (in my case its mostly about being realistic about things, so I could replace moderate conservative with realism, however realism isn't a political terminology) and left is a economic/social orientation that wants to reduce wealth gap between poor and rich.
I have passive income, I'm literally profiting of of basically every war, doesn't mean I want war, I just invented intelligently when it was too quite for some time. There are people that hate me for it, and i actually couldn't care less. I make a dollar doing nothing and they don't, I still go to work every day like a normal person and contribute with my work, Im also politically active, all the people that are loud and cry on the internet have something in common, their RL sucks and nobody cares about them.
Again, Rent and a service are different things. And people that don't understand that are... Well, mistaken.
The cut that Steam takes from publishers is a rent. It is the equivalent of buying property and allowing an individual or family to live in it, for a cut of their wages. The landowner and Steam do not produce anything -- they are a place, physical or virtual, for people to operate out of, at a cost. Steam is not a store that sells their own products, they are a platform that sells other people's stuff and they take a cut. If I own a big plot of land, and let a bunch of businesses operate on that land as long as they pay me monthly, I'm taking a rent. It's the same thing.
I feel like I don't even need to comment on your weird bragging about profiting off of war, but I'll just say this -- whether you like it or not, whether you are personally interested or not, you are financially interested in the suffering and death of other people. If you think that's morally okay, good for you. Personally, I think that's pretty monstrous. I'd wish you a good day, but after learning that, I hope you get some help.
Steam is a service provider, they don't rent out shit. They do the marketing, distribution and payment processing. They are not rent. Idk what definition of rent is stuck in your head but I think that definition needs some reinstall, apparently its corrupted and fucked up the definition of Services.
A rent is something you get for giving someone property for money and still own it.
A service is (for example) when you distribute a product for someone and market it to people that might want it.
Big difference, and exactly what I don't like about the nowadays leftists, speak a lot without knowing theory and definitions. Make the movement look like anti realistic morons that fight ghosts.
Oh and yes I'm absolutely financially interested in the suffering of others... Where is the diviece from that you made this comment with?
In neoclassical economics, economic rent is any payment (in the context of a market transaction) to the owner of a factor of production or resource, supply of which is fixed.[1] In classical economics, economic rent is any payment made (including imputed value) or benefit received for non-produced inputs such as location (land) and for assets formed by creating official privilege over natural opportunities (e.g., patents). In the moral economy of neoclassical economics, economic rent includes income gained by labor or state beneficiaries of other "contrived" (assuming the market is natural, and does not come about by state and social contrivance) exclusivity, such as labor guilds and unofficial corruption.
Edit: In case anyone needs this broken down: Online videogame marketplaces are a resource. The supply of online videogame marketplaces is fixed. Valve is the owner of the largest online videogame marketplace, Steam. The publisher of a videogame pays Valve to list their game on Steam. A payment to the owner of a resource, the supply of which is fixed, is economic rent. Imagine how low you gotta be to downvote Wikipedia.
Bro we all are not responsible for your lack of reading compensation.
Lmao you're the one misunderstanding rents here, you don't need to try to spin it around on me. If you think you're right, go ahead and tell me where I'm wrong based on that definition.
I'll bother and explain why you're being stupid and not understanding the thing you yourself posted.
From the definition of factors of production on Wikipedia:
Simply put, rent is paid at INPUT, for things like land, in order to produce OUTPUT, which are things like goods and services. What Steam provides is a SERVICE, an output. You don't pay economic rent on outputs, you pay economic rent for inputs. Steam's service being: marketing and distribution of games in place of others, plus integration with analytics and a bunch of other features.
The comparison you're making is the same as saying you're paying rent to your team of marketers and accountants...
You could make a point and argue that artists are paying economic rent for Adobe suite, and that game developers are paying rent for unreal engine fees. Without those things, which are inputs for production, neither artists or game developers would have a product at all. Steam only comes into play once the final product is already done. You don't need Steam before the game is a product at all, which corroborates that Steam is not economic rent, for it's not a payment made for an Input in order to produce an output.
Also, in what way is the marketplace for games fixed? It's not a finite resource. There's no finite number of how many stores there are out there, anyone can go and make their own client and store. There are games and developers that up to this day make their own standalone launchers.
Steams offers a service, the best one in the block. You don't want it? You're entirely free to go and figure it out yourself. No monopolistic behavior in sight.
Thank you. I don't think I'm being stupid, but you have made me think about it a lot, so I appreciate that. You are right that the online marketplace is not a fixed resource, that's not technically right at all. I was thinking for a long time, "did I misunderstand that?" I certainly didn't think about the input vs output aspect of production. This led me to do some more reading and here's what I've got.
I do still think Steam is factor of production in that it is a capital good, like a business complex. The problem with your outputs argument, I think, is outputs are the quantity and quality of goods or services produced in a given time period. Well, for the devs, there really isn't an output in the traditional productive sense. They didn't produce a bunch of cars, creating X amount of value through their labor. The value is only created when copies are sold, and in that sense Steam,, and other game stores are inputs in the value created by a game dev. I think one could even make an argument that publishers provide a service and Steam is involved in that as a factor of production, but I think that speaks more to the strangeness of the software market in general. Anyways thanks for actually taking the time, I got to learn some cool stuff and feel a little humbled in the process so that is good
I think you need to carefully read the quotes you just posted because they disagree with what you're saying.
I don't think they do, but if so I'm happily ready to admit I'm wrong. How do you find my interpretation wrong?
A market is not a resource. It's not coal in the ground that Valve came along, dug up, and provides to people for a fee. They built the whole market, it's theirs, and they built it when there were no guidelines or examples to follow either. If you want your game on there it requires a mutual benefit because if only the game makers benefit then there won't be a market anymore due to no doubt astronomical costs of servers, development, moderation, etc. If there were no charges there'd be no market and publishers would have to sell their games on the remaining markets which, at the time of Steam's creation, was nowhere and even now is multiple inferior places.
Appreciate you actually inputting your view.You're right in that I was mixing colloquial terms with technical ones, and thus my statements were wrong, or at least misleading. A market is not a resource, but a marketplace can be a factor of production, the owner of which is paid a rent.
When I referred to the online marketplace of Steam as a resource, I was comparing Steam to a marketplace, like a business complex, which is a capital good and a factor of production for businesses operating out of the business complex. Those businesses operating out of the complex pay a rent to the owner of that business complex. We don't see traditional production in the games industry, wherein if you as a business have produced X amount of output, you have also created X amount of income. With cars or grain or tangible products, when you turn inputs into outputs, you own the value of the outputs. That's not true for a videogame, whose value comes from the sale. In that sense, Steam is a factor of production in that value-creation process -- it is an input -- and as such, game devs pay a rent to Valve for that.
I'm not saying there are no operational costs for Steam. All I'm saying is they charge a form of rent to the creators of videogames. That rent may encapsulate other benefits, like being put on the front of the Steam store (marketing), analytics, tools for devs to interact with customers, etc. But it is still rent, since it comes in my opinion before the value is created.
I mean, there is a reason the individual in the article, and Valve's own former resident economist Yanis Varoufakis refer to Steam as a digital fiefdom. It is a digital equivalent of peasants paying a rent to work on an owner's land. In this case, Steam as a factor of production is not land, but capital.
Then again, I'm not an economist. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.