this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
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There is regular, for-profit business, and then there is EA/Microsoft/Amazon level for-profit.
The complete disregard for their employees, massive firings for "AI powered optimization", the use and abuse of dark pattern methods(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern), are some of the things that I haven't yet head of from Steam.
Sure, ultimately Steam is a capitalist business, but it could be much, much worse.
Their entire platform is built on goodwill. After he passes, someone is gonna cash that goodwill in for profit. Seems to be happening to Nintendo. Disney has been doing it for many years.
That is the McKinsey formula, abuse consumer trust to have them over pay expecting the previous quality of goods while you slowly slash all your costs and bottom out the quality of your product. The lag time between your actions to destroy the product and the consumer realizing that your doing is all profit.
I mean, there is your regular serial killers, and then there's ___ Insert most dangerous killers here____ . Sure ultimately I've killed a few people, but it could be so much worse. See what I mean? Steam is an ok platform but in the end they only cares about profit. But since 90% of the gamers get wet when you mentioned the company name, there's no need for them to change anything right now. Why in the world is it considered normal that a business that basically only provide server space gets to take 30% of sale price, while the devs who spent thousand of hours on a project only get 70%. Maybe it made sens 15 years ago, but not in 2024.