Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It's easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
This.
Valve doesn't release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It's great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren't trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that's the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
Invented the loot box y'all love so much. Tried to invent paid mods. Valve is still a Corpo and corpos gonna corpos
Honestly I'll defend TF2 loot boxes til I die. There are valid complaints as far as casual gamers go but as someone who played the game for thousands of hours the cosmetic system added a lot of longevity to the game. It was a fun ecosystem to engage with and compared to modern games where you spend $15-20 on a single cosmetic item it was an absolute bargain. If you got tired of an item you could trade it for something else too.
Idk maybe I just got indoctrinated but I have so many positive memories of that game and interacting with the cosmetic system. These days every game you play is shoving their store front in your face. Every cosmetic is $20 and if you don't buy it now it's lost forever. Don't want to spend money? Ok here's an "event" where you need to play the game 2 hours a day for a week to unlock some meh items and if you don't then fuck you those items are gone forever.
Sorry I'm ranting.
Agreed. It sounds weird saying, but I feel that Valve did these things right or at least fixed them quickly thereafter. I've never felt any sense of pay-to-win or being left out playing TF2. Quite the opposite. I'd get the new items quick enough, and if there was anything in there articular I'd want then there was a robust market willing to make it happen for cheaper than I thought. And "cheaper" referring to in-game items.
Playing a touch of devils advocate here but, how are patreon only mods any different than what valve was trying to do? It seems if mod makers wanna get paid for their work they should be able to monetize it in via any avenue that fits their fans abilities.
Uh, paid mods were around in the 90s. Probably earlier but that's what I can testify to.
DOTA 2, Counter-Strike 2, TF 2 are all maintained and get updates or total overhauls.
What’s their opinion on NFTs now?
That was slightly facetious. I just spent the entirety of the NFT bubble reminding people that tradeable tokens attached to JPGs is something that Valve invented to do with their dumb trading cards when they introduced those and we all saw in real time that all of them trend to zero value immediately.
I kept asking cryptobros to explain why their new tokenized JPGs were gonna behave any differently and it turns out there really wasn't a particularly good answer to that one.
For the record, those get updated and get total overhauls because they are driven by cosmetics MTX and/or battlepasses, both of which Valve straight-up invented in their modern form.
So I guess yeah, they either make cutting edge innovations in monetization design for games-as-service things or they put out ads for Steam. I think the larger point holds.
I don’t understand your point. It’s bad that they give out free games and constantly update them because they make money on cosmetics? That’s somehow worse or as bad as companies that make the same game every year, charge an arm and a leg for it and then have micro transactions on top of it? Or they’re bad because they innovate and then other companies take their ideas and make them shittier? What’s your point, exactly?
That 20-30% tax also gives developers access to Valve's massive infrastructure (content delivery ain't easy or cheap) and Steam's audience, and that's something that can't be replicated with exclusivity deals.
Oh, and they KNOW that, too. Valve's entire business model is making other people work for them. Their third party relations talks are less keynotes and more thinly veiled, very pleasant shakedowns.
They can shake down corpos as much as they want, I don't care. Sony and Microsoft have been shaking down corporations for 30% for decades, it's fine by me if they get shook down.
Not corpos, though. Corpos have deals with all platforms, they're not concerned about positioning on Steam. Valve will go to them, and if they don't their marketing budget will carry them.
No, it's the indies who end up bending over backwards to fit Valve's marching orders. It was contentious for a while, during the awkward period when Steam was figuring out how to crowdsource store placement. Now that they've successfully done so they invest very little and get to tell indies what to spend their budgets on, which they do often and explicitly.
If I had to compare the relationship, it's closest to Youtube and content creators. Have you noticed how every Youtube video now has a little intro with highlights from later on? Like that.
I feel like your first statement is a massive stretch.
Through Steam, GoG, and Epic the Indies can avoid the far more expensive 30-70% cut publishers take.
I'm not going to pretend content creators on Youtube don't massively benefit from youtube. There's a reason kids now-a-days want to be youtubers not astronauts or something. Does it suck to be beholden to corporate overloards? Yeah. But if you work at EA, Google, Valve, CDPR, Epic, Apple... you're shook down for your wages all the same.
Exactly, they're offering useful services for monetary compensation. How dare they?
I think you're missing the principle. They could still charge for it, they simply won't. Think of it this way, if it was EA in that situation would they give it away for free? Somehow I doubt it because EA does things for profit. This is a potential avenue for profit and which means not asking money for it would go against the goal of EA.
Doesn't change that it's a lot lol they're also basically "the industry"
Well it's easier even to want more money, cooperations giving something away for free that could have earned them money is not that common.
Is it though? The only reason other platforms take 15% is to try to break through valve's market. Once they make it (like Epic) you better trust they're going to take as much as they can.
Plus, it's apparently not easy to be generous, Apple and Google make far more money, where are they being generous? Gaben is a gem
(Google and apple also take 30% of transactions on their store). You get much more for you 30% to valve than 30 or 15% anywhere else.
Epic, Bethesda, Blizzard and others are not paying for those 30% to Valve. So what's their excuse? Bethesda resold Skyrim enough times to shame anyone. Blizzard remade Warcraft3 and we all know how that went. I for one am happy Valve did this. They gave an old game a new life for at least a short time by giving it for free to keep, added new multiplayer maps and added some servers. Let people have some fun at anniversary instead of being greedy.
If only Valve could learn to count to three they'd be the perfect game studio.
Tony Hawk, anyone? Remaster old game, then make it require a server ping to guarantee it won't work in the future when they decide to stop supporting it.
Adding a couple of maps to a 25 year old game isn't a remaster. Anyone here play Black Mesa? Now THAT's how you do a remaster.
That's a remake, not a remaster.
Yes, I suppose you are correct.
Well, not every company is shitting money like Valve.
They can afford to do this because of their technical monopoly.
Blizzard, Bethesda, Epic, EA and many others have more money than Valve. So what's their excuse for not giving free games? Hell EA earned on micro-transactions for FIFA more than GDP of some countries.
Activision Blizzard annual net income for 2022 was $1.513B
In fiscal year 2022, EA posted GAAP net revenue of approximately $7 billion
Epic Games revenue is $5.76 billion according to figures reported in 2021
Valve generated around USD13 billion in total revenue in 2022
Also,
So what’s their excuse for not giving free games?
Did you really ask this after including Epic?
But these comparisons are ridiculous anyway. Neither of these companies are your friends, and trying to understand their behavior in terms of anything other than profit-seeking is only going to lead to you feeling betrayed. Gamers' obsession with defending Steam is so ridiculous that no one ever disputes the idea that Apple and Google are being abusive with their store policies, but calling out Steam for doing the exact same always brings dozens of people out of the woods who think it's a controversial claim.
You're aware that Revenue and Net Revenue is not the same right?
Epic did give free games, though not their own. But in general you are right, none of these are our friends and they are there to do business. The question is from which service do we the users benefit the most and that's why I think including Epic was very important, even though contradictory in context of giving games. None of them tried to compete with Valve by providing a quality of service, instead they forced exclusives, tried public shaming, etc. I'd happily switch to Epic if they provide a better service but they won't and we know for sure the moment they gain traction that percentage they laughed at Valve they are going to start taking as well.
I mean sure, but this is a great showcase of Source Engine 2 which is a product they will be selling
Just few weeks ago everyone complaining about CS2
Since CS2 came out a ton of new people have started playing and a bunch of old school players came back. I am one of them and easily spent $60 on buying skins. Valve understands how to get people to love their games and spend money on something that is free.
Dead space remake was great, wasnt it?
It was. And so was RE4.
But on the other hand, they're already remastering The Last of Us 2 for some reason.
and at least they didn't remove the old one, even though that old one is $25 and gets put on sale less and less.
They can do that because you pay them when you buy other game remasters.
yes but so do other huge game companies on cosmetics, in game items, other spin offs. I agree it's not as easy but right now even doing this is unusual for most companies.
What game?
Best remake was AoE2 imo, the price is completely justified.
I know the documentary and the fact that game is free for now, but I am completelly out of the loop of what changed.
Did Valve upgraded graphics? Added new maps? I mean - for single player of original game? Someone please advise :)
they added a short bonus campaing for single player that was formaly on a demo disc that got lost to times. they added 4 new multiplayer maps they fixed graphic bugs and added widescreen support they dramatically improved controler support
so nothing game changing but nice nontheless
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