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this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026
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WTF is this comments section here? I don't give a rat's fuck (if that is a thing), about what Tim Sweeney thinks about Valve, or if Valve is a good company or not.
Charging 30% of revenue for a digital store is clearly nit justifiable and Valve makes insane amount of profits just by having a near monopoly on PC game sales. They don't need that much and it's still just digital feudalism regardless if who does it.
You guys are just stuck in the good guy/ bad guy mentality and honestly, it's kind of embarrassing to get this defensive over a company.
Having a 21 year old Steam account and having bought quite some games makes it hard to stay subjective about this for me. I don't disagree with you but I see Valve as the best monopoly if I could choose. And I don't see Epic performing the same services while tryharding tremendously to be the monoply themselves by giving away free games.
agreed, i feel like Valve is using their monopolization for good then bad, look at Valve's competitors using their monopolization stance for bad.
and i feel like Valve has monopoly cause they do less mistakes then their competitors(compare Steam with like Epic Games and GOG)
am not defending valve here.
They aren't a monopoly, they are simply better than all their competitors in every feature that matters. They aren't anti-competitive, and Epic is free to try making a decent product instead of the pile of garbage they currently have.
ok i get the full picture now
as long as they avoid enshittification that hurts the consumer they may continue to get away with it.
I think it's worth discussing though.
What about game devs though? They are clearly hurt already by the insane fees.
Just think about it. When you buy a game for 10€ on steam, steam get's a flat 3.33€ just for giving you a "buy game" button. The gamedeev get's maybe half of what you payed (Taxes, engine fees etc.).
Don't you think, that there is something kind of fucked up about that?
it's not really hurting the devs. if anything it hurts consumers, but even that's a stretch considering the service both sides are getting.
holy hell can't you see the difference between EGS and steam? one works reliably. the other is all over the place. to me that's worth 30%
That's disingenuous. They do a lot more than that.
Discovery for one. Hosting the game so that downloads are fast and paying for the server and network infrastructure for that. Handling payment processing from all around the world.
That all has a cost. And any developer can just drop the installer on their own website and pay all of these things themselves.
if that was all they got the money for, and the devs were indeed hurt to a significant degree by it, a competitor with a lower fee (say, epic, with their 8%) would have outgrown them years ago, since steam doesn't do exclusivity deals.
That's not how this stuff works. Gamers decide, what stores succeed, not game devs.
Also Valve has policies, that say that you can't offer your game for cheaper elsewhere, which means, that gamers can never notice the difference between a 30% cut or an 8% cut.
okay, so all a storefront has to do is build a better system and take, say, 20%. that would pull in both sellers and buyers. why isn't the other storefronts building competitors? epic has infinite money but all they seem to use it on is bribes. gog offers standalone installers and online community systems, but not both at the same time. itch is held together by duct tape and dreams.
if it’s not justifiable, then the game devs can go elsewere.
That's not how the network effect works. If Deva go elsewhere, nobody buys their game. Most people will never even know of the games outside of steam.
and why would gamers not buy their game elsewhere?
you could try answering, but conceding works just as well
it's an asynchronous medium. the answer could come tomorrow, or next week. not answering within an hour is not "conceding".
well i am waiting
I'm honestly not sure whether it's some huge astroturfing campaing or just people simply sucking off billionaires for no reason, but every time we see ANY criticism towards Valve or Gaben, most of the commenters flock in support of Valve. Underage gambling? Oh, who cares. Lootboxes? Well, that's okay. Taking 30% cut for games? Uh, actually, that's not a lot! Gaben owning a ton of yachts? Well, he's a good guy, so it's fine. And when Valve got forced by Australian court to create a refund policy, I saw a TON of comments saying it was actually wholesome valve who voluntarily decided to create it. But apparently they get a pass because they're smart enough to invest in a backup solution (Linux) in case Microsoft fucks them over.