this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
20 points (79.4% liked)
Asklemmy
53670 readers
351 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
I love steam and valves hardware products, but the thing is, I'm not the primary customer in their business model. Steams product is digital shelf space in one of the most popular digital arcades, access to which they charge their real primary customers: independent game devs and publishers.
Whatever their activities are outside that, even the much appreciated proton and contribution to Linux gaming, is in the context of capturing more gamers on their platform, making their real product an irresistible choice for their real customers to release their game on, despite the steep per-purchase cut Valve takes.
That's not an entirely...erhm...nice business model imo. It's remarkabley like Amazon, but at least Valve didn't put a bunch of local bookstores out of business becoming the juggernaut they are.