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this post was submitted on 26 Apr 2024
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Steam
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I was just curious considering the praise angle of the story. Everyone complains about Apple’s 30% cut from their store, but for some reason it’s ok or “praised as a democratic platform” when everyone else does it.
Difference: what does apple do? It has a store that they check the content on. And provide the small app infrastructure. Also they ask for money for you to upload anything.
What does steam do? They provide a huge infrastructure for games with hundreds of gigabytes and then a workshop for mods and multiplayer and controller support and remote play and a general good service.
The epic games launcher sucks and they don't even provide half of that and they ask for 25% I think because otherwise developers wouldn't even consider their shop.
Steam has also done a ton of work making games run on linux via Proton. Not to forget the Steamdeck too.
Epic's at a 25% cut now? I thought they still were at 12.
I remember Sweeney trying to convince users games would be cheaper because of the lower cut. Of course every publisher just pockets the difference and gamers are stuck with the garbage launcher.
Not to mention them paying for exclusivity to indie studios, only for the indie studio to make way more money once the game released on steam, despite the cut.
I only recently realized how amazing the controller customization is on the deck. Being able to edit your entire control scheme completely on the fly without even closing the game is a real gamechanger.
I remember fighting with third party tools just to get simple shit like macros or mouse control mapped to a controller. Now I can set up complex doodads like button chords and mode shifts, it feels like the future.
~~I don't know what democratic platform means since the two closest democracies to me geographically are total bullshit.~~ Edit: after reading the article I get it. Its visibility of your game that they are praising. They detail how they have to really work to get the game to show up anywhere but on steam if its good, people will buy it and it will show up more.
Maybe if apple allowed 3rd party stores, yet was objectively better than the others then things would be different in regards to them.
Steam has had so many competitors over the years and the only one with any merit is gog. The rest have been so garbage that even if they had better rates, comparatively few people would use them. With the rise of discord pretty much nobody uses steam's socials any more apart from as an easy way to join a friend's game. Before that none of the others compared there either.
And nobody is forced to use steam in the first place. Most games on steam are available on other platforms, although I can't think of a good reason to use any other than got.
The remaining downside to steam is that you are still only buying into a license agreement and not owning anything, though even pulled games are accessible if you bought them. I would know, I have like 2-5 iiirc. For now anyway. Dog only knows if valve's fucked or faulty future mitigation plans to prevent fucking over friendly customers will actually pan out if gabe dies.
I have like 400 free to own games on my EGS account and the only thing I've ever played on it is Fortnite occasionally. I'll just buy a game on Steam if I want it, rather than checking if I already own in in EGS--it's that bad.
Hah yeah mine is probably half as many but I've only played three, two of them recently. Its tolerable with heroic launcher, but in the case of outer worlds and guardians of the galaxy EGS version on steam deck I still wasted about a day tinkering each to get cut scenes to work on one and something else on the other but Christmas or whenever it was that they were free was like 100 years ago now and I forgot the specifics.
The app store is the only way to get apps on ios, whereas steam is not the only way to get games on PC.
It's the biggest one, yes, but no one HAS to use it. It does hold some power by virtue of having the majority of the gaming population as its user base, but no other storefront has even tried. The only one that has any value over steam is GOG, the rest are objectively worse.
Well you aren't forced to publish your PC or Steam Deck game on Steam for one.
Apple and Google's 30% not only hits the base price, but every single transaction that happens inside apps as well. Imagine a toll bridge in front of your nearest supermarket where the people working the toll booth inspect every bag of grocery you bought and then charged you toll based on what you bought there.
Apps arent entirely like video games. If you wanted to open a non-subscription based music store or book store or whatever, you'd find it economically impossible to pay the publishers their cut, apple their cut, your server host their cut, and have anything left over for yourself without charging your customers their arms and legs. This is why all those kinds of apps are subscription based. You can cleverly batch and bundle stuff in a monthly subscription fee which gives you room to dance around google and apples high fees and have enough money to keep your lights on.
Because Epic is warming up it's litigation rout with Valve against Apple. It's not going too well.