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$843 million lawsuit against Valve already has its own website: "The Steam Claim" accuses the biggest store in PC gaming of "overcharging" players (www.gamesradar.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Dadifer@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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[+] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -41 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Oh fuck off with the good guy thing, it's a private company trying to make money, there's no good people when profit is the goal, there's no good billionaires and Gaben is one.

[-] RandomException@sopuli.xyz 44 points 5 months ago

Let's replace "good guy" with "one of the few actually good services in gaming", would you still disagree?

[+] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -34 points 5 months ago

No, they're still overcharging us if they make enough profit that the boss could become a billionaire while the employees make more than the industry average.

I don't know what goes though people's mind to get them to defend for profit private companies, they're not there to be your friend, they're there to get you to take the money you earned and spend it while gaslighting you into believing that you get your money's worth.

[-] RandomException@sopuli.xyz 39 points 5 months ago

I mean I get what you're saying, but Valve is actually one of the few large tech companies that are providing an actually good service (Steam). People should be allowed to make money by providing value to their customers because that's the motivation of building such services and products in the first place.

The hatred should go towards the companies abusing their position and violating customers and then just cashing excessive amounts of money for a crap product/service that has no real competition. If Valve had started making their competitors lives harder, by generating lots of nonsense lawsuits for example, they should absolutely be blasted down to hell by everybody. As long as they are just earning lots of bucks by providing a service people want to use without restricting using other services and playing with healthy rules otherwise as well, it's all fine and everyone working on the great service SHOULD earn more than average.

[+] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -29 points 5 months ago

Why do you think they're able to make that much money? Not by using their position as the store where the majority of people buys games from?

There's no good guys when profits are the goal. They might provide good service, the only reason they're doing so is because they see potential profit.

There's a major difference between making more than average and being a billionaire. You know what's the difference between making 500k a year and making a billion a year? About a billion.

[-] Nilz@sopuli.xyz 26 points 5 months ago

Steam didn't get to where it is because of market abuse but because of providing a good service, or at least a service that was better than anything else at the time by far. Valve are reaping the rewards now, but are also still providing an arguably better service than it's competitors. It's a bit odd that you want to punish a company just for being successful.

Valve isn't perfect and they're profit driven, but they're privately owned and the goals isn't maximizing profit, which isn't something you can say about most of their competitors.

[+] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -15 points 5 months ago

I'm all in for punishing all billionaires and you're very naive if you think their goal isn't too maximize profit. If it wasn't there's no reason why they would accumulate enough surplus for Gaben to own six yacht, they would instead reduce their 30% cut and pass the savings to everyone and we would have cheaper games.

[-] Nilz@sopuli.xyz 14 points 5 months ago

Yes, the profit is excessive, but it's because they have a good product where the competition has not really been putting in much effort and letting Valve get away with it for so long.

Valve's goal isn't to maximize profit because they don't have shareholders that demand it. If they really wanted to maximize profits then there's a whole lot more to squeeze out of Steam and the games they made. And yes I agree Valve can lower their cut and still make bucket loads of money, but I highly doubt that if they did reduce their cut it would actually lead to cheaper games except for a maybe a few. Because just like Valve, the devs and publishers are profit driven and why would they turn down a potentially bigger profit?

[-] stardust@lemmy.ca 15 points 5 months ago

I guess steam could have avoided making billions if they had never improved their launcher since Half Life 2. Not improving products and keeping it as crappy as possible so people stay away from it is one business strategy of ensuring people are deterred from using it.

Shame they kept improving and made something people want to use.

[-] RandomException@sopuli.xyz 13 points 5 months ago

I mean Valve has a game store called Steam, but what's the actual position they have? There are competing game stores - both digital and physical - and Valve isn't trying to run their competition out of business with shady business tactics? Just by being good at something and therefore running a successful business shouldn't be illegal or hated by itself - it's the way the business is being conducted that actually matters. Gaben is free to have yacht or two as long as his company is being run with a healthy mindset, their employees are being paid a fair salary (which I guess is another discussion in it's own who decides that) and they are not screwing their competition nor their customers up.

[-] LainTrain@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 5 months ago

Okay, but is Gaben more deserving of this than white replacement supporter, anti-trans fearmonger and apartheid diamond mine baby Musk? Than makes people piss in bottles in warehouses Bezos?

Is what steam does more predatory than basically every major music publisher (the big three), than MPAA? Than OpenAI? Than Meta? Than the streaming services? Than Nintendo? Than Apple? Than Google? Uber?... And so on and so on.

So why pick on Valve? I'd go after fucking taco bell before Valve. Make it make sense.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

You assume that I'm not pissed at all these corporations and all billionaires and multimillionaires??

This discussion is about Valve, I'll talk about the others when we have a discussion about them.

[-] uranibaba@lemmy.world 15 points 5 months ago

Isn't that the discussion though? Take the time and money spent on this to fight someone more deserving.

[-] Carighan@lemmy.world 6 points 5 months ago

Even if you believe that all privately owned capital is intrinsicly evil, you still ought to go after companies from most to least problematic within a specific category, no?

That is, for digital storefronts, start with the likes of Epic or in a broader digital gaming space in general, Microsoft or Ubisoft. Go after Steam when you've cleaned up the rapists, backroom dealers and collusionists.

[-] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works -2 points 5 months ago

You think humanity is unable to take care of two things at once?

You think Epic is worse when Valve has 70% of the market so they're in a position to ruin everything in a second? You realize that the PC gaming market is dependent on the goodwill of a single guy?

[-] Regrettable_incident@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

Shame you're getting so downvoted. People are so determined to believe in good philanthropic billionaires that they forget the system that allows the accumulation of such ridiculous wealth doesn't work for nice philanthropic people. It was like this with Elon musk, before he sacked his publicists (my guess) before the cave diver thing. People were saying he was going so save humanity or some shit. All he's done is fuck up twitter. Same with this guy. I use steam and I think my steam deck is a cool little machine but that doesn't inspire me to tongue the sweaty arsehole of an obscenely rich guy.