this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2024
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Valve could still operate as it currently does, including having sufficient profits to account for R&D and long-term costs, at a lower cut of platform sales (as another commenter mentioned, Gabe Newell's billion dollar yacht collection is demonstrative of the platform's profitability, especially when one considers how much it costs to maintain ships). Products such as the Steam Deck make money for Valve too, as Steam Deck users (myself included) statistically buy more games on Steam as a result. I don't support profiteering efforts by game publishers either, such as the Factorio price increase attributed to inflation, $70 game releases attributed to inflation when digital releases have reduced their costs, and micro transactions in general. In any case, however, given that cost increases are always the consumer's responsibility, cost decreases should not simply be a means for companies to bolster their profit margins.
I am fine with someone who set up and runs a successful business that is in no way predatory and is a benefit to employees, consumers, and the companies that use their product to have an excess amount of money. They are doing capitalism the right way and actually earned the benefits.
Games going up to $70 are not becsuse of the 30% cut. They wouldn't go down if that percentage dropped either. I play multiple games that were always sold at $40 or less as full games and they have been massively profitable.
So it's not predatory to let games become more expensive while also reducing running costs? Because if you run the numbers it means they're just increasing their profits by charging the same % and forcing devs and publishers to increase the cost of games to compensate for development costs increasing. The only winner here is Valve, maybe you should start defending your own interests instead of defending the interests of a billionaire.
Steam is not making the games more expensive, the game studios/distributors are increasing the prices so they can make more profit.
It you need to make 30$/copy to cover costs in 2015 and Steam is taking 30% you need to sell for 43$/copy, Valve is making 13$/copy.
Development costs go up by 20% over the next 10 years, you now need to make 36$/copy to cover costs, with Steam's cut you now need to sell for 51.50$, Valve is making 15.50$/copy.
If it was 15% instead? 35.50$ and 42.50$ would be the prices.
During that time operating costs for Valve has actually gone down though, so they're actually increasing their profits two ways!
But hey, let's defend their business practices so Gaben can buy a seventh yacht!