This take always ignores the immense value of the Steamworks SDK.
Valve’s cut enables free: multiplayer, voice, chat, game notifications, in-game purchases, stats and achievements, rich presence, cloud saves, Steam Input to support any input device you could imagine including for accessibility, error reporting, persistent inventories and tradable items, game keys, leaderboards, matchmaking and lobbies, remote play, remote play together with a remote friend, screenshots, modding / workshop, authentication and ownership validation, anti-cheat and game bans, virtual/augmented reality, special/positional audio, multiple game builds and beta channels, global CDN, community discussion / forums / game guides, sales stats, playtesting, automated builds, developer streams direct to the store page, demos, DRM, automated compatibility tests, Linux support for Windows binaries via Proton, GoldSrc, Source, and Source 2 game engines, game cafe / licensing support, marketing and promotion tools, common runtime environments to target for Linux (and alleviate external dependencies), glmgr to translate DirectX to OpenGL for macOS, and much much much more.
That’s what the Valve cut covers. It’s an insane amount of functionality to put into your game and take a huge weight off your shoulders. It’s what enables one-man indie studios to be able to make a hugely popular multiplayer game that blows up overnight without needing to bare the burden of building all the required services yourself nor the cost of running them.
Epic etc take a smaller cut, but can’t offer anywhere near the amount support in return requiring end-users to have a subscription to cover the cost of the services.
I’m fairly certain every platform offers an SDK with mostly the same things.
A lot of that stuff is just there to stop users from easily migrating in any case. Making mods only available inside a closed ecosystem so it’s easier to charge for them and grab a cut isn’t actually a good thing for instance.
There’s also the fact that valve could easily offer all that and only grab like 3%. 90% of the cut is there to cover Gabens new boat purchase, not for the features.
I’m fairly certain every platform offers an SDK with mostly the same things.
Just objectively, factually incorrect.
Making mods only available inside a closed ecosystem so it’s easier to charge for them and grab a cut isn’t actually a good thing for instance.
So you’re fed up with NexusMods bullshit too eh?
Err… were you talking about something else?
There’s also the fact that valve could easily offer all that and only grab like 3%. 90% of the cut is there to cover Gabens new boat purchase, not for the features.
Fact? You have detailed access to the internal financial records of a privately held company that is generally not obligated to report them?
You could be correct, but you’d need to provide… you know, evidence that that is the case.
I’m not trying to clown on you to be an ass, I’m trying to point out that you just seem to know a bunch of things that are false, that you almost certainly can’t know, that apply equally or moreso to alternatives to Steam/Valve.
And he has actually been using his super yacht to do actual ground breaking research on the biology of extremely deep sea creatures.
Not even joking, that yacht has a deep sea submersible, he bought the shipyard so he could direct the refitting of the super yacht to be able to carry and launch it… they’ve been mapping a trench near Japan, have captured high resolution video and bathymetry… they even appear to have discovered a or maybe a few new species.
This take always ignores the immense value of the Steamworks SDK.
Valve’s cut enables free: multiplayer, voice, chat, game notifications, in-game purchases, stats and achievements, rich presence, cloud saves, Steam Input to support any input device you could imagine including for accessibility, error reporting, persistent inventories and tradable items, game keys, leaderboards, matchmaking and lobbies, remote play, remote play together with a remote friend, screenshots, modding / workshop, authentication and ownership validation, anti-cheat and game bans, virtual/augmented reality, special/positional audio, multiple game builds and beta channels, global CDN, community discussion / forums / game guides, sales stats, playtesting, automated builds, developer streams direct to the store page, demos, DRM, automated compatibility tests, Linux support for Windows binaries via Proton, GoldSrc, Source, and Source 2 game engines, game cafe / licensing support, marketing and promotion tools, common runtime environments to target for Linux (and alleviate external dependencies), glmgr to translate DirectX to OpenGL for macOS, and much much much more.
That’s what the Valve cut covers. It’s an insane amount of functionality to put into your game and take a huge weight off your shoulders. It’s what enables one-man indie studios to be able to make a hugely popular multiplayer game that blows up overnight without needing to bare the burden of building all the required services yourself nor the cost of running them.
Epic etc take a smaller cut, but can’t offer anywhere near the amount support in return requiring end-users to have a subscription to cover the cost of the services.
Thank you, fartsparkles, I didn’t know any of that.
I’m fairly certain every platform offers an SDK with mostly the same things.
A lot of that stuff is just there to stop users from easily migrating in any case. Making mods only available inside a closed ecosystem so it’s easier to charge for them and grab a cut isn’t actually a good thing for instance.
There’s also the fact that valve could easily offer all that and only grab like 3%. 90% of the cut is there to cover Gabens new boat purchase, not for the features.
Just objectively, factually incorrect.
So you’re fed up with NexusMods bullshit too eh?
Err… were you talking about something else?
Fact? You have detailed access to the internal financial records of a privately held company that is generally not obligated to report them?
You could be correct, but you’d need to provide… you know, evidence that that is the case.
I’m not trying to clown on you to be an ass, I’m trying to point out that you just seem to know a bunch of things that are false, that you almost certainly can’t know, that apply equally or moreso to alternatives to Steam/Valve.
Gabe doesn’t need to buy new boats, he owns a company that builds them…
And he has actually been using his super yacht to do actual ground breaking research on the biology of extremely deep sea creatures.
Not even joking, that yacht has a deep sea submersible, he bought the shipyard so he could direct the refitting of the super yacht to be able to carry and launch it… they’ve been mapping a trench near Japan, have captured high resolution video and bathymetry… they even appear to have discovered a or maybe a few new species.
https://www.geeky-gadgets.com/gabe-newell-inkfish-unclassified-ocean-creature/
I mean yeah, having a super yacht is … pretty extra.
But, there are certainly worse ways one could be using it.