• chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    It’s more nuanced than that.

    Choosing not to release on Steam isn’t easy because it’s not a balanced market, at all. It’s trying to release a Disney-style animated movie, but only in adult theatres.

    Steam is the 900-pound gorilla. Yes, they have a good interface, but they take a ludicrous portion of game revenue. Epic has a shit interface, but they take well-under half of the fees Steammdoes for the same game.

    Gabe is not your friend. He’s a billionaire yacht-collector. Half-Life 2 wasn’t designed to be a great game. It was designed to launch a digital storefront that allowed Valve to rake in 30% of all revenue for games sold on the platform - which is often a larger percentage than is paid to the actual people making the games.

    Why are we defending a system where the fucking checkout system is valued as much as the people making the games?

    • lofuw@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      It’s more nuanced than that.

      It’s not, though. If people actually want to play your game, then Steam isn’t going to get in the way.

      Look at MMOs. Look at fortnite. Minecraft. Roblox. Those games can succeed without Steam because people want to play them.

      If a game can’t succeed without being on Steam, then Steam isn’t the problem.

      Why are we defending a system where the fucking checkout system is valued as much as the people making the games?

      You’re asking the wrong question here. You should be asking why you’re defending the developers who just want to make more money and don’t care about how it may impact the experience for their customers.

      Gabe isn’t your friend and neither are the whiny/greedy developers.