masterspace

Great! So in the context of the conversation, you then agree with me that Valve is an even worse company, that's definitely not worthy of praise since they can afford to make all their employees multimillionaires but instead keep it for themselves.

Glad we can agree on the entire fucking point of this thread: that Valve is a greedy company not worth praising or dick riding.

Wolfire estimated that Valve had roughly 360 employees (a number likely sourced from Valve itself in 2016) and that per-employee profit was around $15 million per year.

Even if that $15 million number isn’t exactly right, Valve, in its public employee handbook, says that “our profitability per employee is higher than that of Google or Amazon or Microsoft.” A document from the Wolfire lawsuit revealed Valve employees discussing just how much higher — though the specific number for Valve employees is redacted.

https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/13/24197477/valve-employs-few-hundred-people-payroll-redacted

If you don't want to be insulted than don't blindly dick ride a corporation.

At the end of the day, what I’m trying to explain and that you keep stubbornly refusing to hear, is that: way the way industry is currently, someone other than the developer is going to get that hypothetical 15% when it comes to 99% of total sales revenue.

BECAUSE THATS HORESHIT.

Jesus fucking christ. It's literally objectively false. You are just saying that to blindly defend Valve because gamers dick ride Valve like dumbass fucking lemmings.

A game developer has a revenue sharing deal with their publisher meaning that the publisher will get X% of whatever their revenue is. If their revenue is lower because Valve takes more, then they both get less. If their revenue is higher because Valve takes less, then they both get more.

It's not fucking rocket science. Stop making up hand wavy bullshit like the money will just dissappear into the ether so let's keep making Gabe Newel richer.

Are you saying that creating literally all the code that make those usability improvements possible is not worthy of praise?

Do you only praise the window washer and not the architect or construction worker who built the building? Are you really sitting here trying to praise surface level sheen over the actual infratstructure and bones?

UX is important but so is the literal foundation it's built on. If Valve deserves praise as a saint for their Linux contributions, then so does Microsoft and IBM. If that makes you uncomfortable, the lesson to learn is to stop dick riding Valve, not that you need to praise IBM.

You're just not getting it. That hypothetical money isn't going anywhere but the pockets of the people a level above the actual developers.

Literally just objectively false.

If I self publish my game on steam, I get every dollar from it except for the ones that valve takes.

Are the developers a studio owned by a large publisher like Microsoft? Microsoft is funding the entire project and studio operating costs, and all the revenue is going back to them. They set the budget, and anything above the projected sales figures a nice bonus for Microsoft execs and shareholders.

Yeah bro, some developers are not owned by Microsoft, what's a twist!

Your premise of lowering platform fees leading to better games is only ever going to happen for early-access indie games where the devs quit their day job. Those devs are a tiny minority of gross PC game sales, and while it would be nice for them to be paid a bit more, it's not going to change anything for the average Joe Gamer consumer.

No dumbass, it's just fundamentally more efficient. Your premise of giving Gabe Newell 15% of every game sale and then deep throating him while you thank him for the opportunity, for literally no benefit or reason, is just asinine.

My point still stands: you're proposing something that doesn't actually benefit the typical consumer, but merely shifts the profit ratio between two profit-driven corporations.

No. It doesn't. Your position is that you want to waste 15% of every gaming purchase on enriching Gabe Newell instead of the developers who actually made the game. Congratulations, that makes you a dumbass who likes wasting money on hero worship.

It literally is if you have a monopoly.

Try clicking past the first result next time you "research" something to prove how unbiased you are:

https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenue-revealed-in-lawsuit/

Also, stop dick riding corporations.

So basically "we should all be little dumb dumbs who praise the shiny bauble in front of us, not the actual work and effort that goes into creating something".

Interesting point.

Yes you are defending rent seeking behaviour, which is what rent gouging landlords do.

Its not arguing about shifting money between two arbitrary corporations, it's about shifting money to the people actually creating something, not the people who own the store that sells it to you.

Every dollar Valve gets, is one less that a game developer had to spend on staff and creatives to make a better game.

So?

Just because you don't understand electrical engineering doesn't make it less valuable then paint. If Valve is a saint for contributing to Linux then so is Microsoft and IBM and we should all dick ride Microsoft and IBM like the Valve dick riders in this thread.

No, they're anti Starbucks price gouging. It's like all those companies taking advantage of a little inflation to drastically increase retail prices.

I said Valve is taking 15% more that they don't have to, they said who cares if a landlord drops Starbucks rent 15%, the consumer won't save. I pointed out that that means that not just Starbucks is being gouged but also independent stores and places that might actually drop their prices, or not increase them as quickly in the future.

There is literally no way to defend rent seeking. It makes everything more expensive for everyone.