Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?'
Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?'
Tim Sweeney emailed Gabe Newell calling Valve 'you assholes' over Steam policies, to which Valve's COO replied internally 'you mad bro?'
If scale is no longer an issue, why can't Epic create a store with similar functionality to steam? Because it's not about that. It's about Tim not being able to pocket as much.
Epic simply doesn’t want to be consumer friendly. Epic sees the money Valve is making, but not the effort Valve puts into their store. Just how consumer friendly Valve is the reason Valve basically a monopoly. Valve gives so many tools to the devs too such as SteamAPI to make their games better and accessible to a wide range of consumers with a wide range of devices.
Epic knows that the way it can fight Valve is by pointing out their 30% cut. Everything else, involves making their store better, which Epic doesn’t wanna do.
Human rights principles? Tim needs to quit sniffing his own farts. He's trying to sell digital video games on iPhones, not end human trafficking.
Is epics cut still 12%?
And in the same court case - it was discovered it was not profitable despite their more limited offerings.
If the percentage was the most important part, why isn't every game on Epic?
Yes. Since nobody else seems to want to answer. Also, they waive the Unreal Engine revenue share from sales on the Epic Store.
I appreciate Epics pro developer stance, but the need a better consumer experience and innovation in that space if they want to be serious about the store.
Valve has spen't much of the last 25 years pushing the industry forwards in distribution. That's why there's so much loyalty to them.
Yes
Love how this is "highly confidential", yet, here we are 🤣🤣🤣 God, I love this community!
People hated Steam and were very skeptical initially. Respect was earned over time
I miss Won network and kali…
Lol I used to be on Kali, and IFrag before that.. college days
They were literally selling physical game boxes with a code and an installer for Steam in it instead of the game.
Steams initial tactics are as scummy as Epic's. The reason they don't need them anymore is because of their semi monopoly.
Those DVDs usually had the game backup files on it too, so you didn't even need to download most physical copies you purchased. And I can still download the original CS game I bought like 20 years ago. Seems like a good deal since that game cost me like $40 in store.
Do you know why steam is dominating? There are no better alternatives. They actively work on projects that benefit everyone, including their competition.
For the time being, there's nothing to be said other than other companies need to stop being so shitty.
Valve forever more have my support just because of proton. Letting me get off windows to game has been revolutionary for me.
Yea, steam actually earned their market share through being a solid storefront and game distribution center and not because of exclusive releases from third parties or shady practices beyond promoting games.
Sure, they are the only place for valve games, but that is because those are their games. Yes, some of their games have loot boxes and that is all terrible, but that is the games and not inherent to steam.
my problem is people conflate pro develper and pro consumer actions as the same thing, when they arent. what epic does is very pro developer(better cut, money in advance if exclusive), but the platform is far from being pro consumer(removes consumer choice in platform to buy it on, lower competiuon, inconplete community, store, workshop, and os functionality). I'm in open arms for competition, but it actively is a worse consumer experience, then its very hard to support.
Epic is really only pro-dev in that way though, steam has a lot of perks through its steamworks api
I said this in another place, but the single only reason that Epic is pro developer is because they have miniscule market share.
If they gain significant market share, they will 100% absolutely guaranteed, no doubt, double their cut from developers.
It is the exact scum tactic that has been done dozens of times before like amazon.
Here's the difference. When we talk about companies dominating an industry, we're usually talking about practices that keep competition from even forming. Monopolies are formed as a result of big companies buying out or making it impossible for their competition.
Steam doesn't do that, which is a big reason they won their monopoly suit. They just provide a better model than anyone else is willing to, and they rake in the cash because of it.
Compare this situation to books-a-million in the states. Books-a-million doesn't have a monopoly on books, they just have created a better environment for selling them. They aren't stopping other book stores from opening or buying chains to shut them down, they just sell you a cup of coffee and give you a place to sit while you browse their massive selection.
That's not a monopoly, that's just better business.
While you may have a point that we can't know what any company will do in the future, the fact remains that Valve has earned their place by 2 factors alone:
1.- Constant innovation to make their platform a place where everyone wants to be, without crippling the competition, despite having the means to do it. 2.- years of building trust with their users and providers alike by being transparent and clear on what they offer, while adding value which costs money that they absorb.
Yes, 30% of so much money is a shitload of money, but I have yet to see one good reason why that's a bad thing other than the usual "it's too much" bullshit argument.
Unity, Reddit, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, these companies have 1 common denominator: they have gone out of their way to destroy anything that would present a risk to 10 cents of their revenue, including, but not limited to, absorbing any potential competition, regardless of if they represent a risk to their dominance or not.
Do not compare valve to these assholes. Valve is making tons of money? Unless you can show me, with evidence, how this is detrimental to anyone else, other than the fact that you are not making as much, all you have is bullshit and a fucking tantrum.
We worry about companies that aren’t anywhere near as dominant as valve. Just because their interests align with ours today doesn’t mean they will tomorrow.
Valve is dominant because they treat users well. Is your argument here seriously "Yes, Valve is a better platform that treats you well, but you shouldn't use it because other people already do! You should use a platform that's not as good because competition!"
A competitor in any industry needs to do more than "exist" to be worth using. If Valve starts acting shitty I will stop using it, much like how I have stopped purchasing or playing Blizzard games.
The “you mad bro” is found among internal Valve communication (Valve COO Scott Lynch to Erik Johnson and Newell, i.e. in the sense Johnson/Newell being “mad”, not Sweeney). It was particularly not sent out as a response to Sweeney. Another outlet already got tripped over this and had to make a correction: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/03/valve-coo-on-epics-tim-sweeney-you-mad-bro-when-launching-the-epic-store/
This is not quite as sensational as some people are framing it.
If "Newell remained magisterially above the fray." wasn't hint enough this is garbage fucking journalism, this fact would tip you over the edge.
Sweeney is a third-rate Carmack
That's insulting to Carmarck considering how intelligent and talented the man is. Sweeney is a mediocre programmer and a hack businessman at best.
Time Travelling Interdimensional Energy Being John Carmack!?
Weekly reminder for everyone to go get their free epic store game of the week...
And never install the launcher or play any of said games.
Not a lot of people know the troll face is used by pedo rings to identify each other. It was true back then but its common use muddied the water and gave them a lot of plausible deniability, but nowadays that it's fallen off from common use it's almost exclusively used as a symbol.
Less drama more context would be nice from headlines, but man does it feel like I'm asking too much
I do wish Steam changed their pricing policy tbh. Make it so you pay smaller % for X amount of purchases, then a higher % on purchases after that and then a yet higher % on purchases after that amount with amounts set to give better terms to small indie game makers, then be less harsh on mid size devs and then get the most operational money out of big games.
A pricing structure which helps indie games doesn't mean losing all that
Lmao common steam W
Steam community or not, the glib defense of rent-seeking behavior on lemmyml is wild.
I dont understand. Doesnt Epic give devs a better cut of the profits? Why is Sweeney mad?
Because his shitty company can't provide any of the benefits Steam provides, so he has to keep creating bullshit distractions to be marginally relevant and not have all of his investors jump ship.
Sweeney really comes off as an angry guy who sees only enemies. Apple (justified, even though I'm an Apple nerd), Valve… let's find some more persecution-complex targets. Can we be mad at Steam? Let's go!
Epic offers jack shit in terms of features, has admitted to be losing money from the 12% cut, has a shitty storefront and is beholden to Tencent, the shittiest gaming company known to the world. Also, Steam is free advertisement, whereas the EGS is antiadvertisement.
There's at least as much of a "massive discrepancy" between what Valve and Epic provide as value to people that chose their service.
👑
The 30% cut is an obscene standard that needs to be reduced on PC, console, and mobile. Taking an entire third off-the-top as nothing but a middleman and file-server is indefensible. Valve doesn't even control their platform - they shoved their way onto computers via HL2 and now perpetuate an overwhelming market share. Then as now, it is a problem that games require any online DRM launcher.
Tim can still get bent.
EGS by all accounts does fuck-all to attract users or sellers, beyond adjusting that cut, and it is still a project that exists primarily as rent-seeking for that cut.
Same deal for Fortnite on iOS: their excuses are pretense for taking 30% of everything spent on an app or IN an app, on every iPhone. They once strongarmed Facebook out of even mentioning that. Furthermore, people must have software freedom. It is intolerable that Apple ever restricted what you install on your own goddamn phone.
Fortnite should be unavailable because Fortnite should be illegal.
Nothing inside a video game should cost money. Real-money charges make games objectively less enjoyable. Maximum revenue comes from addiction to manufactured discontent. It is infecting every platform, genre, and price point. It is in single-player games. if we allow this to continue there will be nothing else.
people use 'u mad bro' like it's some great insult. people get mad. it's a human emotion. it exists for a reason. it's not a glitch. anger is a motivator, and a damn good one. get mad, folks. use that energy. most people aren't mad enough these days.
See https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/u-mad, in particular the “Due to the agitating nature of the phrase, it is often considered a form of trolling.”
u sound mad
Their criticism of Steam seems pretty valid
How so?
I mean it's not like Epic does anything to help sales, they just give devs slightly more of the money. Or at least it cannot prove that. Their store is so badly organized that the reduction in discovery and the Sweeney-created (and in fact at this point seemingly deliberate) negative association of the epic store and in particular exclusivity on it, it's impossible for a company to judge whether the 25.7% increased money (70%->88%) is not easily eaten up by the loss in sales compared to other stores.
Valve can also trivially point to all the stuff Steam provides like forums, mod integration and streaming to justify higher cost, and Sweeney suspiciously never talks about that. I bet if he had to, he'd have to admit that he actually provides less value with his baby store considering how little devs get for the 12% taken compared to what Valve provides for the 30% they take.
Is it cool that stores take 30%? No.
Can I, as a gamer, judge whether it's a valid amount of even one worthy of critique in particular comparing brick&mortar supply chains (his 75%-loss-criticism is a false equivalence, as the extra costs he adds existed with physical stores, too)? No, I cannot.
Does it feel to me as a gamer that I get "more" buying a game on Steam than on Epic? For sure! Sometimes I can get it cheaper on Epic, which might be worth it compared to having stuff like workshop integration or prompt updates on Steam. Or it might not be, that's something everyone has to judge.
For me personally, my takeaway from Sweeney's baby trantrum antics and aggressive exclusivity has been this:
His criticism might be valid. Or not. I cannot judge that. Regardless, he's an asshole and his shop is terrible for me as a customer comparing the alternatives.
How so
Well
Then Sweeney adjusts his flight goggles and gets ready for takeoff on one of his pet peeves: the 30% platform fee on Steam. "There was a good case for [such fees] in the early days," writes Sweeney, "but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee."
Sweeney opines that, if you were to strip away the top 25 selling games on Steam, "I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made." The maths to get there is 30% to Valve, 30% on marketing, and 15% on servers / engine costs, so "the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution economics of the 1990s."
Sounds valid, it's a really high cut
"Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people," writes Sweeney. "We're all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?"
Sounds valid, making deals with the big publishers for smaller cut and taking the big cut from smaller publishers. Sounds pretty shit
I'll never understand why some people look at the fact that steam is popular because of their policies, and can't help but make a comment like this equating that popularity to cock worship.
Like, we get it bro. You're thinking about cocks and you're mad about a half decent game store. What compelled you to combine those thoughts on a public forum?
The weird thing is that this isn't even the first comment I've seen like this. Dudes that are mad about steam want everyone else to know about steam's massive, throbbing cock for some reason. This guy alone has posted 3 of these.
It's because of their backend tech. Steam has some of the most efficient CDN usage in the world. How do you think you're able to download a 60Gb game in 10 min?
It surprises me too. I suppose gamers do really like their proprietary DRM with monopolistic practices.
DRM is up to the game developers, it's not enforced by Steam.
Steam is just perfect at keeping the gamers behind them as they are only assholes behind doors to the Devs on their platform.
30% is an absurd cut for a store that has such a monopoly that if you don't release there your game is pretty much cancelled even if you release at your own store without DRM and with additional goodies (Looking at GOG and The Witcher - they released the Gwent standalone like a year later on steam because it didn't sell at all on GOG and then it apparently outsold the GOG version without a week)
People are just too lazy and Steam is keeping them happy enough to not bother looking another way.
Epic isn't a good guy in any case but the exclusive deals on AAA Games they do is probably the only way to get someone to buy the game there instead of Steam
I know we happen to be a minority, but given how much valve has done for linux gaming, I'm happy to vote and support them with my wallet.
For reference, before they started giving a good linux experience I didn't buy games for more than 15 years, so is not like the game developers were going to get 100% of the money I'm paying for games now, the choice is to get 70% or nothing because I wouldn't play their games. Not only that, if the proton compatibility layer fails, I'm very confident that steam's refund policy has my back, again, without this policy I wouldn't buy games.
Remember, not everyone is you, and not everyone plays games the way you do.
I recently moved my main desktop to Linux (everything else has been for a long time), and - aside from some problems with Wayland (due to NVidia) - everything has just worked. Every game I've played has been working flawlessly. They've been doing an amazing job with Proton.
This is me too. I'd moved away from PC gaming completely when I dropped Windows from my PCs back during the XP era. The Steam Deck has brought me back though. I really like the experience, and I get a kickass Linux handheld PC for a great price.
I've stayed with Windows just because of that, but I can't think of any games I regularly play that haven't worked on my steam deck.
The epic games store user experience is awful. Exclusives are awful. I have zero reason to ever use it except for if I’d been taking advantage of the countless free games they’ve been giving away.
Steam offers a service, hosting downloads and all the backend for friends/multiplayer connectivity/etc isn’t free. If you’re big enough to not need that(minecraft), good for you! Otherwise, it’s clearly difficult to make a launcher/game platform that doesn’t suck ass(uplay/origin/etc) - sorry that steam is just better than any alternative right now.
People are just too lazy and Steam is keeping them happy enough to not bother looking another way.
You say that like we are making any kind of sacrifice by using steam. I used Epic and Xbox Gamepass or whatever on PC for like a year or two but stopped using either because the steam experience is just better and the exclusives weren't worth changing.
I will buy from other storefronts if the deal is good, I have bought plenty from GOG. Epic are just anti-consumer and I refuse to support that store.
Steam just offers peace of mind with refunds and the feature set they provide is next to none, I haven't been given a reason to look elsewhere primarily.
30% is an absurd cut for a store that has such a monopoly that if you don't release there your game is pretty much cancelled
That's exactly why they take 30%. Because having your game on Steam is a huge deal. Because Steam is very popular and lucrative. Because it's well-made and useful. Little Timmy wants to skip to having a popular and lucrative platform without first doing the step of making it well-made and useful.
The exclusive on epic game store is a cancer that should not exist. And epic should remove their parody of launcher from existence because they somehow managed to make this a cancer too.
300+ library on Steam over more than a decade with them. I'm not moving to Epic regardless of how shitty Steam gets because I'm not maintaining multiple accounts for multiple launchers just 'cause Tim fucking Sweeney decided it was mandatory I split my library so he could stack a couple more zeros in his bank account.
Valve could reduce their cut honestly, perhaps some program for independent developers to help them get on their feet. I don't think the top games or big publishers should be getting cut reductions.
Either way, Valve haven't been buying out studios for exclusive games, so Epic and Sweeney can go fuck themselves, they are scum.
At the same time it's not like Valve is not making use of the extra money to use it only for taking in profits. It might of been what made it possible to try entering the hardware market with VR and the Steam Deck and putting resources in trying to make Linux gaming for accessible for regular people. Might of been what allowed them to not be deterred after the failure of the Steam machine and Steam Controller.
Might have, brother. Might have.
If I recall correctly valve did lower their cut in the wake of EGS having better terms for devs.
For the first $10m earned it's 30%, then it's 25% until $50m, then it's 20% from then on.
I do think Valve could drop it to 25% and not lose much sleep over their coffers.
I mean I don't know how much money steam is banking, but they provide quite a good service for their share.
Max download rates at all times (almost).
Amazing steam overlay. Online gaming. Online saves. Workshop. Linux support.
And many more. Some of that epic has too but in comparison epic launcher is shit.
It would effectively not do anything for game devs to reduce it by 5%.
On the dev side steam provides distribution and a bunch of tools while you develop your game. Tomorrow you can pay 100$, and steam will support you with keys, releasing and publishing your game, reviewing it for free etc.
I have a game I've been developing for 5 years part time. I have steam keys I share with testers, and can distribute version for free, with all the patch notes and update features from steam for 100$.
When I do release, they'll have earned the 30%, and if I don't release I'll have saved a ton and steam will take the costs. This greatly reduces the barrier to self-publishing. Out of all the companies I deal with, this is by far the fairest and lest predatory model there is. Gaben could have just bled us of our money even more and it would have worked. They are very rich because they are very humble in a sense.
I think Steam's cut should probably be something like
0.05 * (log(x) + 1)where x is number of copies sold.https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/04/why-valve-actually-gets-less-than-30-percent-of-steam-game-sales/
Awesome article, see? Just like Apple and Google... No, wait, I was thinking of a parallel reality. Never mind.
The reason big studios get better rate is because they have leverage. Just as Amazon has leverage against apple in app store
Its based off revenue, obviously more revenue made overall gives Valve more money with less cut than small revenue at a larger cut.