
Steam is not healthy for gaming - eswat
https://www.polygon.com/2017/5/16/15622366/valve-gabe-newell-sales-origin-destructive
======
pavel_lishin
> _Valve themselves eagerly trumpeted that they had paid more than $57 million
> to Steam Workshop creators over four years — an enormously impressive figure
> until you realize that it 's only 25 percent of the sale price, which means
> Valve just made $171 million profit from ... setting up an online form where
> you can submit finished 3D models._

Yeah, come on, you guys! They barely did any of the work! They just set up a
form! How dare they expect to be compensated for that? It's not like there's a
huge infrastructure powering all of that, that not only required an initial
investment of money, time and brainpower, but also requires ongoing
maintenance!

The article does raise some good points, but the overall raise-the-pitchforks
tone makes it seem less credible - especially when most of the complaints seem
to be that _Valve is running a profitable business while delivering value to
customers_. The author forgot what installing and playing games was like
before Steam - better write down those CD keys somewhere safe, or never lose
the cases - or the CDs themselves. (Or, god forbid, keep the manual around
forever so you can refer to line 5 on page 17, and type in the third, seventh
and eight word.)

And one of the reasons people hated EA was because EA abused its employees and
developers, not because they had a shitty game client; if you want to compare
someone to Uber/Lyft/AirBNB, they are a much closer candidate.

~~~
pikzen
Hey, I'm hosting a server with a shitty PHP app, but you can put your addons
on it. I'm just asking for 75% of your income. Not profit, no, income. I'm
running the infrastructure after all. Not to mention that this 25% figure is
largely exaggerated, and it's closer to 7-8% in reality.

Steam is not all bad. But the last thing Valve needs is people defending them,
because they have been doing fuck all work for the past years. Delegating
everything to the community is not work. Steamworks API is still a joke.
Greeenlight is a joke. 99% the cosmetics they are putting out are done by the
community. CSGO skins? Done by the community. DotA2 skins? done by the
community. Team Fortress 2 items? I can't even remember the last time the game
was updated with some thing they made themselves. They outsourced an update to
the community, ffs. The last time Steam itself had a meaningful update was
years ago. Still waiting on an actually good Big Picture mode.

I am not saying they do not deserve payment for their work. Just that the
ratios are heavily skewed in their favour and as the only serious players in
the market, this is bad for everyone but them. Until the day Origin, Uplay,
Galaxy, etc. get better (spoiler: never), we are bound to their whims and
whishes. You can be the most benevolent dictator of all time, you're still a
dictator, and I'm still going to protest.

>better write down those CD keys somewhere safe, or never lose the cases - or
the CDs themselves.

Joke's on you, I enjoy having cases. I actually miss having physical boxes and
manuals and all the goodies that came with games.

~~~
cestith
Oooh, a hat! Who wrote the game it shows up in, runs the servers that do the
matchmaking, and distributes the hat to the customers? Right, you did all the
work. I'll remember that next time I play my favorite pikzen game distributed
by the pikzen network and run on pikzen servers.

~~~
pikzen
Coming Soon™ in your stores.

>runs the servers that do the matchmaking

For reference, once cosmetics were introduced (and it was already getting old
by the time), TF2 ran a good... two years? without matchmaking servers, only
with a master server to list all the public servers. While it's not something
you're running on a $5 DigitalOcean instance, it's not exactly super expensive
either (especially considering they were down regularly). All the servers were
hosted by the community. Microtransactions are the only reason the game got
matchmaking.

But I don't know, call me a bleeding heart idealist, but if I'm asking people
to come build things for me, I'm not asking for a 75% claim on it because the
terrain belongs to me. People didn't ask Valve to make content for them. Valve
asked them to.

~~~
cestith
Actually if I recall correctly, modders were largely making skins and other
things for free and distributing them to other players. Then Valve developed a
section of their online store and distribution network to allow those mods to
be sold for at least some money. Now the split may not be what you consider
entirely fair, but 8%, 25%, 75%, or 100% of zero is all the same.

A game without mods is a game. A mod without a game is just digital art. It's
their engine, their game rules, their store, their distribution network, and
their audience that they've reached with their marketing. Maybe they deserve a
bit smaller share than they ask, but who are you going to sell these items to
without a game engine, game rules, a store, a distribution network, and an
audience to sell them to?

If you gave 30% to an app store, and 20% for marketing, and 25% for someone to
vet your items don't break the game, what would that cut be overall? 75%.

~~~
pikzen
>If you gave 30% to an app store

Valve's cut.

>20% for marketing

No marketing is being done for items aside from announcing them in patch
notes.

>25% for someone to vet your items don't break the game

That is not something Valve does, considering the amount of items that clip
through models after release. Notwithstanding the fact that items they select
are either from modelers that they're already in contact with, or items that
were voted up by the community and therefore, tried.

This is exactly where the Polygon article is right. Steam is in a situation of
almost monopoly on the market, and you have absolutely zero chances of ever
being able to negotiate those rates. Even the mafia takes less as a protection
fee, and they do more work than Valve when it comes to their customers.

~~~
cestith
> No marketing is being done for items aside from announcing them in patch
> notes.

None perhaps for the individual add-on items, but there's been marketing to
get people involved in the games for which the extra content is made. The
audience is there initially because of the game, not initially because of the
extra content.

> That is not something Valve does, considering the amount of items that clip
> through models after release.

That's a shame. I would expect that for the amount they keep they'd do some
quality control.

If you want more control and a bigger share, make assets for a non-Valve game.
Find an engine, some programmers, a musician, a level designer, and a couple
of testers. Publish your own game. Of course, then you'd be splitting the game
development share across all of those team members. So depending on the size
of the team, 5% to 50% of the game team's share from your 70% from the sale of
the game through the store would be that alternative, unless you're prepared
to do it as a solo project. That, though, is for the sale price of the whole
game rather than a single downloadable item. Then you can do the same with DLC
packs. Indie games do tend to sell at lower prices than AAA titles, though.

------
jakebasile
Valve isn't my friend, no corporation is. They are largely benevolent despite
some missteps. I can forgive that, mistakes are made. Steam has been a great
boon to my hobby and I would dearly miss it if it were gone.

~~~
calibas
I wouldn't call any major corporation benevolent or malevolent, they're
effectively amoral entities. They're your "friend" so long as they stand to
profit from you.

~~~
sakawa
I don't agree with this. NGOs are primarily meant to do (morally) good things
to the society where we live (usually help helpless people), where
corporations pursue profit, which is usually not a bad thing unless they break
the law (with a misleading behavior with the customers, antitrust, tax
evading, and I'd like to say also lobbying).

Anyway, Steam users are also paying to consume the game, even if they don't
own it. And I really doubt the 2% of their users read even the first paragraph
of the EULA contract (where they do specify the above, yep I read it.)

------
conanbatt
My main beef with steam is that the client is a piece of crap. With the big
bucks they have they should have a much better UX/UI and overall engineering.

They enjoy a massive network effect plus the key handling helped increasing
the switch costs, but they should go down. Platforms like itch.io are much
better, and GOG.com at least keeps improving.

~~~
Karunamon
Steam definitely takes the Google approach - throw out a minimum viable
product, automate as much as possible, and provide little-to-no support.

That also means the experience is similar. When it works, it works well and
you don't have to think about it. When it doesn't work, be prepared to lose
hours-to-days of your life to a system that seems to be as kafkaesque as
possible.

~~~
dreen
Except its not minumum and not viable. Its bloated with lots of features added
over the years on top of each other, and its terrible.

------
rjbwork
Vox is not your friend, and Polygon is not healthy for gaming.

~~~
santaclaus
Why is that?

~~~
icpmacdo
There only purpose is to make money. If you not spending anything on the
product you are the product.

------
gallerdude
Steam fills a need and does it well. I have zero issues with it.

~~~
H1Supreme
Totally. Steam single handily got me back into gaming on a (semi) regular
basis.

~~~
macintux
Conversely, Steam turns me away from gaming. I want to own my games, not rent
them with hopes Valve won't take them away from me.

~~~
wst_
Use Google. Their content is mostly DRM free and you can download games to
local disk.

------
Karunamon
This is outrage clickbait, pure and simple. The comparison of Steam Workshop
to _" an online form where you can submit finished 3D models"_ is so dishonest
it crosses over into willful deception.

This is the same Polygon (a video game site) that put out an article
complaining about how unfairly they were treated when they released a video
showing that they don't even understand the basics of video games. The whole
site is problematic.

~~~
oridecon
the steering wheel

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE)

------
preinheimer
Their lack of refund policy kicked me off the platform in 2010. I bought Civ
V, then discovered that Mac port was a piece of crap. It didn't matter how
fast your computer was, or how new your video card was, it rendered like stop-
motion animation once you had more than a few units.

It probably took 10-15 emails, being bounced between steam, the publisher, and
the port developer to finally get steam credit "as a courtesy".

~~~
rhcom2
This is a lot easier now. If you have played the game for less than 2 hours
and purchased it within 14 days Steam will refund you pretty much no questions
asked.

~~~
hobarrera
I tried this once for a game that crashed on startup. My game "suddenly" had
11 hours played (according to steam).

The game crashed, but it turns out that steam kept the counter going after it
did, so not only did it not work: it also meant no refund.

------
georgeecollins
This is such a screed. I love PC games and was a very successful PC game
developer in the nineties. Piracy was killing the business, don't let anyone
tell you otherwise.

Steam is extremely successful but it is not a monopoly. All the smart
developers I know use Steam but also maintain alternate points of distribution
for all kinds of business reasons. If you don't like Steam, don't use it.
There are many alternatives.

------
im3w1l
While I'm emphatically _not_ a fan of the Platform as a way of extracting
rent, Steam is one of the more acceptable cases, since it isn't preinstallled
and integrated with (or gasp given exclusive access by) the OS.

~~~
paulryanrogers
Ironically I think the ideal is an OS with open infrastructure for 'stores'
and all the good features they bring. (Ease of discovery, auto updates, etc.)

This is how Linux repositories got it right.

------
MrZongle2
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14352762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14352762)

------
projektir
The main negative I see with Steam is that it seems to make gamers expect even
lower prices on games, which is especially bad for indie studios...

~~~
pythonaut_16
I don't have links right now but Valve has published some numbers that seem to
suggest the opposite- that their low price sales sell so many more copies of
games that they bring in more revenue than when the game is at full price.

Also you can see how effective the model is for indie games. Take Stardew
Valley for instance. A hugely successful indie game that's made the author a
ton of money. And it still sells for less than Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons.

~~~
graphitezepp
Isn't this the parents point? There super low sales drive prices down because
they work. Personally I see this as 'the market' working in a helpful way for
consumers and don't see the problem with low price expectations. Not like the
rate people are making games to sell is low.

~~~
WorldMaker
The thing to keep in mind is that this is the Wal-Mart model: drive prices as
low as possible (and maybe sell in bulk). It squeezes/kills the little
suppliers (such as indie developers), drives down the notional market value of
goods, but feels like a good deal for consumers.

At least in current society there isn't anything overtly wrong with "the Wal-
Mart model" as it stands, but recognizing a Wal-Mart model is the first steps
towards trying to figure out if it is long term healthy for the community.
(Which brings us back to the article at hand, questioning the long term health
of the community in the face of a Wal-Mart like Steam.)

------
Lagged2Death
The story and so much of the discussion about it seem to exclude the boring
possibility: Valve is not run by benevolent entertainment angel-saints, but
neither is it run by mustache-twirling villains. The things they do have both
upsides and downsides.

I'm surprised by the concerns over refunds. In my experience, brick-and-mortar
stores that sold computer games were generally not too friendly about refunds.
GameStop's website says downloadable PC purchases are not eligible for refunds
at all.

I was going to say that Steam's monopoly status is overstated, since there are
a few (much smaller) competitors. But in fact it looks like the games I bought
on Impulse years ago have vanished; GameStop bought Impulse, rebranded it, and
later shut it down. As far as I can tell, my licenses have disappeared into
the ether. Motivating just about any former customers to avoid GameStop in
future, I would think. Boggling.

------
fb03
Steam got me back into gaming after a long period not having free time to fuck
with activations, custom installs etc. If I get a new box, I just log-in and
my shit gets installed. I don't have enough time to game and they're getting a
cut for the service they provide, is this unacceptable?

~~~
WorldMaker
It's acceptable, it's fine, the issue at hand is that we've reached the point
that Steam is the Wal-Mart of PC videogames and a lot of people act like they
still think Steam is some sort of Mom & Pop shop. It doesn't hurt to examine
our Wal-Marts and want them to do better (even if many of us will still shop
at them).

------
boona
If any entity isn't healthy for the gaming community it's Polygon. This and
other click bait articles they release regularly try to stir up controversy
where there isn't any.

------
t0mbstone
I'm confused... I've gotten refunds from Steam on multiple occasions, with no
trouble at all?

Steam has both pros and cons. For me, the benefits greatly outweigh the cons.

------
Jimmie_Rustle
| If you were to ask the average PC gamer, they’d swear up and down that
there’s no way they’d ever give their money to such a corporation.

Stopped reading here, what retarded nonsense.

~~~
J5892
He's implying that an average PC gamer would never use Uber, Lyft, or Airbnb.

The whole article seems like the author just woke up from a 15-year coma and
is having trouble coming to terms with modern commerce.

~~~
Nadya
_> The whole article seems like the author just woke up from a 15-year coma
and is having trouble coming to terms with modern commerce._

Seems more like a Games Journalism article written by someone who isn't "a
gamer". Which is par for the course nowadays.

I'd be hard pressed to find any PC gamer who doesn't think Steam improved upon
the way things used to be done. I do know one person who is an exception but
their issue isn't the _gaming_ side of things but the fact they liked to
collect boxes for the box art. Fewer games being released as a box = fewer box
arts for their collection.

~~~
WorldMaker
We could play the "no true Scotsman" game for a while, but I've yet to meet a
games journalist that is less of "a gamer" than I am.

The article admits Steam improved the way things had been done before. It
simply asks us to question our relationship with Steam _today_ , if it's
continuing to do real good. It wonders why so many people are still adamant
Steam is a Mom & Pop shop when it's the PC gaming Wal-Mart today.

~~~
Nadya
_> We could play the "no true Scotsman" game for a while, but I've yet to meet
a games journalist that is less of "a gamer" than I am._

I predicted this would be a response (or, similarly, "gatekeeping").

"Gamers" in the _literal_ sense? Sure. But most people mean "gamer" as in
"gaming enthusiast". There's a certain level of skill or knowledge expected of
anyone calling themselves an "enthusiast". If you lack both of those things
you'll find it hard for anyone to take you seriously. Just like an "artist"
who is both untalented and ignorant (eg. no knowledge of common terminology,
history, or popular figures) wouldn't be taken seriously as an "artist",
regardless of how much time they spend on it.

Polygon infamously released 30 minutes of gameplay footage of Doom that was
mocked for the player being _so bad_ it's like they've no experience with an
FPS game [0]. Polygon in general has a long track record of being ignorant of
entire facets of gaming culture, to an extent that many enthusiasts say
"Bullshit. You don't know what you're talking about." Their reputation for
being ignorant and clickbaity wasn't earned because they're _good_ at what
they do, quite the contrary.

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3pQ0oO_cDE)

~~~
WorldMaker
"Enthusiast" has no implied meaning, that I am aware of, with regards to skill
or encyclopedic knowledge of/within a culture. Enthusiasm is not a profession
and plenty of people are enthusiastic of things without high skill or deep
knowledge, and there are so many different facets of gaming that I distrust
anyone that thinks they can define a canon of skills, experiences, or
knowledge that makes "a gamer". Primarily RPG gamers might have no FPS skills.
FPS players might lack the deep lore and cultural touchstones of RPG culture.
Neither is more nor less "a gamer", which is exactly why this is a "no true
Scotsman" argument. That's just two genres of games within the hobby; we could
go all night diving through the variety and depth of gaming.

Gaming is a giant spirograph of a venn diagram of interests, skills,
knowledge, cultural touchstones, etc. You may be comfortable picking some very
specific section of that Venn diagram for what criteria you think counts as "a
gamer", but I hesitate to. I'd rather celebrate how wide and interesting the
hobby can be than lock myself in an ivory tower or boy's club treehouse.

~~~
Nadya
You're right that enthusiast doesn't have any dictionary definition with the
implication I mentioned. So for lack of a dictionary term, allow me an analogy
that also explains why it isn't a "no true scotsman" argument.

Compare game genres to musical instruments. Guitarist == FPS gamer and Pianist
== RPG gamer

Both guitarists and pianists are musicians, just like RPG players and FPS
players are gamers. Feel free to expand this analogy into as many genres and
musical instruments as you like.

Now take someone who isn't able to play the correct notes, cannot read sheet
music/tablature/any form of music notation, has no knowledge of music theory,
hasn't heard of The Beatles (or whatever cultural/genre relevant artist would
be the equivalent to The Beatles), but still practices for hours every day on
their 8-note plastic recorder they got in 4th grade [0]. They call themselves
a musician, after all they spend so much time with their hobby!

Nobody but that person and maybe their mother - being nice - would call them a
musician. Is there a hard, defined line for when they'll "become a musician"?
No. There is a grey line of necessary skill/knowledge that one needs to have
for others to consider them a musician. Every amateur hobby has that grey line
that needs to be crossed before you'll be taken seriously.

ps. The dictionary definition of "musician" only mentions "plays an
instrument" and doesn't indicate any level of skill. This is the difference
between "dictionary definition" and "actual usage of a word". By the
dictionary's definition our untalented individual is a musician, even if
nobody else would consider them one.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/UXHmy6c.png](http://i.imgur.com/UXHmy6c.png)

~~~
WorldMaker
That analogy doesn't work for me either. History is littered with amazingly
beloved musicians that played entirely by ear, with little to no literacy in
the larger world of music, that basically reinvented everything they knew of
music from first principles with never studying the previous culture or proper
music literacy or music theory.

I think the dictionary definition is accurate/adequate enough and you may have
an implicit "good" or maybe "professional" somewhere in your usage of
musician, that I don't. One is a value judgment (history is also littered with
"terrible" musicians that were still musicians, or contributed to the craft)
and the other an economic judgment, neither of which I see as necessary to
describing who is or is not a musician.

~~~
Nadya
We'll have to agree to disagree here, because I don't find dictionary
definitions all that useful for communication and most people don't operate
under strict dictionary definitions.

By definition a pilot doesn't need to successfully fly - only operate the
controls. So a drone pilot could crash every drone and still be a "pilot" by
definition. Nobody would recognize them as a drone pilot because there is an
implied "successfully" that isn't found in the definition.

Yes - there is an implicit "at least to some level of success" in my
definition. "Professionals" meet that criteria by _being good enough to be
paid for what they do_. Amateurs come at many different levels but I don't
call myself a photographer just because I've taken a few (hundred) photos.
This is where we disagree - because you would consider me a photographer for
having taken _any_ photos.

~~~
WorldMaker
Here's where your analogy particularly breaks down: "a gamer" is neither a
professional nor an amateur mark. Fandom does not, and perhaps cannot, have
any sort of success bar. There is a notion of a "professional gamer" in the
eSports world, and it's possible to extrapolate thereby to a notion of an
"amateur gamer" that competes in eSports. But that belies a confusion between
"[sports] gamer" and "[fandom/enthusiast] gamer". Within the context of
fandom/enthusiasm, what would "professional" mean? "Amateur"?

Fandom/enthusiasm don't really have success bars. It's something you are
either enthusiastic about or you aren't. You can be a fan of something and
never be successful at it, however you define success. A baseball fan doesn't
have to be good at actually playing baseball nor devoted to a deep knowledge
of the sport to be a fan of their favorite team.

------
self-diversity
I've never understood the drive toward some notion of commercial-free purity
the gaming world seems to embody. Is it due to the heavy teenage boy presence
that underlies so many other unsavory aspects?

