much larger comision

GoG, every console, play store, and Apple store take the same cut. Itch io is strange and takes a smaller cut but only indie games publish there in the first place. Epic and (windows) Microsoft store take 12%, but they fucking suck and you know they're evil fucks that would definitely fuck you and publishers over as hard as they could if they ever got the market share. I couldn't immediately find numbers for all the various publisher run stores (I'm not even sure if arbitrary games can sell on them) like the ubisoft one but they also fucking suck and are run by evil fucks.

It would be awesome if steam took a smaller cut, but complaining about it like it's not the same cut everyone else that has marketshare takes and accounting for the ones that do take less being garbage run by public companies trying to buy marketshare then enshitify is disingenuous.

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 agree with you that this doesn't mean they are ethical or pro-consumer. But they do keep the consumers satisfied enough.

The commission/valve cut is tiered.

First $10m of revenue: 30% cut

Between $10m and $50m: 25% cut.

Over $50m: 20% cut.

Then you have all of the incredible things Valve offers to a game dev, beyond simply existing where most pc gamers are...

...here, use our achievement system, here, you can make in game items tradable, here, you can use our servers for multiplayer peer discovery and linking friends to friends easily, here, you have a whole storefront, news blog, and discussion board... oh you made your game for Windows? No sweat, you don't need to port it to Linux, we got you there. Oh you wanna do DLC? We got a whole system for that. Oh we forgot to mention cloud saves, we'll do that for you. And! If you want people to mod your game... we'll host all their mods, and make it so users can just upload them and download them and such.

You know how many games I've seen start on itch.io, incubate, develop, then do an initial launch on Steam?

Way, waaay better plan than just jumping straight into Steam Early Access. You put a firewall between the people on Itch who know they are beta testers, and people on Steam who expect working product, and thus avoid the reputational damage of going through all or most of development on Steam.

Anyway... I'd call all that stuff pro-indie-game-developer.

I certainly agree that gambling, p2w loot drops are bullshit, and the Steam item market being able to convert into actual money is... not good, and should be changed.

(I will note though that a game dev can decide if their game's items will be directly tradable, or marketable for basically SteamBucks, or both. You can just only allow them to be directly traded.)

But the rest of it? Yeah, a whole lotta games that start with little money can have a lot easier time developing and remaining financially solvent, with all the infrastructure that Valve/Steam provides... maybe the analogy would be they effectively help you up a few of the first rungs of the proverbial ladder.

Its also worth noting that Valve is not a publically traded company. They do not have stock. They do not have a board of investors or shareholders demanding line must go up.

They do things the old fashioned way, they build up a giant warchest of money, money they actually have, with no loan payment due, no strings attached... and then then deploy that money to do things like invent their own VR tech, fund Proton development, build the Steam Machine and Steam Deck, etc.

Every other company in the space that does anything like this is beholden to capitalist investors and the demi-gods of banking and finance in a way that Valve isn't.

Its why Unity enshittified and then imploded, and why Godot hasn't.

When you need to make line go up for somebody, when you very directly owe people money... shit comes out the end of the pipe. When you don't... as long as you manage your own affairs well, you more or less are in charge of what comes out of the pipe.

I think it's "proconsumer" because the alternatives are so awfully anticonsummer that you see them as the desired alternative.

I mean, if someone comes and tells you: hey, you have two options, I shoot you with a revolver in your head 5 times... or I kick you in the balls once.

Sure, the kick in the balls sounds awful, but if your only alternative is getting shot 5 times in your head with a revolver...

And right now, this is the videogames market.