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In 2018 a group of Valve staff tried to figure out just how efficient they were being—and found they were making more money per head than Apple, Facebook, and nearly every tech giant out there (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 2 years ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

Which is exactly what Apple does with their iTunes store.

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  • [–] 79 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    Not exactly, apple forces their users to use their stores, whereas Valve just offers a better experience than the other stores out there.

    There is nothing stopping you from using other stores to buy your games on, unlike the appstore.

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  • [+] -16 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That has no impact on both of them taking a 30% cut.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    In the case of Steam that's because no other corpo run by parasites can create anything close to it. You're completely free to get any other launcher or store that takes a smaller cut.

    And now is where your misguided comparison completely falls apart: Apple users have no other choice than the AppStore. Even if someone wanted to create a better store, they just can't.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Yes, it's all massive profiting, driving the cost of everything up, or putting less money into the hands of the people who make the thing you like.

    When I really love a game, it bothers me that valve, or apple, or Google, or Sony, take 1/3rd of the money. They don't deserve it.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    What if you could buy direct from the publisher or developer, but you could only download the game once? Let's say you could still install it any number of times on any device so long as you had the source file in this scenario. Would you still be willing to pay $60 for a major title?

    Would your willingness to buy a game change if you couldn't get a refund in the above scenario, regardless of time played?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Fortunately thanks to steam allowing free key generation you can buy directly from the publisher and still get all the features of steam except refunds maybe.

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  • [–] 0 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That's the same as buying from Steam. The publisher pays Steam and then gives the key to the customer. They get the same cut either way.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Steam doesn't take a cut on keys.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    .... like a disk or cart? Yes that's fine. I do that.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

    Sure, that's fine for a release that has a physical edition, but many do not.

    Also, when buying physical copies I'm guessing that the dev gets an even smaller cut, but it probably depends on the retail location to a large degree.

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