Technology

Yep. But it also seems like people are so shocked by the data that maybe they're missing the moral of this story, too? ...sure it's impressive that Valve has done so much with such a small workforce, but I think the reason they've been able to move so quickly is because they have such a small workforce. Companies get slow because they get big...I don't care how much you tout your SAFe processes; you will always lose efficiency as you grow. It's the difference between steering a canoe vs a cruise ship...the more you grow, the more you have to fight against momentum. So, my takeaway from this is that they figured out the secret to continued success as a maturing company, and good for them.

Now, I say all of this with sincere hopes that they don't work their smaller number of employees to death and ask them to take on inappropriately burdensome workloads. Because if that's the case, they should fuck right off with the rest of their peers.

But it’s basically a store front and they contract almost everything out. Like how many people does it take to run some servers? They don’t make games, the steam deck and the VR are the few things they’ve done. And that could be done by a couple dozen engineers and contract everything else.

Like how many employees should they have?

Okay I shouldn’t have taken a shot at their game making ability, but it legit fucking sucks and they acknowledge it, people bash them for it sometimes, take it easy guys.

Well that's why they actually do right by their customers. That said I definitely agree

My reference to free market is only a means of saying customers choose steam because of its offerings not that they have too.

I agree it would be nice if they charged less. However do we know their full PNL/balance sheet? People just keep taking revenue/employees as if employees are the only overhead.

They provide the servers, and do have an rde cost for development for services we discussed like cloud saves, control support etc. if people have this much energy over it attack pharmaceutical for there insane mark ups that would drive way more positive social change. But the people driving are mostly trying to make more money by cutting there publishing expenses through steam. I'm sure psn and Xbox also take 25 to 30percent cuts.

They also championed low publishing costs of only 100 dollars to list a game. I don't know enough to speak to their update charges though. Hell psn been known to charge 25k for visibility in top of their 30% cut and there are no other market options Reference

Everyone focuses here cause developers and publishers want more of this cut and to me seem to try to push steam into regulator cross hairs as a way to force the changes they have failed to negotiate.

I would also point out brick and mortar sellers also take 15 to 20% cut and then also charge for storage, disposal, fulfillment, return on and on. Amazon does the same. It's the nature of a market place. Reference

Overall it doesn't make sense to me as a community that we attack our best example of what a game market place should be.

justifying anything by saying they're successful in a free market is really iffy

The important part is why they're successful; unlike many companies which try to lock customers in and take advantage of them as much as possible, Steam/Valve try to build a good product at a reasonable price, and trust that it'll bring them customers.

And look at that, it does.