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This article has the timeline wrong about Steam. Steam was established earlier than the App Store, and everything you buy there is very locked down to the Stea

by bni 6y ago

This article has the timeline wrong about Steam. Steam was established earlier than the App Store, and everything you buy there is very locked down to the Steam platform. Try uninstalling Steam and still play your bought games and they wont work. Also Steam has an even higher rate than 30%. Yet Steam get a free pass in most rants like this, why is that?

Heliosmaster 6y ago
Because you can sell your games to the same customers, same machines, outside of Steam. You can't do that with iOS.
teraflop 6y ago
This is flat-out false. It's true that many games on Steam use DRM of some kind (either through Steam itself or a third party) but there are many others that don't, and can be used with no restrictions once you download them with the Steam client. This page is just a quick Google away: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games
Ndymium 6y ago
Do you have a source for Steam's rates? From what I can find by searching, it seems to be 30%, going down to 25 or 20% for more popular games.
toast0 6y ago
From other threads, Steam lets developers generate steam codes for free, and sell them elsewhere; it only gets its cut if the sale happens on Steam. They also don't have a history of making inconsistent review decisions that seem to be business oriented rather than customer oriented. I'm sure there's some examples, but most of the publicized removals have been for things like totally broken in unfun ways games, and games where a totally different game was published in the same slot. Often, customers get refunded for purchases when things like that happen. I think Steam has also earned a fair amount of goodwill by not being as terrible as most other game download services, but maybe that's just my perspective.
dandellion 6y ago
Because the only people who use Steam are those who are happy with it. People that don't like Steam can use the Microsoft Store, Epic Store, Origin, GOG, the Ubisoft Store, buy physical copies, etc. so they probably just do that instead of complaining about Steam. And the same goes to publishers, in fact many of those stores were created by publishers that weren't happy with Steam's cut.

by bni 6y ago

Heliosmaster 6y ago

Because you can sell your games to the same customers, same machines, outside of Steam. You can't do that with iOS.

teraflop 6y ago

This is flat-out false. It's true that many games on Steam use DRM of some kind (either through Steam itself or a third party) but there are many others that don't, and can be used with no restrictions once you download them with the Steam client. This page is just a quick Google away: https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games https://steam.fandom.com/wiki/List_of_DRM-free_games

Ndymium 6y ago

Do you have a source for Steam's rates? From what I can find by searching, it seems to be 30%, going down to 25 or 20% for more popular games.

toast0 6y ago

From other threads, Steam lets developers generate steam codes for free, and sell them elsewhere; it only gets its cut if the sale happens on Steam. They also don't have a history of making inconsistent review decisions that seem to be business oriented rather than customer oriented. I'm sure there's some examples, but most of the publicized removals have been for things like totally broken in unfun ways games, and games where a totally different game was published in the same slot. Often, customers get refunded for purchases when things like that happen. I think Steam has also earned a fair amount of goodwill by not being as terrible as most other game download services, but maybe that's just my perspective.

dandellion 6y ago

Because the only people who use Steam are those who are happy with it. People that don't like Steam can use the Microsoft Store, Epic Store, Origin, GOG, the Ubisoft Store, buy physical copies, etc. so they probably just do that instead of complaining about Steam. And the same goes to publishers, in fact many of those stores were created by publishers that weren't happy with Steam's cut.