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I watched a talk by GabeN years ago, where he explained his business philosophy (which also had to do with his exit from Microsoft). It was strikingly simple: t
by zamalek 4y ago
I watched a talk by GabeN years ago, where he explained his business philosophy (which also had to do with his exit from Microsoft). It was strikingly simple: treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well (even if the majority of customers don't understand that... yet).
- manchmalscott 4y agoIt totally makes business sense for them to not have to depend on Microsoft (who have their own gaming business) for their customers to play games, we all win when consumers have meaningful alternatives.
- ip26 4y agoIf his customers don’t feel they are being treated well (e.g. they don’t understand, and won’t for years) then does it really fall under that principle?
- Teever 4y agoNeedless pedantism.
- ip26 4y agoIf I explained to you that Musk’s decision to buy Tesla was founded on his principle of “make the requirements less dumb” , would it be pedantry to inquire what I meant?
- zamalek 4y agoThis is more along the lines of Apple having (at least historically) being pro-privacy before the problem became common knowledge.
- gatonegro 4y ago> treat your customers well. Supporting Linux is treating his customers well. It's really won me over, I can say that much. When I was using Windows, I favoured buying games from GOG over Steam whenever possible. DRM and all that. Ever since I moved to Linux, it's been the opposite. GOG couldn't care less about Linux compatibility, and while you can get their stuff going through some combination of Wine/Lutris scripts, the experience I get with Steam is so much better.
- boudin 4y agoI wouldn't put GOG in the same basket as other stores like EGS though, they did make some efforts and officially packaged and distributed games for Linux quite early. It's not the same effort as Valve but it's still to their credit (I'm saying that as a Linux user). Nowdays, Heroic Game Launcher is the easiest option to play GOG games though (as well as EGS ones) https://heroicgameslauncher.com/ https://heroicgameslauncher.com/
- the-smug-one 4y agoI'm sure GOG would care if they had more resources. Valve's push into Linux is because Microsoft is making a big push towards there being a single walled garden store: Microsoft's. Valve is doing this ultimately to benefit themselves. That's of course the case with GOG too, but GOG has very little money to put into any sort of Linux push so they have to lean on Valve's investments.
- als0 4y agoThey’re not even leaning. They’re doing literally nothing. They could easily provide proton wrappers for their games with no effort. But they don’t, it’s all up to the user. Then you spend more time configuring the game than playing it.
- MikusR 4y ago> treat your customers well That's why it took a lawsuit to get refund support for Steam.
- soulofmischief 4y agoThat lawsuit specifically had to do with meeting Australian guidelines. I personally have had zero complaints with the Steam refund system here in America.
- girvo 4y agoThey didn’t have a refund system initially.
- ClassyJacket 4y agoThe Steam refund system in America only exists because of the Australian lawsuit
- foundajob 4y ago
- bombcar 4y agoValve’s customers are the studios. Only half-sarcastically.
- chairmanwow1 4y agoNot really. More like hostage to distribution. If you list your game on Steam, you can't list your game for a cheaper price anywhere else on the internet. People put up with that because they still come out ahead by listing on Steam.
- IshKebab 4y agoIn fairness Steam's prices are very reasonable. I imagine there are ways around it anyway.
- Keyframe 4y agoYet fleecing game developers with 30% cut on sales at the same time. It's a soft big cushion to talk profound thoughts from. Reminds me of billionaires giving advice like "you just have to believe and work hard"... yeah, but that's a low baseline you have to have anyways.
- jlund-molfese 4y agoSales through the store, yes. You’re welcome to sell Steam keys on your own website, and Valve won’t take any cut at all, while still providing the same services as a purchase through the store. See https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys , at face value, it’s a completely reasonable policy.
- satvikpendem 4y agoIf only Apple and Google could do the same.
- Keyframe 4y agoThat's actually quite good and impressive. I haven't realized that.
- neura 4y agoStill comes back to "can you sell enough keys on your own to make up for the amount of sales you get through Steam, even after the 30%?" It's great if you think you have a hot game or product that will be sought after by a large enough audience vs people seeing a game show up in their feed or on sale or a friend is playing it or however it ends up in front of you on Steam, a game that maybe you've never heard of before and now you're going to buy it.
- SatvikBeri 4y agoYou can sell steam keys on your store and sell normally through the Steam Store. The only requirement is to keep the Steam price <= your own store's price. That seems like a very fairy policy.
- firecall 4y agoThe Steam brand and mindshare is second to none in my experience. My tweener kids will preference Steam over all other platforms. They would rather buy/re-buy, or pay more for a game on Steam than use another game launcher. Their are games that are free to play with Xbox game pass, but they would rather buy and play them under Steam. They have negative views on Epic, Ubisoft and so on. Blizzard/Battle.net aren't even on their radar. They are mostly indifferent to MS/Xbox Store. With Steam, the brand respect they have is five-stars!
- christophilus 4y agoIt’s well earned. Steam is BS-free relative to the others on your list. Steam could degrade significantly in quality and customer satisfaction and still handily beat that lot.
- danielheath 4y agoIt has, and it still does. It’s a browser wrapper around a visibly slow site, and it’s far, far better than anything else but I’d rather use my real browser for those parts every time.
- ThatMedicIsASpy 4y agocompare steam to epic if you want a real browser wrapper experience.
- bombolo 4y agoHave you seen how slower is the new authenticator app?
- denkmoon 4y agoI'm the same, as a 30-something. Steam is so much better and Gabe has fostered my undying loyalty. He'd have to shoot my dog to stop me using Steam.
- 4y ago
- ClassyJacket 4y agoThis is the freedom you have when you're not a publicly traded company and don't have the boot of capitalism constantly pressing down on your neck.
- ctack 4y agoIt would be great to see more of this in the world.
- _cenw 4y agoThough, let's be honest, that's not the reason for Valve investing in Linux. Users wouldn't care what's running underneath their games as long as the games run reasonably well. Back about a decade ago there was real concern that Microsoft might lock away modern graphics APIs behind some sort of entitlement and Valve simply didn't want to be dependent on Microsoft.