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Valve is a pretty amazing company that consistently innovates and makes long-term, strategic decisions. Its a real model for a great tech company. Its unique ca

by boh 4y ago

Valve is a pretty amazing company that consistently innovates and makes long-term, strategic decisions. Its a real model for a great tech company. Its unique capital and management structure has insulated it from any real competition. Companies like EA have to constantly turn a profit, cut corners where they can, and think in very short timeframes. Valve is completely private, with mostly (if not complete), owner/manager ownership. There's no managerial hierarchies. Ideas are both welcome and constantly challenged. If it was a public company we would likely see Google-like growth since its inception. Linux-based gaming became a focus for the company for at least the past ten years. Steam Deck is the culmination of a focused, persistent strategy--the type most highly leveraged, public companies with unreasonable growth requirements are completely incapable of facilitating.

nindalf 4y ago
Valve is cool, but they're only able to afford this style of development because they take a 30% cut of all PC gaming revenue. Not profits, revenue. When you're making that much money you can do whatever you want and still stay afloat. They've mismanaged some games (Dota 2), abandoned other games (TF2) and completely messed up other games (Artifact 1 and 2). They have my loyalty as a consumer because they've treated me right. But let's not pretend that their success is tied to their culture or that the culture would work elsewhere. I reckon you could do anything and be successful if you had Steam's revenue rolling in.
- eatsyourtacos 4y ago
  >I reckon you could do anything and be successful if you had Steam's revenue rolling in. I disagree completely. Most people in a company like that would completely take advantage of the monopoly they have and make everything miserable as hell for the end user. I'm hard pressed to think of anything else over the past 20 years that hasn't sold out or been turned to utter trash in one way or another. Steam continues to be absolutely top notch. They have essentially lowered the price of all PC games over the years and added great features like family sharing etc. It just works. It's not some convoluted garbage interface that they try to keep updating every year to stay up with the pace of "modern design". They don't bombard you with crap when you aren't using steam, you don't get random pop ups (like Epic games...) and all that. Anyway- I get what you are saying. Obviously they have some massive revenue to work with.. but I don't think it's as easy as you think to stay successful in the way they have to the end user.
- COGlory 4y ago
  It's not like they have some artificial monopoly though. Developers put their games on Steam (well, some do) because Valve has a huge audience. Valve's audience exists because Steam is a good client and has excellent features, and places the consumer first. Valve has no artificial monopoly, does nothing to keep people on their platform, refuses to even do things like sign exclusivity agreements, and the past decade have seen multiple big publishers (EA, Ubisoft) and developers leave to start their own thing, and then ultimately come back, because they couldn't do as good of a job. It isn't like Apple or Google where you can't be on the platform (phones) without paying a tax. And in the case where Valve actually controls the platform (SteamOS 3), they do nothing to stop other stores from being on it. I can still buy games on GoG, and install and play them on SteamOS. I just choose not to because GoG won't invest in making it as good of an experience. Valve's 30% is well earned, not forced. There's nothing forcing me to buy the next game I buy from Valve, other than that I want to. And they have made me want to by offering an incredible product.
  - TheDesolate0 4y ago
    [dead]
  - nindalf 4y ago
    Big publishers came back because Valve offered them a sweetheart deal, much better than what's offered to small devs. https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-game-marketplace-revenue-split-new-rules-competition https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...
    - COGlory 4y ago
      That article is from 2018. Ubisoft just came back this year. I'm going to guess they're not directly correlated.
  - danShumway 4y ago
    > It's not like they have some artificial monopoly though Eh, as a developer I don't feel like I have a choice. There's a kind of vicious cycle where as a consumer it's honestly kind of difficult to not engage with Steam at all because a lot of games only release on Steam (looking at you, Vampire Survivors, which had an itch.io version during early access and then went Steam exclusive once it came out). Part of the reason for that is that Valve offers a lot of services that you can't use outside of Steam -- you can't just pay for them as a developer, they're exclusive to the Steam version of the game. As a result, a lot of games get kind of locked into the platform or can't afford to offer full compatibility off of Steam. And the end result of that is that a lot of consumers only buy games from Steam. There are some exceptions, but it is remarkably difficult to get consumers to care about a game that's not on Steam, and a lot of the community management then gets centered on Steam. You go off of Steam and you're losing access to Steam Input, you're losing access to mod management -- these are services that could be debundled from Steam, but aren't. Even on the Steam Deck itself, shader caches mean that games you buy from Steam literally perform better than games you buy specifically from a developer because distributing shader caches outside of Steam would be copyright infringement. To their credit, Valve is trying to improve performance in that area, but I have seen multiple people on the Steam Deck subreddit talk about how they've switched over to 100% Steam games specifically because of shader caches. And if you're a developer, that kind of becomes a chicken and an egg problem. You're not going to be able to convince those people to buy from you off of Steam now. So you release on Steam, and then it becomes harder for users to avoid Steam because you're not keeping an itch.io version up to date or it's missing features from the Steam version. So then those users decide they'll only buy from Steam. And it goes round and round. Things are a little complicated, I generally like Valve as a company. But there's no denying that they have a lot of power over the gaming market, and regardless of their intentions, that power tends to be self-reinforcing. Not all of that is Valve's fault necessarily (it's not Valve's fault that the community-run SteamGridDB only allows API usage with a Steam account, making it useless for fetching artwork outside of Steam). But regardless of who's fault it is, the more that communities centralize around services the harder it is to build alternatives to them. Consider something like Steam Input; good luck launching an alternative that's missing the thousands of user-submitted input configurations that are locked into Steam. You import a game from a 3rd-party storefront? Unless you're very particular about naming, you no longer have community input configs. That kind of stuff tends to create a lock-in effect where consumers feel like they can't buy games outside of Steam without sacrificing features, and so developers basically have to release there.
- boh 4y ago
  EA and Activision are a great counter-example of how "you could do anything" with revenue can vary from company to company. I think Valve's success being tied to their culture is pretty easy to prove, since as you say "they have my loyalty". How many other gaming platforms have done the same (particularly those aged 25< years)? I'm sure developers would love to pay less than 30%, but how is that cost compare to Valve's competitors? Valve is a for-profit venture and make their decisions based on the current economic environment.
- SpacePortKnight 4y ago
  Steam is just a better product, period. It does not spy or beg for your defaults like Windows. The review system is great, downloads are fast, and the community is awesome. No other platfrom provides this.

by boh 4y ago

nindalf 4y ago

Valve is cool, but they're only able to afford this style of development because they take a 30% cut of all PC gaming revenue. Not profits, revenue. When you're making that much money you can do whatever you want and still stay afloat. They've mismanaged some games (Dota 2), abandoned other games (TF2) and completely messed up other games (Artifact 1 and 2). They have my loyalty as a consumer because they've treated me right. But let's not pretend that their success is tied to their culture or that the culture would work elsewhere. I reckon you could do anything and be successful if you had Steam's revenue rolling in.

eatsyourtacos 4y ago
>I reckon you could do anything and be successful if you had Steam's revenue rolling in. I disagree completely. Most people in a company like that would completely take advantage of the monopoly they have and make everything miserable as hell for the end user. I'm hard pressed to think of anything else over the past 20 years that hasn't sold out or been turned to utter trash in one way or another. Steam continues to be absolutely top notch. They have essentially lowered the price of all PC games over the years and added great features like family sharing etc. It just works. It's not some convoluted garbage interface that they try to keep updating every year to stay up with the pace of "modern design". They don't bombard you with crap when you aren't using steam, you don't get random pop ups (like Epic games...) and all that. Anyway- I get what you are saying. Obviously they have some massive revenue to work with.. but I don't think it's as easy as you think to stay successful in the way they have to the end user.
COGlory 4y ago
It's not like they have some artificial monopoly though. Developers put their games on Steam (well, some do) because Valve has a huge audience. Valve's audience exists because Steam is a good client and has excellent features, and places the consumer first. Valve has no artificial monopoly, does nothing to keep people on their platform, refuses to even do things like sign exclusivity agreements, and the past decade have seen multiple big publishers (EA, Ubisoft) and developers leave to start their own thing, and then ultimately come back, because they couldn't do as good of a job. It isn't like Apple or Google where you can't be on the platform (phones) without paying a tax. And in the case where Valve actually controls the platform (SteamOS 3), they do nothing to stop other stores from being on it. I can still buy games on GoG, and install and play them on SteamOS. I just choose not to because GoG won't invest in making it as good of an experience. Valve's 30% is well earned, not forced. There's nothing forcing me to buy the next game I buy from Valve, other than that I want to. And they have made me want to by offering an incredible product.
- TheDesolate0 4y ago
  [dead]
- nindalf 4y ago
  Big publishers came back because Valve offered them a sweetheart deal, much better than what's offered to small devs. https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-game-marketplace-revenue-split-new-rules-competition https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-gam...
  - COGlory 4y ago
    That article is from 2018. Ubisoft just came back this year. I'm going to guess they're not directly correlated.
- danShumway 4y ago
  > It's not like they have some artificial monopoly though Eh, as a developer I don't feel like I have a choice. There's a kind of vicious cycle where as a consumer it's honestly kind of difficult to not engage with Steam at all because a lot of games only release on Steam (looking at you, Vampire Survivors, which had an itch.io version during early access and then went Steam exclusive once it came out). Part of the reason for that is that Valve offers a lot of services that you can't use outside of Steam -- you can't just pay for them as a developer, they're exclusive to the Steam version of the game. As a result, a lot of games get kind of locked into the platform or can't afford to offer full compatibility off of Steam. And the end result of that is that a lot of consumers only buy games from Steam. There are some exceptions, but it is remarkably difficult to get consumers to care about a game that's not on Steam, and a lot of the community management then gets centered on Steam. You go off of Steam and you're losing access to Steam Input, you're losing access to mod management -- these are services that could be debundled from Steam, but aren't. Even on the Steam Deck itself, shader caches mean that games you buy from Steam literally perform better than games you buy specifically from a developer because distributing shader caches outside of Steam would be copyright infringement. To their credit, Valve is trying to improve performance in that area, but I have seen multiple people on the Steam Deck subreddit talk about how they've switched over to 100% Steam games specifically because of shader caches. And if you're a developer, that kind of becomes a chicken and an egg problem. You're not going to be able to convince those people to buy from you off of Steam now. So you release on Steam, and then it becomes harder for users to avoid Steam because you're not keeping an itch.io version up to date or it's missing features from the Steam version. So then those users decide they'll only buy from Steam. And it goes round and round. Things are a little complicated, I generally like Valve as a company. But there's no denying that they have a lot of power over the gaming market, and regardless of their intentions, that power tends to be self-reinforcing. Not all of that is Valve's fault necessarily (it's not Valve's fault that the community-run SteamGridDB only allows API usage with a Steam account, making it useless for fetching artwork outside of Steam). But regardless of who's fault it is, the more that communities centralize around services the harder it is to build alternatives to them. Consider something like Steam Input; good luck launching an alternative that's missing the thousands of user-submitted input configurations that are locked into Steam. You import a game from a 3rd-party storefront? Unless you're very particular about naming, you no longer have community input configs. That kind of stuff tends to create a lock-in effect where consumers feel like they can't buy games outside of Steam without sacrificing features, and so developers basically have to release there.
boh 4y ago
EA and Activision are a great counter-example of how "you could do anything" with revenue can vary from company to company. I think Valve's success being tied to their culture is pretty easy to prove, since as you say "they have my loyalty". How many other gaming platforms have done the same (particularly those aged 25< years)? I'm sure developers would love to pay less than 30%, but how is that cost compare to Valve's competitors? Valve is a for-profit venture and make their decisions based on the current economic environment.
SpacePortKnight 4y ago
Steam is just a better product, period. It does not spy or beg for your defaults like Windows. The review system is great, downloads are fast, and the community is awesome. No other platfrom provides this.