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Uhhh.... 11 percent. That is the charge back rate in gaming. The "overall" stat for all transactions is something like 3 percent. Card processing isnt free. T

Uhhh.... 11 percent. That is the charge back rate in gaming. The "overall" stat for all transactions is something like 3 percent. Card processing isnt free. There are fees, and supporting card processing still has more humans in the loop than one needs. Never mind all the technology that comes with running the dam platform. Is 30 percent a lot. It sure is. Valve isnt a charity, this is how they chose to make money. Meanwhile, AWS has a 30+ percent margin and I dont see CTO's lining up to run hardware...

gruez 1y ago
>11 percent. That is the charge back rate in gaming. The "overall" stat for all transactions is something like 3 percent. 1. source? 2. How does that justify a 30% rate, when presumably it's clawed back from developers? >Card processing isnt free. There are fees, and supporting card processing still has more humans in the loop than one needs. Never mind all the technology that comes with running the dam platform. Again, nowhere near 30% though >Meanwhile, AWS has a 30+ percent margin and I dont see CTO's lining up to run hardware... 30% margins on renting hardware is totally different than a 30% tax on transactions, and it's disingenuous to imply they're comparable. At the very least amazon needs to spend the other 70% on running servers and investing in datacenters, whereas valve doesn't. It's studios that are actually doing the development. Valve just is charging 30% on top of that. To take an extreme example, compare the 2-3% fees charged by visa vs the ~15% gross margins that car companies make. Even though that's 5x higher, I doubt many are outraged about car companies' profiteering.
- dartharva 1y ago
  Valve also hosts and maintains the game files for consumers to download, and the bandwidth/hardware needed to serve hundreds of GBs for each game to millions of customers across the globe is not trivial.
  - cwillu 1y ago
    And the minefield of user cloud storage; I'm amazed that they've managed to avoid basically any abuses of the service.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- bossyTeacher 1y ago
  I wonder then how you expect valve to operate profitably. Paying for the maintenance and upgrade of equipment, the developers to build the features and SRE to monitor the systems, designers, marketers, HR and lawyers. For some reason, people in tech live under the illusion that everything nontangible should be literally free
  - gruez 1y ago
    >For some reason, people in tech live under the illusion that everything nontangible should be literally free Strawman.
saintfire 1y ago
I would assume it's less than 11% for steam due to their incredibly consumer friendly refund policy.
- immibis 1y ago
  I would think so too - aren't the majority of "gaming" transactions microtransactions in mobile games?
koakuma-chan 1y ago
Is AWS not being forced on CTO's? I don't see what AWS does that you can't self-host in an OVH container.
immibis 1y ago
There are many ways to get people to pay you 30%. Steam and AWS use different strategies. Also AWS's margin should be way higher than 30% if they're not lighting money on fire

gruez 1y ago

>11 percent. That is the charge back rate in gaming. The "overall" stat for all transactions is something like 3 percent. 1. source? 2. How does that justify a 30% rate, when presumably it's clawed back from developers? >Card processing isnt free. There are fees, and supporting card processing still has more humans in the loop than one needs. Never mind all the technology that comes with running the dam platform. Again, nowhere near 30% though >Meanwhile, AWS has a 30+ percent margin and I dont see CTO's lining up to run hardware... 30% margins on renting hardware is totally different than a 30% tax on transactions, and it's disingenuous to imply they're comparable. At the very least amazon needs to spend the other 70% on running servers and investing in datacenters, whereas valve doesn't. It's studios that are actually doing the development. Valve just is charging 30% on top of that. To take an extreme example, compare the 2-3% fees charged by visa vs the ~15% gross margins that car companies make. Even though that's 5x higher, I doubt many are outraged about car companies' profiteering.

dartharva 1y ago
Valve also hosts and maintains the game files for consumers to download, and the bandwidth/hardware needed to serve hundreds of GBs for each game to millions of customers across the globe is not trivial.
- cwillu 1y ago
  And the minefield of user cloud storage; I'm amazed that they've managed to avoid basically any abuses of the service.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
bossyTeacher 1y ago
I wonder then how you expect valve to operate profitably. Paying for the maintenance and upgrade of equipment, the developers to build the features and SRE to monitor the systems, designers, marketers, HR and lawyers. For some reason, people in tech live under the illusion that everything nontangible should be literally free
- gruez 1y ago
  >For some reason, people in tech live under the illusion that everything nontangible should be literally free Strawman.

saintfire 1y ago

I would assume it's less than 11% for steam due to their incredibly consumer friendly refund policy.

immibis 1y ago
I would think so too - aren't the majority of "gaming" transactions microtransactions in mobile games?

koakuma-chan 1y ago

Is AWS not being forced on CTO's? I don't see what AWS does that you can't self-host in an OVH container.

immibis 1y ago

There are many ways to get people to pay you 30%. Steam and AWS use different strategies. Also AWS's margin should be way higher than 30% if they're not lighting money on fire