7 ms·

Valve makes a significant amount of their money from the gambling they've attached to their games, and profits immensely from the culture of farming loot boxes

Valve makes a significant amount of their money from the gambling they've attached to their games, and profits immensely from the culture of farming loot boxes to gamble on for skins and such. They also take an absurd cut of developer income and saddle devs with costs that they don't always want. (Selling on Steam? Valve takes 30% and forces you to moderate the forums on your listing page that you cannot opt out of.) They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. Valve has done some cool stuff, but let's not lionize them too much. They are probably better than an average company, for sure, but it's important to remember that they are also sketchy in some very gross ways as well.

abtinf 11mo ago
> but it's important to remember that ... as well Hello LLM.
Bombthecat 11mo ago
How much money do they make through counter strike loot boxes and selling games etc?
umvi 11mo ago
I'm happier to pay Valve's 30% than Apple's. With Valve you could always switch to Itch or something if you didn't want to pay, but with Apple you have no alternative. Valve gives you access to a huge player base and lots of useful marketing tools and such.
- worldfoodgood 11mo ago
  Ok! Happier is a fine place to be. They are both still too high. Not everything has to be binary -- I can think Valve is offering some utility and also think that Valve is charging too much for that utility. The fact that Gabe has a billion dollars worth of yachts probably suggests that maybe, just maaaaaybe, that 30% could be lower and Steam could still provide you the same level of marketing support and player base.
  - bigyabai 11mo ago
    > They are both still too high. You don't get to decide that. Apple's price is not set by free market competition, Valve's is.
    - ceejayoz 11mo ago
      Apple's price definitely gets affected by competition. https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/19/apple-may-lower-app-store-commission-report/ https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/19/apple-may-lower-app-store-com... https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-store-small-business-program/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s...
      - bigyabai 11mo ago
        I didn't say "affected" though, I said set. Valve plays by common rules, Apple does not.
        ceejayoz 11mo ago
        This is an odd attempt at a gotcha. Neither Valve nor Apple has their cut “set” by the market. Both are “affected” by market influences.
    - rcxdude 11mo ago
      Valve's price is still very strongly predicated on network effects which make it very hard to avoid.
      - DaSHacka 11mo ago
        Almost like they make the best game distribution platform around for customers, and thus customers flock to it.
      - jsheard 11mo ago
        Indeed, when big publishers like EA and Ubisoft started leaving Steam they introduced a tiered pricing system which progressively reduces the cut to 25% or 20% after tens of millions of dollars in revenue, to lure those AAA juggernauts back. The price is now indirectly based on how much leverage you have over Valve - Ubisoft can get away with not releasing their games on Steam, so they pay 20%, while small-to-medium studios effectively have no choice, so they pay 30%. It's especially backwards when you consider that those AAA games put far more strain on Steams infrastructure with their >150GB install sizes.
- 0xbadcafebee 11mo ago
  > Valve gives you access to a huge player base and lots of useful marketing tools and such. So does Apple. Despite this, they are both engaged in rent-seeking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking), which has a harmful effect on everyone but them. Imagine if roads weren't public, but were built by a single private company. You have a business that moves goods by truck. You can use the private company's roads, but only if you pay 30% of the profit of your goods to the company that owns the roads. It only takes 2% of the profit to maintain the roads; the other 28% is profit (rent) for the road-owning company. You could choose not to use the roads. But then the only way to deliver the goods is by parachute (which may be possible, but isn't practical). So you use the roads. But this means you have to jack up your prices to make any profit for yourself. Competing is much harder (tighter margins), and your customers are paying more than necessary. Everyone's life is harder, except for the road company.
  - roggenilsson 11mo ago
    >Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth Would the PC video game market be bigger or smaller without steam?
    - Loughla 11mo ago
      I think it would be smaller. While I hate always connected DRM, and lamented the death of physical media when steam got huge (and also refused to get a steam account for years for that reason), we would have multiple shitty stores if steam didn't exist, I think. Look at epic and all the other distributors. Their stores are terrible and that's with the inherent competition of going against steam. Imagine if they were the only game in town. . .
      - Ekaros 11mo ago
        Also looking at history. Download stores run by game stores. Or some startup. Some random extra DRM involved. Shut down in a few years without recourse... Just imagine that repeating every few years. Maybe fine for Linux and Mac users who expect no longevity from their purchases. But as PC user, no not acceptable.
- ThrowawayR2 11mo ago
  You are happy now and will probably be for as long as Gabe Newell is in charge of Valve. (He's 63, by the way; not quite elderly but not young either.) After he retires, well, Valve, as the dominant gatekeeper for PC gaming, has a lot of opportunities for cranking up monetization that investors would just love to get their hands on.
  - scheeseman486 11mo ago
    So it's either choosing to buy from a company that might become public after the owner dies which then succumbs to the rot that you admit is inevitable with public companies. Or choosing the companies that are already public that is already exploitative and only interested in short term gains? That's actually a very easy choice to make.
    - pseudalopex 11mo ago
      Investors did not imply public. Enshittification is not limited to public companies. They did not say it was inevitable. Are GOG exploitative and only interested in short term gains?
- knollimar 11mo ago
  Don't they have a disgusting most favored nations clause that prohibits you from pricing anywhere else lower (e.g. you can't raise price X by 42% and sell on your site for X)? I think they're being sued over delisting someone for this last I checked, even if their public policy might not interpret their MFN that way
xinayder 11mo ago
> They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. Source?
- tyg13 11mo ago
  No, that's the game engine.
- worldfoodgood 11mo ago
  A couple sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-organizing-utopia-6d32d329ecdb https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-...
  - o11c 11mo ago
    The second link is paywalled, but from the various sources I looked at, the diversity problems with Valve seem limited to "Valve refuses to spend company time/effort to support my cause". I have not seen any concrete claims of misbehavior, in direct contrast to some other video game companies. Additionally, when I actually look into the alleged statistics of claims that "Valve is primarily white and male", the numbers ... don't actually look that bad? We shouldn't expect any company to fit national demographics exactly.
    - worldfoodgood 11mo ago
      Additional allegations of discrimination: https://discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com/valve-corporation-face-over-3m-in-damages-for-transgender-discrimination/ https://discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com/valve-c... Allegations of unpaid labor: https://web.archive.org/web/20160209211205/https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44yl24/how_a_whole_language_of_the_steam_translation/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160209211205/https://www.reddi...
      - jimbokun 11mo ago
xhrpost 11mo ago
If you were a dev selling a game years ago when physical distribution was the only method, you'd likely end up with a lot less than 70% after both the publisher and retailer take their cut. https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/story/2010-02-19/anatomy-of-a-60-video-game https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/sto...
- worldfoodgood 11mo ago
  [flagged]
  - aquariusDue 11mo ago
    Well yeah, but nobody stops you from doing what Notch did with Minecraft way back when you just bought it from the games website. itch.io and so on are still alternatives, you're not paying just for ease of digital distribution you're also paying for eyeballs.
    - dymk 11mo ago
      Your publisher stops you from doing that because they require you to sell it on steam and other storefronts
- kwanbix 11mo ago
  The difference is that the company had to risk manufacturing cartridges, distributing them, etc. If the game didn't sell, you ended up with lots of money lost. Steam is much much easier for Valve. I am not saying it has a value, but 30% seems a lot. Of course, in the end that 30% we end up paying it ourselves.
  - throwuxiytayq 11mo ago
    It clearly isn’t easy, given that nobody else is doing it their way. Maintaining the company culture might be the toughest challenge of them all. The other game storefronts simply can’t resist muddying the water for the consumer, making the shopping experience hostile for some stupid ass monetization reasons. Shopping on Steam is a breeze, and it always feels like the store is on your side trying to help, instead of trying to get in the way. The developer-side publishing experience is much similar.
Forgeties79 11mo ago
10% if it’s a Linux copy ;)
sugarpimpdorsey 11mo ago
> They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. If they don't like the culture, then they should work elsewhere. I hear Google is hiring. Nothing worse than joining a company you contributed zero to building from the ground up, then unilaterally deciding the culture needs to change according to your whims, right now. You might feel uncomfortable working in a black barber shop. Or a cat cafe with pet allergies. You've contributed nothing to their business, they shouldn't have to change for you.
- worldfoodgood 11mo ago
  What nonsense. A decision about workplace should be a combination of factors -- workplace culture, products you can work on, compensation, skill fit, alignment with your interests, etc. You should feel empowered to have a voice in the products of your labor. And you should feel empowered to have a voice in the culture that produces those products.
  - sugarpimpdorsey 11mo ago
    They're a game company. They're not feeding the poor. Your employment is "at will". You are not entitled to any item in your list of demands. You are, however, free to leave at any time for something more suited to your tastes.
    - worldfoodgood 11mo ago
      > You are not entitled to any item in your list of demands. Can you point to the word entitled in my posts? Or are you putting words in my mouth? Can you point to any demands? Or are you arguing against something I didn't say?
      - thereisnospork 11mo ago
        You seem to be misunderstanding how language works? Can you please explain why you think the literal word entitled had to be said by you here? You listed a bunch of things which should be, an opinion, he says your not entitled to those things, a probable fact relevant to the likelihood of attaining your professed desires, and he then offers a solution if you are unhappy with not having the things you professed 'should' be afforded.
kotaKat 11mo ago
> They also take an absurd cut of developer income and saddle devs with costs that they don't always want. Fun fact: Nintendo's revenue split on WiiWare was 60/40, and required minimum downloads to even get your revenue out of Big N.
vkou 11mo ago
Valve charges 30% for access to their marketplace, and allows you to sell Steam keys for your game at whatever price you want through your own sales channels, without paying Valve a cent. I'm not sure how any of that is sketchy or gross. As far as marketplaces and platforms go, this is quite reasonable, and there are many successful games which are either not on Steam, or are cross-listed on multiple platforms, or are cross-listed on both Steam and the developer's own distribution channel. I'll give you lootboxes, they are pretty shitty.
eckmLJE 11mo ago
I appreciate what you've posted here. Valve fanboyism is widespread (I'm guilty of it too) and while they are shoulders above the alternatives, it's a good reminder that no one's perfect and I'll be sure to take a closer look at the company in the future.
- worldfoodgood 11mo ago
  That's all I was saying. Valve is way ahead of most of the rest of everyone else. But they are still shady. We should be ok with pointing at the shady parts of things we like and going, "It would be better if it were not so shady." Valve is good in many ways! Valve would be better if it didn't profit from getting kids to gamble on skins!
throw10920 11mo ago
The only thing absurd is this comment. > They also take an absurd cut of developer income 30%-20% is by no means "absurd", given the incredible value that Steam provides to developers: content delivery, payment processing, cloud saves, ratings, game tags, social integration, wishlisting and sale notification, search indexing, game discovery, a bunch of incredibly useful APIs including networking and input, Linux compatibility, and many, many other things. In fact, 30% of revenue is well under what it would cost me to implement all of the features that I want from Steam as a developer, unless I somehow won the jackpot and ended up selling millions of copies (in which case I would end up only paying 20% of revenue anyway). > and saddle devs with costs that they don't always want. (Selling on Steam? Valve takes 30% Which you already mentioned, while somehow conveniently omitting the fact that the cut decreases to 20% if your revenue is high enough. > and forces you to moderate the forums on your listing page that you cannot opt out of This is the single possibly objectionable thing here. > They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. ~~Allegations~~ mean nothing. Are there successful lawsuits? > Valve has done some cool stuff, but let's not lionize them too much. Valve is incomparably better than every other major game distribution platform, which is the comparison that we're making. You are very intentionally making manipulative and dishonest points to try to paint Valve as worst than it is. Which makes sense, because you're a throwaway account.

abtinf 11mo ago

> but it's important to remember that ... as well Hello LLM.

Bombthecat 11mo ago

How much money do they make through counter strike loot boxes and selling games etc?

umvi 11mo ago

I'm happier to pay Valve's 30% than Apple's. With Valve you could always switch to Itch or something if you didn't want to pay, but with Apple you have no alternative. Valve gives you access to a huge player base and lots of useful marketing tools and such.

worldfoodgood 11mo ago
Ok! Happier is a fine place to be. They are both still too high. Not everything has to be binary -- I can think Valve is offering some utility and also think that Valve is charging too much for that utility. The fact that Gabe has a billion dollars worth of yachts probably suggests that maybe, just maaaaaybe, that 30% could be lower and Steam could still provide you the same level of marketing support and player base.
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  > They are both still too high. You don't get to decide that. Apple's price is not set by free market competition, Valve's is.
  - ceejayoz 11mo ago
    Apple's price definitely gets affected by competition. https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/19/apple-may-lower-app-store-commission-report/ https://9to5mac.com/2025/05/19/apple-may-lower-app-store-com... https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-store-small-business-program/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/11/apple-announces-app-s...
    - bigyabai 11mo ago
      I didn't say "affected" though, I said set. Valve plays by common rules, Apple does not.
      - ceejayoz 11mo ago
        This is an odd attempt at a gotcha. Neither Valve nor Apple has their cut “set” by the market. Both are “affected” by market influences.
  - rcxdude 11mo ago
    Valve's price is still very strongly predicated on network effects which make it very hard to avoid.
    - DaSHacka 11mo ago
      Almost like they make the best game distribution platform around for customers, and thus customers flock to it.
    - jsheard 11mo ago
      Indeed, when big publishers like EA and Ubisoft started leaving Steam they introduced a tiered pricing system which progressively reduces the cut to 25% or 20% after tens of millions of dollars in revenue, to lure those AAA juggernauts back. The price is now indirectly based on how much leverage you have over Valve - Ubisoft can get away with not releasing their games on Steam, so they pay 20%, while small-to-medium studios effectively have no choice, so they pay 30%. It's especially backwards when you consider that those AAA games put far more strain on Steams infrastructure with their >150GB install sizes.
0xbadcafebee 11mo ago
> Valve gives you access to a huge player base and lots of useful marketing tools and such. So does Apple. Despite this, they are both engaged in rent-seeking (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking), which has a harmful effect on everyone but them. Imagine if roads weren't public, but were built by a single private company. You have a business that moves goods by truck. You can use the private company's roads, but only if you pay 30% of the profit of your goods to the company that owns the roads. It only takes 2% of the profit to maintain the roads; the other 28% is profit (rent) for the road-owning company. You could choose not to use the roads. But then the only way to deliver the goods is by parachute (which may be possible, but isn't practical). So you use the roads. But this means you have to jack up your prices to make any profit for yourself. Competing is much harder (tighter margins), and your customers are paying more than necessary. Everyone's life is harder, except for the road company.
- roggenilsson 11mo ago
  >Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating public policy or economic conditions without creating new wealth Would the PC video game market be bigger or smaller without steam?
  - Loughla 11mo ago
    I think it would be smaller. While I hate always connected DRM, and lamented the death of physical media when steam got huge (and also refused to get a steam account for years for that reason), we would have multiple shitty stores if steam didn't exist, I think. Look at epic and all the other distributors. Their stores are terrible and that's with the inherent competition of going against steam. Imagine if they were the only game in town. . .
    - Ekaros 11mo ago
      Also looking at history. Download stores run by game stores. Or some startup. Some random extra DRM involved. Shut down in a few years without recourse... Just imagine that repeating every few years. Maybe fine for Linux and Mac users who expect no longevity from their purchases. But as PC user, no not acceptable.
ThrowawayR2 11mo ago
You are happy now and will probably be for as long as Gabe Newell is in charge of Valve. (He's 63, by the way; not quite elderly but not young either.) After he retires, well, Valve, as the dominant gatekeeper for PC gaming, has a lot of opportunities for cranking up monetization that investors would just love to get their hands on.
- scheeseman486 11mo ago
  So it's either choosing to buy from a company that might become public after the owner dies which then succumbs to the rot that you admit is inevitable with public companies. Or choosing the companies that are already public that is already exploitative and only interested in short term gains? That's actually a very easy choice to make.
  - pseudalopex 11mo ago
    Investors did not imply public. Enshittification is not limited to public companies. They did not say it was inevitable. Are GOG exploitative and only interested in short term gains?
knollimar 11mo ago
Don't they have a disgusting most favored nations clause that prohibits you from pricing anywhere else lower (e.g. you can't raise price X by 42% and sell on your site for X)? I think they're being sued over delisting someone for this last I checked, even if their public policy might not interpret their MFN that way

xinayder 11mo ago

> They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. Source?

tyg13 11mo ago
No, that's the game engine.
worldfoodgood 11mo ago
A couple sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9aCwCKgkLo https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-organizing-utopia-6d32d329ecdb https://medium.com/dunia-media/the-nightmare-of-valves-self-...
- o11c 11mo ago
  The second link is paywalled, but from the various sources I looked at, the diversity problems with Valve seem limited to "Valve refuses to spend company time/effort to support my cause". I have not seen any concrete claims of misbehavior, in direct contrast to some other video game companies. Additionally, when I actually look into the alleged statistics of claims that "Valve is primarily white and male", the numbers ... don't actually look that bad? We shouldn't expect any company to fit national demographics exactly.
  - worldfoodgood 11mo ago
    Additional allegations of discrimination: https://discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com/valve-corporation-face-over-3m-in-damages-for-transgender-discrimination/ https://discriminationandsexualharassmentlawyers.com/valve-c... Allegations of unpaid labor: https://web.archive.org/web/20160209211205/https://www.reddit.com/r/Steam/comments/44yl24/how_a_whole_language_of_the_steam_translation/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160209211205/https://www.reddi...
    - jimbokun 11mo ago

xhrpost 11mo ago

If you were a dev selling a game years ago when physical distribution was the only method, you'd likely end up with a lot less than 70% after both the publisher and retailer take their cut. https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/story/2010-02-19/anatomy-of-a-60-video-game https://www.latimes.com/archives/blogs/company-town-blog/sto...

worldfoodgood 11mo ago
[flagged]
- aquariusDue 11mo ago
  Well yeah, but nobody stops you from doing what Notch did with Minecraft way back when you just bought it from the games website. itch.io and so on are still alternatives, you're not paying just for ease of digital distribution you're also paying for eyeballs.
  - dymk 11mo ago
    Your publisher stops you from doing that because they require you to sell it on steam and other storefronts
kwanbix 11mo ago
The difference is that the company had to risk manufacturing cartridges, distributing them, etc. If the game didn't sell, you ended up with lots of money lost. Steam is much much easier for Valve. I am not saying it has a value, but 30% seems a lot. Of course, in the end that 30% we end up paying it ourselves.
- throwuxiytayq 11mo ago
  It clearly isn’t easy, given that nobody else is doing it their way. Maintaining the company culture might be the toughest challenge of them all. The other game storefronts simply can’t resist muddying the water for the consumer, making the shopping experience hostile for some stupid ass monetization reasons. Shopping on Steam is a breeze, and it always feels like the store is on your side trying to help, instead of trying to get in the way. The developer-side publishing experience is much similar.

Forgeties79 11mo ago

10% if it’s a Linux copy ;)

sugarpimpdorsey 11mo ago

> They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. If they don't like the culture, then they should work elsewhere. I hear Google is hiring. Nothing worse than joining a company you contributed zero to building from the ground up, then unilaterally deciding the culture needs to change according to your whims, right now. You might feel uncomfortable working in a black barber shop. Or a cat cafe with pet allergies. You've contributed nothing to their business, they shouldn't have to change for you.

worldfoodgood 11mo ago
What nonsense. A decision about workplace should be a combination of factors -- workplace culture, products you can work on, compensation, skill fit, alignment with your interests, etc. You should feel empowered to have a voice in the products of your labor. And you should feel empowered to have a voice in the culture that produces those products.
- sugarpimpdorsey 11mo ago
  They're a game company. They're not feeding the poor. Your employment is "at will". You are not entitled to any item in your list of demands. You are, however, free to leave at any time for something more suited to your tastes.
  - worldfoodgood 11mo ago
    > You are not entitled to any item in your list of demands. Can you point to the word entitled in my posts? Or are you putting words in my mouth? Can you point to any demands? Or are you arguing against something I didn't say?
    - thereisnospork 11mo ago
      You seem to be misunderstanding how language works? Can you please explain why you think the literal word entitled had to be said by you here? You listed a bunch of things which should be, an opinion, he says your not entitled to those things, a probable fact relevant to the likelihood of attaining your professed desires, and he then offers a solution if you are unhappy with not having the things you professed 'should' be afforded.

kotaKat 11mo ago

> They also take an absurd cut of developer income and saddle devs with costs that they don't always want. Fun fact: Nintendo's revenue split on WiiWare was 60/40, and required minimum downloads to even get your revenue out of Big N.

vkou 11mo ago

Valve charges 30% for access to their marketplace, and allows you to sell Steam keys for your game at whatever price you want through your own sales channels, without paying Valve a cent. I'm not sure how any of that is sketchy or gross. As far as marketplaces and platforms go, this is quite reasonable, and there are many successful games which are either not on Steam, or are cross-listed on multiple platforms, or are cross-listed on both Steam and the developer's own distribution channel. I'll give you lootboxes, they are pretty shitty.

eckmLJE 11mo ago

I appreciate what you've posted here. Valve fanboyism is widespread (I'm guilty of it too) and while they are shoulders above the alternatives, it's a good reminder that no one's perfect and I'll be sure to take a closer look at the company in the future.

worldfoodgood 11mo ago
That's all I was saying. Valve is way ahead of most of the rest of everyone else. But they are still shady. We should be ok with pointing at the shady parts of things we like and going, "It would be better if it were not so shady." Valve is good in many ways! Valve would be better if it didn't profit from getting kids to gamble on skins!

throw10920 11mo ago

The only thing absurd is this comment. > They also take an absurd cut of developer income 30%-20% is by no means "absurd", given the incredible value that Steam provides to developers: content delivery, payment processing, cloud saves, ratings, game tags, social integration, wishlisting and sale notification, search indexing, game discovery, a bunch of incredibly useful APIs including networking and input, Linux compatibility, and many, many other things. In fact, 30% of revenue is well under what it would cost me to implement all of the features that I want from Steam as a developer, unless I somehow won the jackpot and ended up selling millions of copies (in which case I would end up only paying 20% of revenue anyway). > and saddle devs with costs that they don't always want. (Selling on Steam? Valve takes 30% Which you already mentioned, while somehow conveniently omitting the fact that the cut decreases to 20% if your revenue is high enough. > and forces you to moderate the forums on your listing page that you cannot opt out of This is the single possibly objectionable thing here. > They also have an internal culture that's been fairly regularly criticized as being pretty uncomfortable for women and minorities. ~~Allegations~~ mean nothing. Are there successful lawsuits? > Valve has done some cool stuff, but let's not lionize them too much. Valve is incomparably better than every other major game distribution platform, which is the comparison that we're making. You are very intentionally making manipulative and dishonest points to try to paint Valve as worst than it is. Which makes sense, because you're a throwaway account.