As much as I agree the 30% cut can be a bit steep, I do appreciate that part of it is going into ongoing R&D like Steam Deck and Proton benefiting the whole gaming industry. I’d like to think of it like Valve are investing into PC innovation similarly to the way Playstation, Xbox and Nintendo do for their new consoles.
A big part is going to buying yachts as well so Valve and Newell could 100% afford to charge a lot less than 30% and still do just as much r&d
To the downvoters: I hurt your feelings by saying that multibillionaire bad? :( Their money comes from your pockets.
https://luxurylaunches.com/transport/gabe-newell-luxury-yachts.php
I don’t know why you’re being down voted, he is literally a billionaire
‘No ethical billionaires’ apart from this guy apparently
I’ve had this conversation so many times and some people just can’t imagine that they might be paying more than they need to just so Gabe can collect yachts… People feel they’re getting their money’s worth because everything they’ve ever bought is priced based on the fact that there’s multimillionaires and billionaires higher up the chain…
AFAIK it falls to a lower percentage if you sell more copies. As to why I dont mind the fee as a consumer; valve invests its earnings into linux gaming and does cool shit like that. I can’t remember the last time i aplauded ea or ubisoft or epic for doing something like that. Oh yeah… it was never. Id sooner applaud Microsoft for investing into a non lucrative venture like accessible gaming accessories. But they aren’t on the same playing field… so from them, I’d expect it.
If i were a developer, I’d let valve eat the 30%. The amount of customers they bring to the table, deal with chargebacks, host the files. That shit isn’t free. Epic has to take such a low amount because they don’t have as many users and can’t produce such sales numbers and don’t have to deal with as many chargebcks and don’t have to waste as much bandwidth hosting the files.
Again, they can afford their R&D while paying their employees more than the industry average and while making the owner a multibillionaire, they 100% could afford to lower their cut without any negative impact on everyone but Gabe Newell.
The lower % starts if a game sells enough copies to make 10m$, Valve has made 3m$ at that point.
Stop defending the people that make you poorer, they’re not your friends, all billionaires exist at the expense of our wealth. All. Of. Them. Are. Evil.