Community MetaSteam | July 2021 - Corporate Propaganda

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I've started Lost Heroes on Citra :blobreview:

We'll see how far I get. There is no fan translation, so right now I'm trial and erroring my way through the menus and items (game is only in Japanese). It's a dungeon crawler with Gundams, Ultramen, and Kamen Riders. It's like a weird dream come true for me. Blobbers with Kamen Riders? Hell yes. I doubt there will ever be a fan translation, seems like this stuff falls on the more obscure side of things. Even old Kamen Rider games can never seem to get a simple menu translation. Oh well...

I'll keep reporting back on my progress. I'm really loving it so far, would love it more if I knew what was happening :face-with-tears-of-joy:

Here's the OP song:

 
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Tizoc said:
If one were to buy this particular game, one would pay EUR 10, and the dev got a good cut from it; why is them getting a better cut from this such a bad thing?
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This is a very interesting discussion you guys are having, it's fascinating to follow. My point of view is that of a simple customer so keep that in mind as I explain my position which is in short as follows: I don't mind developers making more money but I am happy with the current situation and I don't have any incentive to support rocking the boat.

This whole EGS thing has shown us that many developers will prioritize their own monetary gain over their customers. As they should, it's a business after all, I don't begrudge that. However, if developers are willing to compromise the customer experience by offering their game exclusively through a bad service, I feel I am well within my rights as a customer to prioritize my customer experience over the developer's monetary gain.

So it all comes down to what is more beneficial to me. A well funded Valve means I get a quasi platform holder pushing and improving PC gaming. It means I get the Steam Deck. An individual developer making 7% more money gets me... what? A slightly better game? I don't think it's worth it. Maybe Valve dropping its cut won't impact its operations at all. But maybe it will, and I don't see any reason to support rolling the dice.

More importantly, I don't trust most developers to be able to look at the big picture. It's understandable, it's hard to do so when you have to fight every day for your business' short-term viability, but I can't forget that most of these developers were ready to call time of death on PC gaming 15 years ago. Simply put, I don't trust them at all to not kill the goose that laid the golden eggs.
 
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I just realized that FF collection won't be featured in the top seller weekly chart because bundles are not included and as separated SKUs they are not close to top 10 as most people are buying the complete collection. Damn it. U_U
 
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I was this close...... To buying a 18 inch DQ Slime Plush for just $75..... But dang $50 shipping sure is expensive. That one place was doing free shipping and I waited to the last minute to order some stuff. It's crazy how to big/small of a difference free shipping can do.
 
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Mor said:
I just realized that FF collection won't be featured in the top seller weekly chart because bundles are not included and as separated SKUs they are not close to top 10 as most people are buying the complete collection. Damn it. U_U
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also the regional pricing is beyond trash 🚮
 
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Knurek said:
Fans happened, as usual with their ports.
Steam Community :: Guide :: How to unlock or set the framerate
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Oh why would i have ever thought you spoke of an official patch

630639947543609364.png
 
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fantomena said:
No new big PS5 game this fall means Bloodborne remaster confirmed. Or at least a PC port confirmed. Sony still wants money.
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Considering the remaster will be exclusive to PS5 for a while....That can't be right.

Hopefully it's God of War PC this fall.
 
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Neowin does a weekly summary of all the events and deals going on. Pretty cool! Could use work, like including non-Humble bundles.
www.neowin.net

Weekend PC Game Deals: It's raining franchise sales

This weekend's PC game deals include a couple of new gaming bundles from Humble, more Epic Games Store freebies, free events from all corners, plus a whole bunch of franchise sales.
www.neowin.net www.neowin.net
Bundles:
Humble's Early Access All-Stars Bundle
Humble's RPG Heroes collection
Humble Choice for July 2021

Giveaways:
Mothergunship (Epic)
Train Sim World 2 (Epic)
Wanderlust: Transsiberian (GOG)

Free Events:
Marvel's Avengers
Grounded
Two Point Hospital
Golf with Your Friends
 
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Tomasety said:


👀

Mmm, "an major", this could be a sign of fake news :(. Sorry if its the case in the end.
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Didn't Nvidia bought everything related to 3dfx?

Also.... "The official Twitter handle for 3dfx. Need technical support? Our experts are here for you 24/7." and "Joined July 2021"... yeah, I'm going with fake.

But boy does that bring some memories. The first game I saw running on a Voodoo 1 was Tomb Raider and it was one of biggest "holy crap" moments in PC gaming for me.

Even my "crappy" Voodoo 5 (bought because I was a 3dfx fanboy) still had it's moments with some good built-in anti-alias. Made Counter-strike look a lot nicer.

Or... that's what I heard because I'm not old enough to have experienced all of that... no sir :P
 
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gabbo said:
Remember the size of Voodoo cards 20 years ago? ATX cases arent prepared for such monstrosities (assuming real)
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Hey hey.... they weren't hat big.... compared with today cards :p

Please forgive the state of the board because it was sitting in a box without any protection:
Voodoo 5 vs a Gigabyte 1080 Windforce:
S0QKwY8.jpg
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And the 3080 is waaaaay bigger - but I'm not touching that to remove it from my case just for a silly picture :)

Tomasety said:
And again sorry for the fake news, I feel utterly bad now.
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It was a fun trip down memory-lane so no need to feed bad or apologize.
 
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I was wondering why I wasn't getting the fancy new download and disk managemeng pages but I had an epiphany earlier and realized that I wasn't in the beta, because the setting isn't stored server side and I didn't think of checking that when I set-up my new PC a while ago. Lol.
 
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Kyougar said:
Because it doesn't solve the financial issues for 99% of the devs. Like I said, the scenario where the dev depended on a 5 to 10% better cut to survive is very narrow in scope and won't even save those companies in the first place because Game development, apart from GAAS, is not a continuous money-earner in the first place. For a developer that is in financial trouble a better cut just changes the bankruptcy a month or two to the future.




This is not the budgeting I am talking about. I talk about budgeting your game development expenses.

electricity and other utilities
wages
software licenses
taxes
3rd party contracting
marketing
voice work
trade shows
lawyers
financial advisors (<-----!!!!!)
30%cut for digital distribution
retail cut for selling the game on shelves
publisher cut if applicable

not all those points are applicable for every dev but those that do have to budget all of them and hold it against their projected game sales. The 30% cut is just one of the things you have to take into account when making a game.



The point is, that the game is either profitable or not. The cut only changes that for very few specific cases. The % isn't a sliding scale of profitability. It. is. just. another. expense. You can be profitable with your game with a 99% cut, and you can go bankrupt with your game with a 1% cut, hell you could go bankrupt with your game having a -1000% cut.

It seems like people infer that a 30% cut means that 30% of the game's budget goes to Steam. This is ridiculous.

The cut doesn't bankrupt devs. low unit sales are!




Again. This has nothing to do with pricing your game. I am talking about pumping money into your game. And you can absolutely pump an immense amount of money into a game and software licensing is just a tiny cost.

longer development time
better art
better animations
greater scope
voice work
polishing




We hear success stories on Steam from Indie devs more often than in previous years. Every game has the same chance, it has nothing to do with quality, size of your development team, or how much sweat and tears a dev has brought into making it.

It is only luck and SOMETIMES chasing what is currently "in". The cut has nothing to do with that.





You are putting words in my mouth. It is not hard work that is rewarded, it is genre, luck, timing, word of mouth.





Why do devs "deserve" a better cut?

The devs have to ask if Valve deserves the current cut. And for the silent majority of devs the answer is a 250 million userbase, 120 million monthly CCU resounding YES!


The whole argument about a better cut falls flat on the face when all those "deserving" devs could sell their games with a 0% cut on their own website. And some do! But for most, the expenses in handling financial transactions, refunds, and customer complaints are bigger than what they "lose" to Valve.



In the end, what kind of indies are we talking about? the 80% who don't even sell 1000 units? (median sales on Steam were 1500 units in 2019 with a median price of 12 dollars) The ones who sell 10.000 units and would already be a massive success for most of them?

Have you even considered about what kind of money we are talking about here?

Let's go with your range of 5 to 30 bucks and 1000 unit sales, while we lower the cut from 30% to 20%

with a 5 dollar price point, the dev will get 500 dollar more
with a 30 dollar price point, the dev will get 3000 dollar more.

Those are the numbers whole existences of game developer studios hang on? Spoiler alert: for 99% of devs it is not! Show me the devs who can make a whole other game if they had just 500 dollar more.

Even if we go with the generous 10.000 unit sales, the numbers would be 5.000 and 30.000 dollars. A bunch of money, but a game that needed 10.000 sales to break even would also have bigger expenses in the first place.


The point is: the cut doesn't make or break a developer, unit sales and unit sales expectations are.
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I've re-read and re-wrote how to respond to these points a couple of times and found myself repeating some points when responding to this. I eventually ended up consolidating my response as much as I could.

The points you written come off as disuadding a cut lower than 30%.

A lower cut on the sale of a game on steam would mean that, in turn, a dev or publisher gets more out of the sale of that game, be it $0.50 or $1 per copy.
In the case of small or medium indie devs, why is this small earning per copy not worthwhile for them, why should they be disuadded from it? They're getting that extra money from the sale of their game.
Them, not valve.
It could be $50, $100 or $500 more earned if the cut were lower than 30%. This is not a worthwhile thing to happen because....it is a low amount? They are better off with the $0 they earn under the current and standard 30% cut, instead of getting (slightly) more if valve's cut was lower?

I wrote before: Devs and Pubs (in particular indies) prefer sales on steam due to visibility and reviews being counter more towards a game's rating, furthermore a larger (if not largest) chunk of purchases of games occur on the steam store itself.
The sales from steam keys is good and all, but it doesn't aid their visibility much, and a consumer is more likely to buy a steam key from sites such as GMG, Humble or Fanatical etc., then to purchase directly from the dev or publisher's website. Key selling site's would have a lower cut than steam to encourage pubs and devs to sell through them, but a Steam purchase serves visibility, and once again; steam store itself gets most of the traffic for purchase of steam games.

Unit sales (on steam store) obviously is a major factor, and a lower cut even if it doesn't alleviate the impact of a gaming not selling much, would allow the dev or pub to they earn more on the sale of their game, be it $50, $100, etc.
Deserve not being the proper word to use is understandable, but I'm finding it difficult to take in that a lower cut isn't worthwhile as it won't earn them a bigger revenue, because that small extra revenue (from the lower cut) goes to the dev and pub. They would get that amount, instead of it going to valve.

Writing up a detailed set of info like what wrote is coming off as the amount that a dev or pub could earn from a lower cut is so irrelevant, that it's better that valve gets it instead.

...but valve didn't develop or publish the game; they host it on their store, and yes valve must get a cut because they are the host, etc., but as is, this far into the store's life and there being a large volume of sales going on, I think that valve should lower their cut.
 
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Alexandros said:
So it all comes down to what is more beneficial to me. A well funded Valve means I get a quasi platform holder pushing and improving PC gaming. It means I get the Steam Deck. An individual developer making 7% more money gets me... what? A slightly better game? I don't think it's worth it. Maybe Valve dropping its cut won't impact its operations at all. But maybe it will, and I don't see any reason to support rolling the dice.
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My thinking is independent development is tough and risky enough as it is. I would be glad to see small developers have a slightly easier go at it with a bigger share up to a certain dollar amount of initial sales for ex. And while 10% or 15% extra probably isn't necessarily going to make or break things, it is a little bit of extra breathing room. Valve is doing absolutely fine regardless. They're feasting on AAA and hits anyway. It's not whether Valve deserves it or not either -- they unarguably do a lot of great stuff. It's just that it would be good for the scene.
 
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boop beep said:
My thinking is independent development is tough and risky enough as it is. I would be glad to see small developers have a slightly easier go at it with a bigger share up to a certain dollar amount of initial sales for ex. And while 10% or 15% extra probably isn't necessarily going to make or break things, it is a little bit of extra breathing room. Valve is doing absolutely fine regardless. They're feasting on AAA and hits anyway. It's not whether Valve deserves it or not either -- they unarguably do a lot of great stuff. It's just that it would be good for the scene.
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two words:
Wallet cards.

It would annihilate that market with a 15% cut, because Retail already takes 15% and Valve would get nothing from a sale. Wallet cards are big in Asia and south America. Making up nearly 90% of all purchases in some countries.

And where would it end? You can't EVER make the devs happy regardless of the cut, over a quarter even selected 0% to 5% as a "fair" cut in a recent survey.
If 20% is the industry standard, there would be drives to lower it to 10, if 10 was the standard, there would be a drive to lower it to 5.

Let's not forget that we came from a system where 70 to 85% of the cut was going to retail and console owners at one time.
 
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According to GDC, a lot of devs thinks EGS cut is too high.

A lot of devs won't be happy until the cut is between 1-9%.

A cut at 9% means that Valve won't be able to afford Wallet cards anymore, Sweeney himself confirmed EGS won't have wallet cards because the EGS cut at 12% can't afford it.

No wallet cards means that millions of people all over the world, especially in Asia, won't be able to buy games.
 
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I agree that Valve's cut could be lower. However, if they drop it, then so should everyone else in that space because they provide a crapton less for the same amount.

I also think that while it could be lower, I don't think it could be by much. There's a lot we enjoy today thanks to it and I wouldn't want to compromise of that, as much of a strawman as that argument may be.
 
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fantomena said:
According to GDC, a lot of devs thinks EGS cut is too high.

A lot of devs won't be happy until the cut is between 1-9%.

A cut at 9% means that Valve won't be able to afford Wallet cards anymore, Sweeney himself confirmed EGS won't have wallet cards because the EGS cut at 12% can't afford it.

No wallet cards means that millions of people all over the world, especially in Asia, won't be able to buy games.
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I also think 20% VAT is "too much", if I could live in a magical land where I get all the services my country provides to me for free. Developers want next to no cut, but still have a large gaming platform, that allows them to easily distribute their games to hundreds of millions of users across the world.

This entire "debate" is so one-sided and ridiculous, especially how somehow in console land that 30% is completely a-okay and not worth bringing up even once.
 
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Mivey said:
I also think 20% VAT is "too much", if I could live in a magical land where I get all the services my country provides to me for free. Developers want next to no cut, but still have a large gaming platform, that allows them to easily distribute their games to hundreds of millions of users across the world.

This entire "debate" is so one-sided and ridiculous, especially how somehow in console land that 30% is completely a-okay and not worth bringing up even once.
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If Steams cut is so terrible, they should stop selling their games on Steam and only on EGS and Itchio instead. But seems like Steam is too important to miss , so I guess Steams cut must be okay after all.

I have also yet to hear about a dev/pub releasing exclusively on EGS without getting payed.
 
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Mivey said:
I also think 20% VAT is "too much", if I could live in a magical land where I get all the services my country provides to me for free. Developers want next to no cut, but still have a large gaming platform, that allows them to easily distribute their games to hundreds of millions of users across the world.

This entire "debate" is so one-sided and ridiculous, especially how somehow in console land that 30% is completely a-okay and not worth bringing up even once.
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Imaging living in a special region in Africa that is part of Spain but has a special and unique VAT (7%) because many reasons. And yet every time I buy a game I must pay Spain mainland VAT (21%).

I don't mean this as Valve's fault, they obviously can't do much regarding special regions like mine in the world but my country government on the other hand ... they could have provided a law to lessen this effect.

And as a extended bonus note when some of my people bought the Steam Controller they had to pay VAT + regional VAT + customs + shipping + I can't remember what else making the Steam Controller costs like maybe 30% more on top of it. Paying double VAT was/is illegal but they have to eat it because it was either that or you would say goodbye to your Steam Controller.

Again sorry for the off-topic. This is just a small example of how hard must be for Valve to ship something like the Deck worldwide.
 
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fantomena said:
According to GDC, a lot of devs thinks EGS cut is too high.
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Any positive store cut is too high: if a game is featured on a store, then devs have to provide support to the store customers, update game builds, upload Mac & Linux builds, waste time implementing store-specific features like achievements, cloud saves, etc. All of these tasks require additional work. The more stores that devs choose to support, the more work.. and the more wasted time. Realistically, small stores should pay devs to have the chance to sell their games.

Let us assume for a second that I have my own small store and that I contact a dev to suggest that their game should appear on my store. Unless there is a financial incentive, the email will go directly to the recycle bin. Otherwise, devs' interest will be tailored to the promise of an access to a large audience.
 
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boop beep said:
My thinking is independent development is tough and risky enough as it is. I would be glad to see small developers have a slightly easier go at it with a bigger share up to a certain dollar amount of initial sales for ex. And while 10% or 15% extra probably isn't necessarily going to make or break things, it is a little bit of extra breathing room. Valve is doing absolutely fine regardless. They're feasting on AAA and hits anyway. It's not whether Valve deserves it or not either -- they unarguably do a lot of great stuff. It's just that it would be good for the scene.
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I understand your point but I don't quite agree. Valve is indeed doing absolutely fine but there is no guarantee that the status quo will not shift dramatically. Just a couple of years ago EA, Microsoft and Sony were not releasing on Steam while Epic was scooping up what was left. Journalists were writing articles about how Steam doesn't have any big games left. As I said for me it's simply a matter of personal interests. To quote many an Era poster, it's just business. I wouldn't have any issue with Valve reducing its cut but I won't push for it because I am not convinced it is in my best interests.
 
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Alexandros said:
I understand your point but I don't quite agree. Valve is indeed doing absolutely fine but there is no guarantee that the status quo will not shift dramatically. Just a couple of years ago EA, Microsoft and Sony were not releasing on Steam while Epic was scooping up what was left. Journalists were writing articles about how Steam doesn't have any big games left. As I said for me it's simply a matter of personal interests. To quote many an Era poster, it's just business. I wouldn't have any issue with Valve reducing its cut but I won't push for it because I am not convinced it is in my best interests.
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If a reduced cut means fewer steam backend features (store and client), then no, as a consumer it's not worth it.
 
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fantomena said:
Plans change all the time. We've seen that so much the past year and so. Covid fucked up everyones plans.
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I'm aware timetables evolve but Sony's strategy has been quite clear. Ryan and his valet have been on record that PC releases, should they happen, will not be day-and-date. I can't see Sony backtracking on that.

The bitter truth is that we could be at least a year away from Bloodborne PC.
 
Shahem said:
I'm aware timetables evolve but Sony's strategy has been quite clear. Ryan and his valet have been on record that PC releases, should they happen, will not be day-and-date. I can't see Sony backtracking on that.

The bitter truth is that we could be at least a year away from Bloodborne PC.
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There is no truth, it's just a rumor. When Sony announces Bloodborne coming 6 months or whatever to PC after PS5 release, then we have truth.
 
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