Community MetaSteam | July 2021 - Corporate Propaganda

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Cacher

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The Ascent on Gamepass.
Halo Infinite week end.
Death Door and Avengers discounted to respectable levels.
...
Me playing FF14 : how the fuck will I find the time to play any of those if I buy them ? :sweaty-blob:
Play whatever you enjoy the most and leave the rest in the backlog (or simply don't buy them because new things will keep coming out).
 
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fantomena

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No, I had to click all the X's like a shmuck
Ah yeah, even greater update then. Felt really good clicking that "clear all" button, so something had changed. :p

Overall a really good update for me then, the "clear all" button and the new storage overview is really good. Used Treesize a lot to get an overview of game sizes and Valve adding DLC to the storage overview is pretty nice.
 

prudis

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what epic did, and continue to do - nothing can fix that absolute bullshit
it kinda reached the point , not even Jazz Jackrabbit 3 would be enough

Also Heart Machine can take a hike. Solar Ash is one of those exclusives that I can't forgive. It was early in this circus and on the heels of their successful kickstarter for HLD.
they also never patched back the new content from switch version
 

Durante

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Yeah I don't think I would have got Monster Hunter Stories 2 for $48 or Humankind for $40 from Humble Bundle if Valve went to 12%. They would almost certainly have to put major restrictions on third party sites.
They wouldn't even need to put any restrictions on them, they just naturally would cease existing.

The ~15% to ~20% off you can routinely get on GMG, or CDkeys, or other (legitimate) resellers on Steam keys at game launches is a direct consequence of the difference between the 30% Steam revenue share and the 0% Steam key revenue share.


Did Steam have the "clear all" button for finished downloads before?
Certainly not, since I feel like I clicked on that X a million times.
 

fantomena

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Solar Ash looks dope imo, but I have yet to play Hyper Light Drifter and I intend to play that before Solar Ash, so I don't think Im gonna even ask for a promo key for Solar Ash, Im just gonna wait for the Steam release.
 

beep boop

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Also Heart Machine can take a hike. Solar Ash is one of those exclusives that I can't forgive. It was early in this circus and on the heels of their successful kickstarter for HLD.
On the heels of their Kickstarter? HLD came out in 2016.
 

Mivey

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Indies have been on steam for the better part of a decade, and not all of them are major sellers, so as to be viewed as a bigger title. This comes off as saying 'if small indie devs work hard they'll surely be rewarded', which is ludicrous to say the least.
I meant "justify" there in an economic sense from Valve's POV, nothing else. If a huge chunk of the money they see comes from titles selling less than 1 million in revenue, then cutting the 30% fee for these titles would hurt Valve. If however, most of its fees come from titles with revenue over 1 million, then it's probably not a big deal for Valve to reduce it like I suggested.
 
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Swenhir

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On the heels of their Kickstarter? HLD came out in 2016.
Yes, my point being that they owe their existence and success in large part to that kickstarter. People took a chance on them. And now that they are established, they went "fuck you, got mine" like the others that took the moneyhats.

One would have thought that having been the recipient of so much public goodwill, especially financially, would have made them a little aware that customers matter. Now they'll learn the hard way.
 
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Mivey

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If Epic releases a new feature that would be perfect for my needs tommorrow I would start buying from EGS.
My issue with their client is their proven track record of using it to spy on me, to the point of literally accessing without your knowledge the data in your local Steam directory.
Epic would have to clearly acknowledge their past bullshit on this, apologise and then build up a reputation of keeping their client free of spyware bullshit for a few years before I could even think of letting it back on my PC. Even then, given the sorry state their store is in, I really don't see them implementing features Valve hasn't thought about yet.
 

fantomena

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My issue with their client is their proven track record of using it to spy on me, to the point of literally accessing without your knowledge the data in your local Steam directory.
Epic would have to clearly acknowledge their past bullshit on this, apologise and then build up a reputation of keeping their client free of spyware bullshit for a few years before I could even think of letting it back on my PC. Even then, given the sory state their store is in, I really don't see them implementing features Valve hasn't thought about yet.
Oh I agree.
 

Li Kao

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Focus on playing the games that have a deadline, meaning Avengers and Halo.
I'm complicated, deadlines are only a part of the formula.

- Rambling, self-reflection, read if you want, I don't offer refund for time lost -

Let's recap :
The Ascent - Can wait, it won't leave GP tomorrow, true
Halo Infinite - No interest in PVP, but I feel I could launch the thing for a change, I feel horrible having access to some beta and never launching them
Death Door - Could be played alongside FF14 I guess, it's not too long.
Avengers - 2 days free access is not enough anyways, so might as well wait until I have a slot in my playing list
...
FF14 - Time eating machine

The thing is, I'm easily burnt out and dropping out of games, I can't play a lot simultaneously. Example : I sadly dropped Yakuza 0, not because it's bad, but it felt incompatible with FF14, involvement-wise. They are two games I at least had to play several hours of regularly or lose interest. In reality I didn't play Yakuza often enough to sustain my interest in the plot.
That's an unfortunate situation though, because as much as I love FF14 playing the same fucking game for thousands of hours is tiring.

So yeah, thanks for helping me sort out this shit. I... still want to play everything but will MAYBE just buy Death Door and / or try Halo beta to be polite.
 

fantomena

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The Ascent - Can wait, it won't leave GP tomorrow, true
You can also buy this game you know, Steam or MS Store. So you can take your time with it.

Though according to what I've read, game pass/MS store version is missing some features/new update.

And both verisons is apparently broken in different ways + bugs. So Im personally waiting aa bit before playing the game.
 
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Li Kao

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You can also buy this game you know, Steam or MS Store.

Though according to what I've read, game pass/MS store version is missing some features/new update.
We don't have the same opinion about GP. I have never had technical issues with it and I'm not interested in the game enough to nuke 26 euros out of my super limited budget (saving for Deck).
DLSS being absent of the GP version is unfortunate, hilariously bad for GP, granted, but isn't worth 26 euros.

The thing I will totally grant you in regard to GP: I don't use it often enough and it's a waste to keep a monthly sub.
Will consider that ASAP.

Another observation : limited availability windows in GP.
Usually this is a non issue to me, if a game is out and I still have to play it, maybe I wasn't interested enough. And I still can buy it elsewhere.
Very peculiar counterpoint : The Touryst is leaving on 08/01 and there are no other ways to play it on PC, which annoy me. That being said, I don't care enough to play it. Will uninstall and forget.
 
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Li Kao

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Who knows ? Some GP technical issue ?
I may be in corporate apologism water so excuse me if wrong, but I suspect it's more of a dev not willing to offer the full enchilada for GP.
But again, who know.

Sometimes GP is GP, sometimes dev are dumb, too. I mean, it took weeks (months ?) for the cute reaper sailing game* to add languages other than English.
* forgot the name right now

-edit-
Spiritfarer !
 

fantomena

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Who knows ? Some GP technical issue ?
I may be in corporate apologism water so excuse me if wrong, but I suspect it's more of a dev not willing to offer the full enchilada for GP.
But again, who know.

Sometimes GP is GP, sometimes dev are dumb, too. I mean, it took weeks (months ?) for the cute reaper sailing game* to add languages other than English.
* forgot the name right now

-edit-
Spiritfarer !
From what I've read it seems that devs/pubs don't pay attention much to the game pass version of games as Steam version actually affects their bottom line, but game pass version does not. Read about lots of games getting patched far later on game pass than Steam.

Also when it comes to content patches and expansions that comes to games after they have left game pass. In general I would never buy DLC for a game I don't own. So in that way Im glad I bought games like Wasteland 3, Spiritfarer, Streets of Rage 4, Outer Wilds, Outer Worlds etc.
 

Li Kao

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True, I said it was dev unwillingness to offer the full enchilada but it could totally and more probably just be an understandable (?) lack of care.
 
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fantomena

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True, I said it was dev unwillingness to offer the full enchilada but it could totally and more probably just be an understandable (?) lack of care.
Yeah, I mean it sucks that game pass and Steam versions aren't the same and most likely don't get the same amout of care, but in some way, game pass is like Epic exclusives, the devs/pub got their back of money, they put it on the service and that's it. They got their money and don't have to care anymore. If anything else, it is Epic or MS that have to push the devs/pub in to caring about the product.
 
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Li Kao

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Halo Infinite : well, fuck that noise. I won't go out of my way to play in the Pacific Time window.
Shiettt, I'm easily annoyed today, uninstalling numerous shit.
 
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Tizoc

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I personally believe strongly that if Valve lowers their cut the average price I'll need to pay for games will go up.
That's a fair concern, and becomes an issue when it comes to a game one is interested in getting day 1/0.
Though if one takes into consideration games from big publishers such as S-E, Capcom, etc. they would price match the console price.

In the case of small or medium indies, they run the risk of alienating buyers as nowadays there is a price range of $5-20 (or EUR equivalent) for indie game releases. The cut isn't the only norm or standard in this situation IMO; a preset pricing 'standard' has been around for so long that any attempt to change it risky for the indie pub or developer themselves.
Games being priced at $70 on consoles for example hasn't made its way to PC gaming, at least not yet. Even if it did, it would be regardless of a lower cut than 30%.

This brings to mind something:
Part of the reason key selling sites are still around is because the 30% cut that steam takes has allowed legal key selling sites to sell steam keys at a lower cut than what valve takes.

In turn, this allows the key selling site to offer a better selling price for the game than steam (e,g, on Steam a game is discounted to $27, but key selling sites could offer it for $25 or a little less.).

This goes back to an earlier point I made: Game keys may not count towards steam's review system rating so a dev. could lose positive reviews on their game that would've helped its visibility. So while the dev would get a better revenue from selling steam key, it may not help visibility much, which is going to be needed in the longer run.

The concern of key selling sites getting impacted by a lower cut on steam is something on my mind, but there's bound to be a certain % valve could set their cut to that could not impact key selling sites much.


This argument that a lower cut for major successes is bad and the little guys should get the lower cut instead doesn't solve the issue for failing projects AT ALL.
First of all: Someone that needs 5 or 10% more to survive is quite rare in the first place. Either you are profitable with a 30% cut or your game tanks and those 5 to 10% wouldn't help you anyway.
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?


Second: Learn to budget correctly! 30% is a known "expense"! Sure, you can't really know beforehand if your game is a hit or not, but you can budget your project that it will have a certain range that it would realistically and historically sell (if you have existing games/series or experience making games) or this is your first project and there was no guarantee that it will make money at all.
This comes off irrelevant when games are already priced between $5-$30 range, and have been for the better part of a decade. Budgeting is already done.

Third: WHO IN THE HELL is budgeting their games so precisely that they would be bankrupt at 30% and profitable at 20%??? And if you know that in the first place, then cut the expenses beforehand, because you know that you have a 30% commission!

There is an argument to be had on the expectations and wants of indie devs, but that shouldn't be something to use against indie devs getting a better cut.

Fourth: Even if the Industry standard gets down to 20% Most bigger companies will just pocket the difference and smaller devs and indies will just pump more money into the game because they think they have 10% more cash after selling the game. Now we have the situation that 20% is too much.
That is indeed something that's on my mind and an understandable concern. However, how can indies even increase their costs in game development when there are already many tools available for developing games?

Steam key selling sites have always been a major aspect of pc gaming that we prance with and use, such that this can only be an issue for a newly released game that would interest someone.

However, The concern of alienating a buyer due to a price point is something that could deter indies from raising the price of their games, and even if they did? The games would just get wishlistid and one would wait out for a cheap price down the line.
Sorry if this comes across a little aggressive, but the little guys versus the big guys narrative is bullshit.
No it is not because it has been the case on steam for the longest time now; not every small, let alone medium, indie game made is gonna be Among Us levels of success, and there are many such games on steam already. The key thing here isn't success; it's getting a better cut for the game they worked to develop, and now with how well steam is doing, I think valve should consider lowering the cut.

Several AAA Studios don't get 20% while small indies get it (Valhalla and Among us just recently)
Not size matters, but success.
"If indie devs work hard, surely they'll be rewarded'
That's a derogatory way to see things and a slap to the face of an indie dev that wants to make the game they want and just want to get money from selling it.

These points of yours come off as indie devs not deserving a better cut and giving reasons to deter from it.
 
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kafiend

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Probably an older build and too annoying for them to update it via Microsoft's weird process? lol
It might be that because Microsofts patch process is needlessly complicated that devs can subtly force change by being extra slow to patch on the service. By extension, annoying Microsofts customers with an unequal service.
 

Kal1m3r0

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Even Control didn't have DLSS on gamepass on its release for some reason, it was added a couple of weeks later I think
 
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Arc

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They wouldn't even need to put any restrictions on them, they just naturally would cease existing.

The ~15% to ~20% off you can routinely get on GMG, or CDkeys, or other (legitimate) resellers on Steam keys at game launches is a direct consequence of the difference between the 30% Steam revenue share and the 0% Steam key revenue share.


Certainly not, since I feel like I clicked on that X a million times.
I put that qualifier there since I know there are some EGS games on key sites, but I'm not sure exactly how the logistics for that go. IIRC, exclusives sold on key sites go against their minimum guarantees, but I'm not quite sure if that applies to non-exclusive games. Regardless, you're right that the discounts would most likely go away, if not change a lot worse for the user.

200fps in Crysis on high

So it can run Crysis? Phew, I was worried about that.
 
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Durante

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I mean, I guess that's a nice effort and all, but they don't even try to compensate for the much lower GPU memory bandwidth in the deck. Depending on a games' workload, at best they are on point, but at worst they could be off by a factor of 4.

It would be interesting for someone to do this more properly. I.e. on Linux, with Gamescope/Proton/RADV, with Zen2 and RDNA2, and compensating as much as possible for the memory BW discrepancy with clocks.
 

Kyougar

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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?
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 comes off irrelevant when games are already priced between $5-$30 range, and have been for the better part of a decade. Budgeting is already done.
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.

There is an argument to be had on the expectations and wants of indie devs, but that shouldn't be something to use against indie devs getting a better cut.
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!

That is indeed something that's on my mind and an understandable concern. However, how can indies even increase their costs in game development when there are already many tools available for developing games?

Steam key selling sites have always been a major aspect of pc gaming that we prance with and use, such that this can only be an issue for a newly released game that would interest someone.

However, The concern of alienating a buyer due to a price point is something that could deter indies from raising the price of their games, and even if they did? The games would just get wishlistid and one would wait out for a cheap price down the line.
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


No it is not because it has been the case on steam for the longest time now; not every small, let alone medium, indie game made is gonna be Among Us levels of success, and there are many such games on steam already. The key thing here isn't success; it's getting a better cut for the game they worked to develop, and now with how well steam is doing, I think valve should consider lowering the cut.
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.


"If indie devs work hard, surely they'll be rewarded'
You are putting words in my mouth. It is not hard work that is rewarded, it is genre, luck, timing, word of mouth.


That's a derogatory way to see things and a slap to the face of an indie dev that wants to make the game they want and expect to get some revenue from it.
These points of yours come off as indie devs not deserving a better cut and giving reasons to deter from it.
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.
 

gabbo

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<Tizoc lays it all out>
I don't think "deserve" is the right word to use, especially when we're talking about market forces at work. It implies that devs are being underpayed/taken advantage of as a baseline by the [major] storefronts by default. Is there an argument to be made that the current 'sell more, earn more' model isn't distributed fairly given how the industry operates, and that maybe the pyramid for it should be bottom up, where indies get the bigger cut on a different scale than a major multinational corporate publisher, sure. But neither side 'deserves' anything, just like a dev doesn't deserve my money just because they released a game into the market place.
 

Swenhir

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I think artists by and far deserve to be supported but under the current market conditions, it's pretty hard if not outright outlandish to achieve this. I think that the cut is like arguing about what particular cherry you want on top of your shit-cake. It's orders of magnitude less meaningful than the sheer amount of monthly money a person needs to be able to live comfortably on.

Just my 2c.
 

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Hello, I'm the Giveaway Bot! FeedMeAStrayCat is giving away 10 gift(s).

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Yoshi

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More people working on Valheim :blobcheer:
We’re also happy to share that we have three new vikings joining the Iron Gate team next month, a programmer, an animator, and a QA Manager, who we’ll introduce you to soon.
 
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