Unless you’re going to show that this price fixing was somehow agreed to and accepted by regulations decades ago with brick and mortar stores, and then there was an agreement from all the digital marketplaces to join onboard, you can’t assume it must be a grand conspiratorial cabal except, somehow, for Tim Sweeney and Epic Games, who are standing against literally everyone else.
Nothing you have said about Steam seems to indicate you’re aware of anything Steam does beyond distribute games. Even here, you’re not demonstrating any knowledge of its other features. It says quite a lot you think there must be one singular feature that makes all the difference, it’s like you have no frame of reference for how many other features Steam has compared to other stores and how they could all be of immense value together. You did, however, reference yet another piece of disingenuity: the bullshit MFN clause complaint. Yet another standard retail practice and agreement that someone is disingenuously claiming is unique to Steam. I’d chalk this up to another EGS thing but there’s no proof they’re connected to or, you know, colluding with this Dutch group behind the odd class action suit.
So much of this is just ignoring what the standards are and lying by saying they’re unique to Steam and nobody else. Standards are standards. There are other agreements in place to keep digital pricing the same as physical pricing too, we should be talking about standards more, not less. There’s no good reason to reject acknowledging and considering standards and how little they have been changed. This is Tim Sweeney’s whole push about lowering the fee to 12% too.
Pointing out the basis for your arguments are wrong is not nitpicking. The premises are the foundation of the argument and directly lead to the point. You don’t have a point if everything that leads to it is wrong. It’s also not defending anyone to say that you, and specifically you, are working on false information. If anything, it’s closer to being a attack on you than a defense of anyone else.
Speaking of not reading what is being written, you somehow missed I told you what you legitimately could grieve Valve, Steam, and Newell over and you somehow missed it entirely in order to keep up this lie that Valve or Steam are being defended by pointing out you’ve been played to believe something that isn’t actually true because you have little to no experience with the services in question.
Speaking of billionaire worship, I notice a distinct lack of you questioning why billionaire Tim Sweeney would be manipulating public thought and argumentation against his competition in the exact same way that billionaires have been doing for the last decade, and how you fell for it. If you’re really anti-billionaire, you should be mad that happened and actively untangling all of the bullshit away and moving on to more legitimate grievances and criticisms instead of doubling down on them by hoping yelling “collusion!” enough will make it real.
Nothing you have said about Steam seems to indicate you’re aware of anything Steam does beyond distribute games.
Jfc, tell me the feature you think is worth a billion dollars worth of boats. I’m saying I know the features but they 1. Are a drop in the bucket in terms of profit and cost compared to actually hosting the game files, and 2. It isn’t enough to justify any of it.
Now who’s nitpicking? My point was never that there was one killer feature that’s worth $100b/yr. Again, it’s weird you think there is one, a weirdness that can only be chalked up to a total ignorance of what Steam actually offers. The whole point is that the entire meme argument of “Steam doesn’t deserve the 30% cut!” is based on flawed premises based on the PR campaign of a competing billionaire trying to take much of that capital for himself, there is not a single way to make a reasonable point in that direction unless the argument is that nobody deserves a 30% cut but, given the features provided compared to every other retailer out there, Steam would deserve the highest cut (even if that’s something like 15% instead of 30%).
Accusing collusion, pretending Steam doesn’t have any extra features compared to other retailers or digital platforms, ignoring market and industry standards, and accusing any pushback as being a defense are not reasonable lines of argument.
No one deserves a 30% cut for hosting virtual game files, even with the extra features included.
Steam, Epic, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are literally sucking out profit for something that has virtually no expense compared to that profit.
That profit could be going to the actual people making the product and all it needs is a minimum of regulation. We could be getting more and better games right now but instead Gaben and company get big boats.
All of them have fluff like friends lists, multiplayer frameworks and what not. Sure steam is better than the others but they are still part of the same club playing the same game. Even worse, with their small staff, steam probably has the highest cost to revenue ratio.
I’m trying to explain to you that the features don’t matter and certainly aren’t currently enough to justify robbing devs of literal billions.
Unless you’re going to show that this price fixing was somehow agreed to and accepted by regulations decades ago with brick and mortar stores, and then there was an agreement from all the digital marketplaces to join onboard, you can’t assume it must be a grand conspiratorial cabal except, somehow, for Tim Sweeney and Epic Games, who are standing against literally everyone else.
Nothing you have said about Steam seems to indicate you’re aware of anything Steam does beyond distribute games. Even here, you’re not demonstrating any knowledge of its other features. It says quite a lot you think there must be one singular feature that makes all the difference, it’s like you have no frame of reference for how many other features Steam has compared to other stores and how they could all be of immense value together. You did, however, reference yet another piece of disingenuity: the bullshit MFN clause complaint. Yet another standard retail practice and agreement that someone is disingenuously claiming is unique to Steam. I’d chalk this up to another EGS thing but there’s no proof they’re connected to or, you know, colluding with this Dutch group behind the odd class action suit.
So much of this is just ignoring what the standards are and lying by saying they’re unique to Steam and nobody else. Standards are standards. There are other agreements in place to keep digital pricing the same as physical pricing too, we should be talking about standards more, not less. There’s no good reason to reject acknowledging and considering standards and how little they have been changed. This is Tim Sweeney’s whole push about lowering the fee to 12% too.
Pointing out the basis for your arguments are wrong is not nitpicking. The premises are the foundation of the argument and directly lead to the point. You don’t have a point if everything that leads to it is wrong. It’s also not defending anyone to say that you, and specifically you, are working on false information. If anything, it’s closer to being a attack on you than a defense of anyone else.
Speaking of not reading what is being written, you somehow missed I told you what you legitimately could grieve Valve, Steam, and Newell over and you somehow missed it entirely in order to keep up this lie that Valve or Steam are being defended by pointing out you’ve been played to believe something that isn’t actually true because you have little to no experience with the services in question.
Speaking of billionaire worship, I notice a distinct lack of you questioning why billionaire Tim Sweeney would be manipulating public thought and argumentation against his competition in the exact same way that billionaires have been doing for the last decade, and how you fell for it. If you’re really anti-billionaire, you should be mad that happened and actively untangling all of the bullshit away and moving on to more legitimate grievances and criticisms instead of doubling down on them by hoping yelling “collusion!” enough will make it real.
Jfc, tell me the feature you think is worth a billion dollars worth of boats. I’m saying I know the features but they 1. Are a drop in the bucket in terms of profit and cost compared to actually hosting the game files, and 2. It isn’t enough to justify any of it.
Now who’s nitpicking? My point was never that there was one killer feature that’s worth $100b/yr. Again, it’s weird you think there is one, a weirdness that can only be chalked up to a total ignorance of what Steam actually offers. The whole point is that the entire meme argument of “Steam doesn’t deserve the 30% cut!” is based on flawed premises based on the PR campaign of a competing billionaire trying to take much of that capital for himself, there is not a single way to make a reasonable point in that direction unless the argument is that nobody deserves a 30% cut but, given the features provided compared to every other retailer out there, Steam would deserve the highest cut (even if that’s something like 15% instead of 30%).
Accusing collusion, pretending Steam doesn’t have any extra features compared to other retailers or digital platforms, ignoring market and industry standards, and accusing any pushback as being a defense are not reasonable lines of argument.
No one deserves a 30% cut for hosting virtual game files, even with the extra features included.
Steam, Epic, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo are literally sucking out profit for something that has virtually no expense compared to that profit.
That profit could be going to the actual people making the product and all it needs is a minimum of regulation. We could be getting more and better games right now but instead Gaben and company get big boats.
All of them have fluff like friends lists, multiplayer frameworks and what not. Sure steam is better than the others but they are still part of the same club playing the same game. Even worse, with their small staff, steam probably has the highest cost to revenue ratio.
I’m trying to explain to you that the features don’t matter and certainly aren’t currently enough to justify robbing devs of literal billions.