Quoting: ArtenWe buy only if it's on steam because valve is only one from them who seriosly invest into linux.

There is also a lot of reason why people will only buy on steam. I'll take myself as an example.

Steam was the first in the market most other stores arrived far too late on the market when they finally caught with the reality that digital sell were juicy. Epic is the very last one, they will struggle to get people like me. My steam account is soon to be 15 years old I have hundreds of games on it all my friends are there. Epic like other stores before have nothing for me that steam don't have, and exclusivity deals only makes me hate them.

The only store that got me was GoG because they started with a very niche market. Old games and DRM free indies. No one had that. Steam only started to get serious on indies when GoG started to have success. So yeah for some years GoG was the only place you could get these games. Then they started to expand their offer. So, I got to buys there too because I already was a customer. They only started to lose me when I got 100% of my time on Linux and couldn't use GoG galaxy and had some online games that I couldn't play any more because they used the GoG API and forced the use of GoG Galaxy.

Where was epic games 18 years ago when steam was created? Where were they 15 years ago when steam started to get big? It's very rich from them to complain about a "monopoly" they participated to create and push other companies against Valve, when they are themselves very late to the party.

EDIT:

I'm sorry if I sound a bit harsh, but I'm really tired of people throwing shit at Valve for no good reason. Valve is far from being a saint, but some things need to be said. If Valve and Steam are in the position they are today it's because they were left alone for so many years without any real competition. And now a lot of people act all surprised as if that was new. Valve only have a de facto monopoly competition was always free to be created it just wasn't.

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Quoting: SamsaiA fun anecdote, but it's hardly an equivalent scenario to what the lawsuit deals with. In your example the producers have set a price that they are comfortable with and you resell with markup. The producers get essentially a 100% cut (excluding details like tax), since they aren't part of the transactions with your customers that you are reselling to. Game developers don't set a wholesale price for individual copies of their game and sell them to Valve at that price and Valve resells them with markup, they set a retail price and Valve takes a non-negotiable cut from all sales.

So, you are proving me right then, for a 70% cut on a price THEY are fixing, with a 30% cut for Valve that is known way in advance, they are still having issues?

Again the problem is not in the 30% cut, it's in their ability to manage a business. The reality is that many indies don't have a stable business plan and business model for the market they are in.
Reducing valve cut won't alter the oversaturated market we have today. It won't magically make their company profitable. It won't make their thousand upon thousands competitors disappear. It won't change the fact that gamers follow trends and having a big guy on twitch playing one of their competitor will kill their sell instantly while at the same time making said competitor one of the top-selling games.

With an 85 to 90% cut on the sell their problem will still be the same they won't make more money on the long run. If they are not selling enough today, they won't tomorrow either. It's hard, it's sad, but it's the nature of being a business owner. Sometimes shit go sideways.

If you want an example closer to that case. I give you books and bookshop in France. By law every bookshop must sell books at the same price, a price set by the publisher. In general, the cuts are 70% for the publisher and 30% for the bookshop.
When a publisher goes under you never hear them complaining about the 30% cut of the bookshop being too high. Never! They know perfectly that 30% is barely enough to keep most bookshop in business.
And you know what's worst in that case? A book is a physical object so the 70% share is not 70% they have to pay for printers, distributors, authors etc Their real cut on a book price is way lower to pay their employee and still make money.

So, yeah, when an indie game studio come and tell us their 70% cut (that they don't have to share with anyone else) is too small. I have serious doubt on their capacity to maintain a profitable business. And if they have a publisher maybe they badly negotiated their contract and Valve has nothing to do with that.

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I really hope they will lose their lawsuit and that "30% cut is too high" nonsense will cease.

In what world do these people live thinking a 70% cut is bad?

Because if you take the "problem" in that way studio/devs/publisher have a 70% cut, which is insanely high.

If I take my job for example (I'm a bartender) we have a wine bottle we pay 2€ and sell 25€. That make 8% for the wine producer and 92% for us. Want another example? Havana club 3 we get the bottle for 4€ sell it for 140€, 2.8% and 97.2%.

We don't have the independent French winemaker or international pernaud-ricard group whining at our door that they get such a low cut on sales. Imagine if our sales were 70% for the producer and 30% for us. No one would ever go to a bar or restaurant ever again.

And these guys have the audacity to whine when they get a 70% share? If with 70% they can't make it. It's not because the 30% is too high. It's because the problem is elsewhere.

Imagine these guys 20 years ago when games were still sold in boxes and their cut would have been even lower, way way way lower. I remember when digital games started to get out, every one was happy because they still sold the games the same price with a much higher cut on the price. It was the gamer who were not happy to pay the same price without having anything physical. I have a vague memory of something like 10 to 15% share at the time if not lower. (or was it for CDs or books I don't remember well) And now these guys are trying to convince us their share is too small?

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Quoting: CatKillera widely-known and infamous US case, then I don't agree, because it's already widely-known and infamous.

Just to be sassy, I've never heard of that case. Really, first time I hear about it. That's also why I love this website it talks about that kind of things.

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Quoting: CatKiller"fair use" (a US legal concept)

Fair use or an equivalent exists in other countries laws. And I've often seen "fair use" as a translation from other countries laws in English.

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I love that game, I think the dev did a great thing. That will help the game greatly. It's excellent but have many shortcomings.

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What I never like with KDE and their app is how bloated they are. You can't install KDE without it coming with everything, and you can't install one kde soft on a another DE without them installing half of kde.

I really love a lot of kde softwares, but now I tend to use a less interesting alternative because I don't want all that bloat. For example, Okular is my favourite PDF reader, but it loads so much.

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I though the game was dead long ago O_o

I still have my mouse plush I get from them years ago XD

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: DerpFoxYou have to pay a monthly fee AND buy the games.

No you do not. I don't really get how this needs to be cleared up so often. Stadia is a store, you can buy games. Stadia Pro is an optional subscription to get regular free games (playable while your sub is active - no different to PS Plus) and 4K support. Stadia Pro is not required.

Ok. I trust you on that Liam. Thank you.

And where does that come from? The stadia website.

The way the Stadia website is written and presented let you think you HAVE to get to pay to use it. Honestly that is on Google marketing team for messing that up so badly. And that is the case in every language Stadia is translated to.





That is the first thing you see on Stadia when you land on the page. They are hiding on purpose that the service is "free" to some extent. On the first page there is literally no clear information on Stadia being "free". they only present the monthly fee and the Store, letting you think you have to pay for Stadia Pro.

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I really don't understand the appeal for Stadia and the likes. You have to pay a monthly fee AND buy the games. So if you stop paying for stadia you can't play the games any more. For me that's stupid, if I have to pay for the game I want to be able to play it any time I want and not have to pay more. If all the games were included in the Stadia fee I could understand it but not liek that.

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