Storage and bandwidth definitely weren’t cheap in 2003.
To access the same number of people, all around the world, compared to physical stores it’s essentially a rounding error. Rent alone for all the stores would be far more than Valve had to spend, then you need employees to operate the stores and all the other ongoing costs. Storage was not as cheap, and from a consumer point of view it wasn’t cheap, it it’s far cheaper than physical stores around the world.
Additionally Steam provides features that a brick and mortar store could never even think of providing, including updates, DRM, instant access to global consumers, community features, in-depth data analytics, and the ability to adjust pricing in real time.
Not sure how that’s relevant, but yes. I didn’t say they didn’t.
While a lot of the work Valve has put in Steam seems both obvious and ubiquitous today, these were features they pioneered for both developers and consumers.
Again, sure. It doesn’t contradict anything I said so I don’t know why you said it.
I’d also like to point out that the only digital marketplace I’m aware of that charges less than 30% by default (Epic) is famous for losing billions of dollars in the endeavor.
Once again, sure. It doesn’t change anything in my comment.
I don’t know why if anyone says anything that is not just gobbling Valve’s cock with enthusiasm they get people showing up talking about how great they are. Sure, I like them too. It doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to complain. That’s how you end up with companies enshitifying.
It almost feels like bots how frequent it is, but I just think you people have a compulsion to defend them from what isn’t even criticism, like they’re going to praise you for it. Well guess what? They don’t even know you exist.
As you can see, the cost of operating Steam is significantly lower than operating physical stores. That’s obvious to anyone, but for some reason I had to prove it to you.
They have to include them anyway, because almost no game is sold exclusively on Steam. The only features they don’t have to include are features for the customer, so that’s not relevant. The features relevant to developers are access to market (which is the same as physical retail) and DRM, which they have to include anyway if it’s available outside of Steam. Just for reference though, Denuvo is about $100k/y, which is close to the cost of 1 employee.
To access the same number of people, all around the world, compared to physical stores it’s essentially a rounding error. Rent alone for all the stores would be far more than Valve had to spend, then you need employees to operate the stores and all the other ongoing costs. Storage was not as cheap, and from a consumer point of view it wasn’t cheap, it it’s far cheaper than physical stores around the world.
Not sure how that’s relevant, but yes. I didn’t say they didn’t.
Again, sure. It doesn’t contradict anything I said so I don’t know why you said it.
Once again, sure. It doesn’t change anything in my comment.
I don’t know why if anyone says anything that is not just gobbling Valve’s cock with enthusiasm they get people showing up talking about how great they are. Sure, I like them too. It doesn’t mean there aren’t reasons to complain. That’s how you end up with companies enshitifying.
It almost feels like bots how frequent it is, but I just think you people have a compulsion to defend them from what isn’t even criticism, like they’re going to praise you for it. Well guess what? They don’t even know you exist.
Find me the cost of getting all the features steam offers you yourself then.
They’re a private company, so the data is not available, but we can estimate. GameStop, which IIRC is only US based, not global, has total expenses of about $2b/y. Valve, meanwhile, spends $221m paying employees in their gaming division, which is larger than the Steam division (that we don’t have data for).
As you can see, the cost of operating Steam is significantly lower than operating physical stores. That’s obvious to anyone, but for some reason I had to prove it to you.
No. If I were to release a game, how big a % would I have to spend out of my revenue to get all the features steam offers?
They have to include them anyway, because almost no game is sold exclusively on Steam. The only features they don’t have to include are features for the customer, so that’s not relevant. The features relevant to developers are access to market (which is the same as physical retail) and DRM, which they have to include anyway if it’s available outside of Steam. Just for reference though, Denuvo is about $100k/y, which is close to the cost of 1 employee.