Perhaps, but on the other side of that coin: Because valve doesn’t have legal obligations to make money snd increase shareholder value, they put a lot of money elsewhere. The products they create are awesome (literally the best launcher on PC, Tim Sweeney is probably upset because his is ass) and invest heavily in things better for gamers:
digital returns were huge when they first rolled out
(IMO) spearheading game streaming with steam in home streaming & the steam link
creating awesome games and not milking them for perpetual profit (other than maybe in game items but i don’t want to have this discussion)
investing heavily in alternative ways to play (steam machines, aforementioned steam link, VR/index, steam controller, steam deck)
legitimately spending money to make it possible to game on Linux, reducing gamers reliance on Microsoft/Windows
The Epic launcher could actually be so much better if they bothered to put any effort into it. Obviously they’re going to have fewer games and stuff but they could still make a decent launcher that isn’t so annoying to use and actually has additional features.
Part of the problem they have is that it’s actually difficult for game developers to put their games on both platforms so i’ve got to pick one and obviously i’m going to pick Steam.
Valve also allowed most of their employees to work on whatever they wanted for a decade, an initiative that produced almost nothing, and during that time they still made close to a million dollars per year per employee.
I’m not saying I’m unhappy with Valve being private or with Valve making enough money to give itself a nice cushion, but the scale of the money they’re making is absurd when independent game devs often still struggle to make money.
Perhaps, but on the other side of that coin: Because valve doesn’t have legal obligations to make money snd increase shareholder value, they put a lot of money elsewhere. The products they create are awesome (literally the best launcher on PC, Tim Sweeney is probably upset because his is ass) and invest heavily in things better for gamers:
Linux* I assume?
Yeah good catch LMAO
Finally… after all these years… Steam on Windows
The Epic launcher could actually be so much better if they bothered to put any effort into it. Obviously they’re going to have fewer games and stuff but they could still make a decent launcher that isn’t so annoying to use and actually has additional features.
Part of the problem they have is that it’s actually difficult for game developers to put their games on both platforms so i’ve got to pick one and obviously i’m going to pick Steam.
Valve also allowed most of their employees to work on whatever they wanted for a decade, an initiative that produced almost nothing, and during that time they still made close to a million dollars per year per employee.
I’m not saying I’m unhappy with Valve being private or with Valve making enough money to give itself a nice cushion, but the scale of the money they’re making is absurd when independent game devs often still struggle to make money.
Experimenting with company structure is a good thing long-term
Source on producing almost nothing for a decade because the employees had freedom of work projects?
Yeah, I’ve been with Steam since 2013 when they came to Linux, and Steam has gotten better every year since then. For example:
And so on. I don’t know which decade OP is talking about, but at least the last decade has been fantastic for me.
So 30% cut leads to employee well being? Great!