Then again, Valve gets 30% to 20% of the benefits from all sales from their platform. It's easier to be generous when everyone has to pay you to make cash.
this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2023
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This.
Valve doesn't release games, it releases ads for Steam.
Which is fine. It's great. Makes for great, cheap products and long-term strategies that aren't trying to shake all the money off of you.
But that's the end goal, still.
As a friendly reminder, Valve also universalized DRM, invented multiple new types of microtransactions and actually kinda invented NFTs for a little bit.
Invented the loot box y'all love so much. Tried to invent paid mods. Valve is still a Corpo and corpos gonna corpos
Honestly I'll defend TF2 loot boxes til I die. There are valid complaints as far as casual gamers go but as someone who played the game for thousands of hours the cosmetic system added a lot of longevity to the game. It was a fun ecosystem to engage with and compared to modern games where you spend $15-20 on a single cosmetic item it was an absolute bargain. If you got tired of an item you could trade it for something else too.
Idk maybe I just got indoctrinated but I have so many positive memories of that game and interacting with the cosmetic system. These days every game you play is shoving their store front in your face. Every cosmetic is $20 and if you don't buy it now it's lost forever. Don't want to spend money? Ok here's an "event" where you need to play the game 2 hours a day for a week to unlock some meh items and if you don't then fuck you those items are gone forever.
Sorry I'm ranting.
Agreed. It sounds weird saying, but I feel that Valve did these things right or at least fixed them quickly thereafter. I've never felt any sense of pay-to-win or being left out playing TF2. Quite the opposite. I'd get the new items quick enough, and if there was anything in there articular I'd want then there was a robust market willing to make it happen for cheaper than I thought. And "cheaper" referring to in-game items.
I actually agree that loot boxes aren't intrinsically bad.
I mean, I was buying Magic the Gathering cards before anybody got mad at making blind purchases. The entire field is called Gacha because it's modelled on analogue equivalents people don't mind at all.
But that's not what the community will tell you. Loot boxes are THE problem, if you ask this in a different context. Fundamentally predatory.
Unless you bring it up in this, and only this context. When Valve does it it's fine. Never mind that they had and actual gambling problem around their retradeable cosmetic loot box drops. Or that their implementation is indistinguishable from others. Or that they have a pattern of innovating in the monetization space not just with loot boxes but with battlepasses, cosmetics and other stuff people claim to not like when other people do it.
The shocker isn't the actual business practices, it's the realization that you can get so good at PR that you can't just get away with it, but have the exact same people that are out there asking for the government to intervene to stop those actively defend you against the mere suggestion that your business model is your actual business model.
Look, I was out there during the big loot box controversies that there were babies going out with thtat bathwater. I like me some Hearthstone and CCGs and other games that do those things. I like a bunch of free to play things. Got a TON of crap every time I even dared to float that online. UNLESS it comes up in a conversation about Valve. Then I get crap flung in the opposite direction.
I'm not saying you shouldn't like them, I'm saying that brief "maybe I'm indoctrinated" moment of realization should make you take a minute and reassess your relationships with brands and corporations. We are all subject to PR influence.
Your argument rests on the claim that Valve's implementation of these practices is indistinguishable from hated industry standards, but I disagree.
The "hated industry standards" are in many cases directly copied from the Valve implementations that predate them, so... yeah.
I mean, I haven't played CS2 yet, and definitely haven't played CS:GO in a while, but I may need you to point me at the timecode in this video where the superior free-range loot boxes are way better than in, say, Call of Duty, because I'm not sure I caught it the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJGY6RGPCnY
And again, I'm not against these on principle. I think unboxing videos are a bit weird and I don't see the appeal of opening tons of boxes in one sitting in real life, either... but this is the exact same implementation being criticized elsewhere.
Tony Hawk, anyone? Remaster old game, then make it require a server ping to guarantee it won't work in the future when they decide to stop supporting it.
I've been playing TH 1+2 offline with no connection for the past year. What are you talking about?
It hasn't even been out for a year... What're you talking about?
It was released for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on September 4, 2020.
- It's been out since 2020.
- It does Not require an online connection to play.
That's what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the only platform that matters: Steam
Just few weeks ago everyone complaining about CS2
I mean sure, but this is a great showcase of Source Engine 2 which is a product they will be selling
And yet there are companies like Bethesda that have re-released games dozens of times for full price.
I mean don't get me wrong, I am all for Valve's overall values compared to EA, Sony, Microsoft, Bethesda, etc. glad they're staying private.
Dead space remake was great, wasnt it?
They can do that because you pay them when you buy other game remasters.
yes but so do other huge game companies on cosmetics, in game items, other spin offs. I agree it's not as easy but right now even doing this is unusual for most companies.
Very few game companies actually make a lot of money from cosmetics and ingame items. Most don't.
It's also stupid to think companies should do things for free. That's not the world we live in. It's an exception
I just did a minimal amount of googling and this is absolutely not true. Micro transactions have outpaced full game sales by almost 3:1. The entire model of free to play games relies on microtransactions. The biggest games in the world right now are f2p games or paid games with f2p models. I dunno where you're getting your info from, ancedotally, I'm sure, and maybe you just don't play games like that... But the rest of the casual game player population absolutely does.
Cosmetics and in-game items (microtransactions) are how games make money hand-over-fist.
What world do you live in?
Very few game companies actually make a lot of money from cosmetics and ingame items. Most don't.
The companies doing these full price remasters 100% are the ones making millions from cosmetics.
That first point is not true at all. There are entire games built around the paid cosmetics. League of Legends and everyone who follows that model for example. There are more than a few, but you're right on the second point. I mean it's not nice to call people stupid, but I suppose that's not what we're discussing.
Adding a couple of maps to a 25 year old game isn't a remaster. Anyone here play Black Mesa? Now THAT's how you do a remaster.
That's a remake, not a remaster.
Well, not every company is shitting money like Valve.
They can afford to do this because of their technical monopoly.
Blizzard, Bethesda, Epic, EA and many others have more money than Valve. So what's their excuse for not giving free games? Hell EA earned on micro-transactions for FIFA more than GDP of some countries.
Activision Blizzard annual net income for 2022 was $1.513B
In fiscal year 2022, EA posted GAAP net revenue of approximately $7 billion
Epic Games revenue is $5.76 billion according to figures reported in 2021
Valve generated around USD13 billion in total revenue in 2022
Also,
So what’s their excuse for not giving free games?
Did you really ask this after including Epic?
But these comparisons are ridiculous anyway. Neither of these companies are your friends, and trying to understand their behavior in terms of anything other than profit-seeking is only going to lead to you feeling betrayed. Gamers' obsession with defending Steam is so ridiculous that no one ever disputes the idea that Apple and Google are being abusive with their store policies, but calling out Steam for doing the exact same always brings dozens of people out of the woods who think it's a controversial claim.
You're aware that Revenue and Net Revenue is not the same right?
If only Valve could learn to count to three they'd be the perfect game studio.
they already did! the steamdeck was released with steam os 3.0 (in the meantime they reached 3.5)