It’s crazy how it’s absolutely impossible to criticize steam without getting bashed to oblivion by so-called gamers. The amount of free balls sucking Steam gets is just ridiculous. They have sub 100 employees , take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games. Yeah it’s a cool platform, but in the end it’s just another nasty capitalist business.
take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games.
they also provide both proton completely for free, and the entire steam marketplace, as well as any other additional functionality, steam networking for ex, with that 30% cut.
It’s a large cut, but you’re not really going to find a better option. Sure you could release on GOG, i think like 12 people use GOG though.
Yeah,I mean Proton is basically Wine - A free and open-source project developed by hundred of people over the years - with some extra patches. It’s great, but the only reason they did it is to sell steam decks.
Steam does certain things really well, but in the end it’s just a capitalist business. I don’t get why gamers can be that bitchy about studios, that employ thousands of devs and artists, people who just wants to make good games but needs to deal with executives, but will rip their shirt a soon as someone criticize steam. They do no care about you, your experience, or even video games, they only care about money.
You mean like Epic who takes 12%?
Or Itch that let you chose your contribution?
Or Humble that takes 25% but give half of that to charity?
BTW steam is not a publisher…
The infrastructure argument is just BS in 2025. Just admit you’re an official gamer, meaning you will do anything to protect a soulless capitalist business that make millions everyday but employ like 83 people. Ubisoft bad, Steam good, I know lol.
Lol, in 2022 steam had profit margin of 70%. That makes it the most profitable company per employee in the United States, check it out. But obviously, they’re not in it for the money, they just want players like you to be happy.
As a Linux gamer, steam has done so much to make it incredibly easy. They didn’t have to make proton, but they did and it’s great.
The few games they’ve made have pretty much all been incredible.
The family sharing means my wife has access to my whole account on her steam deck.
Sure, they take a big cut of sales, I’ve heard not a great place to work, and probably some other reasons to not like them. But the good far outweighs the cons. It’s hard to hate them compared to other huge companies.
Well I mean, proton exists pretty much solely because of the steam deck. I will agree that it’s been really nice switching to Linux as a result of proton’s existence but they didn’t just magically do it out of the goodness of their own heart either. It’s basically the nicest version of a monopolistic gaming environment that doesn’t really allow you to actually own anything that you buy.
It’s kind of funny to watch the news with them; they’re like two different companies struggling to coexist. One is just as greedy and evil as every other corporation and the other one fights for the consumer, so you end up with a news story one day saying that they’re stifling competition by forcing price cuts on only their platform, but then they also are banning all games that force players to watch advertisements. Make make up your mind Steam 😂
Well I mean, proton exists pretty much solely because of the steam deck.
proton existed many years before the steamdeck, and it’s evident they intended it to be used WITH the steam deck, but it also exists outside the steamdeck, even then, it’s still a huge incurred cost for a console that is actually super cost competitive for what it is. They don’t even have that significant of a console market share, it seems like it’s been nothing but a pet project to make gaming on linux more accessible, presumably because valve doesn’t really like windows. Steam is 100% still WAY in the red on proton, and will probably continue to be for the whole lifetime of the project, it’s unlikely they’ll ever break even on it.
How do they not allow you to own anything? Steam has drm free games, and if this is about licensing that wasn’t different 30 years ago.
Valve is absolutely not perfect and I buy from gog when possible, but my god do I hate that argument. Using steam’s drm is the choice of the publisher.
Family sharing is just replicating a feature of the disc age that valve killed of only owning 1 copy of a game and installing it one multiple people’s computers. If it had DRM requiring the disc to be inserted to play (which many games did), only one person could play it at a time.
I had a couple of classmates who’d take turns buying each Sims 2 expansion because you only needed the last installed expansion disc inserted to play so that way they’d each have a fully expanded Sims 2 install at half the price. My dad would always have the latest expansion installed and I would have to wait until they got the next one before I could get that one. Certain expansions were exciting enough that I’d find times to play on my dad’s computer to play the latest expansion though
It’s crazy how it’s absolutely impossible to criticize steam without getting bashed to oblivion by so-called gamers. The amount of free balls sucking Steam gets is just ridiculous. They have sub 100 employees , take 30% of every god damn games sold on the platform and you don’t own you games. Yeah it’s a cool platform, but in the end it’s just another nasty capitalist business.
they also provide both proton completely for free, and the entire steam marketplace, as well as any other additional functionality, steam networking for ex, with that 30% cut.
It’s a large cut, but you’re not really going to find a better option. Sure you could release on GOG, i think like 12 people use GOG though.
Yeah,I mean Proton is basically Wine - A free and open-source project developed by hundred of people over the years - with some extra patches. It’s great, but the only reason they did it is to sell steam decks.
Steam does certain things really well, but in the end it’s just a capitalist business. I don’t get why gamers can be that bitchy about studios, that employ thousands of devs and artists, people who just wants to make good games but needs to deal with executives, but will rip their shirt a soon as someone criticize steam. They do no care about you, your experience, or even video games, they only care about money.
Really we just to implement an open protocol that launchers and games can both support.
Boy are you gonna be surprised as hell when you find out what sort of percentage other publishers take, especially for physical releases!
Shockingly enough, infrastructure requires money to run!
You mean like Epic who takes 12%? Or Itch that let you chose your contribution? Or Humble that takes 25% but give half of that to charity?
BTW steam is not a publisher…
The infrastructure argument is just BS in 2025. Just admit you’re an official gamer, meaning you will do anything to protect a soulless capitalist business that make millions everyday but employ like 83 people. Ubisoft bad, Steam good, I know lol.
Why? Do we have free electricity and data centers? Sign me up for my share of both.
Lol, in 2022 steam had profit margin of 70%. That makes it the most profitable company per employee in the United States, check it out. But obviously, they’re not in it for the money, they just want players like you to be happy.
As a Linux gamer, steam has done so much to make it incredibly easy. They didn’t have to make proton, but they did and it’s great.
The few games they’ve made have pretty much all been incredible.
The family sharing means my wife has access to my whole account on her steam deck.
Sure, they take a big cut of sales, I’ve heard not a great place to work, and probably some other reasons to not like them. But the good far outweighs the cons. It’s hard to hate them compared to other huge companies.
Well I mean, proton exists pretty much solely because of the steam deck. I will agree that it’s been really nice switching to Linux as a result of proton’s existence but they didn’t just magically do it out of the goodness of their own heart either. It’s basically the nicest version of a monopolistic gaming environment that doesn’t really allow you to actually own anything that you buy.
It’s kind of funny to watch the news with them; they’re like two different companies struggling to coexist. One is just as greedy and evil as every other corporation and the other one fights for the consumer, so you end up with a news story one day saying that they’re stifling competition by forcing price cuts on only their platform, but then they also are banning all games that force players to watch advertisements. Make make up your mind Steam 😂
proton existed many years before the steamdeck, and it’s evident they intended it to be used WITH the steam deck, but it also exists outside the steamdeck, even then, it’s still a huge incurred cost for a console that is actually super cost competitive for what it is. They don’t even have that significant of a console market share, it seems like it’s been nothing but a pet project to make gaming on linux more accessible, presumably because valve doesn’t really like windows. Steam is 100% still WAY in the red on proton, and will probably continue to be for the whole lifetime of the project, it’s unlikely they’ll ever break even on it.
How do they not allow you to own anything? Steam has drm free games, and if this is about licensing that wasn’t different 30 years ago.
Valve is absolutely not perfect and I buy from gog when possible, but my god do I hate that argument. Using steam’s drm is the choice of the publisher.
its the perpetual license thing, every platform that doesnt directly sell you the product does the same thing, it’s the industry standard.
Family sharing is just replicating a feature of the disc age that valve killed of only owning 1 copy of a game and installing it one multiple people’s computers. If it had DRM requiring the disc to be inserted to play (which many games did), only one person could play it at a time.
I had a couple of classmates who’d take turns buying each Sims 2 expansion because you only needed the last installed expansion disc inserted to play so that way they’d each have a fully expanded Sims 2 install at half the price. My dad would always have the latest expansion installed and I would have to wait until they got the next one before I could get that one. Certain expansions were exciting enough that I’d find times to play on my dad’s computer to play the latest expansion though
It’s a testament to how much worse every other company is.