Valve makes almost $50 million per employee, raking in more cash per person than Google, Amazon, or Microsoft — gaming giant's 350 employees on track to generate $17 billion this year
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Valve has lawsuits in the work, although not from the FTC. The fact is Valve is just slightly above the other companies, but it’s a very low bar and that doesn’t negate their very real effect on the industry.
I bring up Amazon because your arguments apply to them. If I told you Bezos deserves all his wealth because he has a better platform then his competitors (all three of them) and offers an easy to use website with cheap delivery, you would probably call me a bootlicker.
All billionaires and their profit making machines are bad, no exceptions imo.
Valve employees aren’t pissing in bottles. Amazon also does a bunch of shitty things on their marketplace (Amazon basics) and killed all the competition.
There’s a huge difference in ethics here.
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steam has a 75% marketshare of PC games distribution in the US. the 2nd biggest player, epic games, has a market share estimated from 3% to 7,5%. i can’t find data for steam’s market share outside the US, but i’d expect it to be even higher.
if google can be considered to have a monopoly on web browsers with 73% of the marketshare, even as alternatives (like safari, 13%) exist, i don’t see why steam wouldn’t count as well.
Now include consoles and phones.
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Valve employees aren’t pissing in bottles. Amazon also does a bunch of shitty things on their marketplace (Amazon basics) and killed all the competition.
There’s a huge difference in ethics here.
There is a difference in the problematic being caused, not the ethics. The soft monopoly they all enjoy together as a group (Valve, Microsoft, etc) is having an effect on the industry. We as consumers get worst quality games in the end, because 30% of profits go directly to a few hosting companies. A lot of indie companies would still be around if the game store club wasn’t insanely greedy and artificially keeping such a huge part of the pie.
If it wasn’t the same, Gaben wouldn’t own a handful of boats worth a combined 1 000 000 000 $. That is 9 zeros for boats.
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Valve has lawsuits in the work, although not from the FTC. The fact is Valve is just slightly above the other companies, but it’s a very low bar and that doesn’t negate their very real effect on the industry.
I bring up Amazon because your arguments apply to them. If I told you Bezos deserves all his wealth because he has a better platform then his competitors (all three of them) and offers an easy to use website with cheap delivery, you would probably call me a bootlicker.
All billionaires and their profit making machines are bad, no exceptions imo.
You are arguing something different. We all agree billionaires shouldn’t exist. You don’t need to try to topic flip to try and let us know. This was simply a discussion about the term monopoly and it’s definition.
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Paying people to promote your stuff is not an abuse of monopoly position, because Duckduckgo is perfectly capable of doing the same thing.
Abuse of monopoly position would be leaning on search results to promote Chrome or Android (for example). And they have been caught doing some anti-competitive shit.
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Now include consoles and phones.
You can analyse markets at different levels.
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You are equating “monopoly” with “abusive monopoly.”
No, I’m not. I’m saying they aren’t a monopoly by the simple fact that they aren’t the only providers of the service they sell. And while they are currently in a position to use their power to make themselves a monopoly, they are not doing that and instead are playing fair with their competition.
I refer you to the other comment subthread where I mentioned textbook examples of monopolies which had 80-odd percent market share, you asked me if Steam had that, I said yes, and then you went quiet.
Don’t bring up points that you were already challenged on and had no reply to - it’s lying, because you already know it’s wrong.
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The conversation is longer then two comments. It’s highly debatable if valve has a monopoly per the FTC definition, not being sued by them isn’t the bar. You don’t need to have 100% market share. You can have legal monopolies, but that wouldn’t make the gross hoarding of wealth (which is the underlining thread) defendable.
There is no doubt in my mind that they have, in common talk, a soft monopoly at minimum and are colluding and keeping the percentage taken high. If they were actually competing, he wouldn’t be able to afford all the boats.
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Nah he’s right. Nobody buys a widget for 5 bucks and sells it for 10 bucks and says, “I made 10 bucks”. By your rational I could buy a car new for 25 grand, sell it 10 years later for 12 grand and say I “made” 12 grand off it.
“Make” has typically implied profit for as long as I can remember.I interpreted it as profit.
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I refer you to the other comment subthread where I mentioned textbook examples of monopolies which had 80-odd percent market share, you asked me if Steam had that, I said yes, and then you went quiet.
Don’t bring up points that you were already challenged on and had no reply to - it’s lying, because you already know it’s wrong.
The gaming market is much larger than PC gaming.
And Steam does not have an 80% market share on PC gaming, so who’s lying?
And finally, who the fuck do you think you are that I owe you a response?
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Call me a shill, but Valve’s actions indicate that they care about the money that comes from improving a product or service. That differentiates them from many publicly traded companies that care about money at the expense of the quality of their own products and services.
Both things can be true. They make good products while also making millions from kids gambling.
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If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
Minecraft, Star Sector, Dwarf Fortress until recently. Stores like Epic and GOG and itch.io.
Plus Steam gives you content distribution, discussions, patches, all for free.
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To be fair, Valve only has around 350 employees. The other companies have thousands more.
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If I want my game to sell I have to release on Steam, though.
You don’t even have to release your game on pc to sell… Some don’t at all. Sticking to only consoles.
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They probably should hire more people and reduce profits. But you can’t just hire anybody and that’s a lot of work.
That’s how you go from sustainable to unsustainable due to chasing constant exponential growth then eventual enshitification that hits consumers to try to recoup all the lost money.
You’re describing the shitty business models of publicly traded companies that hire thousands then lay off thousands and keep trying to do whatever they can to raise stock prices due to not targetting a sustainable stable company for the longterm but quarter by quarter profit targets.
That steam has been more conservative with hiring is probably why they’ve been able to have the resources to go into hardware even if it flops unlike EA, Ubisoft, and Epic despite having way more employees.
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Fuck valve too. Gabe has over a billion dollars worth of boats. Fuck him to hell and back
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Both things can be true. They make good products while also making millions from kids gambling.
You are correct, though it bears stating that they make millions from kids gambling and they make billions for their software distribution platform, as one indicator of Valve’s priorities as a for-profit company.
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It’s not misleading, you’ve just purposely ignored the meaning of the words to instead imply your own.
Have you ever considered that different people can interpret things differently? Why are you jumping down someone’s throat for clarifying an ambiguous title?
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You could defend Amazon with that logic. the fact that the barrier of entry is high is exactly what let’s Steam, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo abuse of their soft monopoly.
Nothing justifies owning a billion dollars worth of of boats.
Amazon tried and failed, too.
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Then again, somehow I don’t expect Valve’s expenditures are that high, except download server costs.
Eh, that could also include sales revenue, of which Valve pays out 70% to right holders.
