Yes, the Steam Deck is great, and Steam is definitely one of the best games platforms there is. And Valve has done great work supporting Linux and open source development, and forcing more transparency for sellers on Steam.
But I feel like people sometimes just love valve for everything they do. GabeN is still a billionaire, buying super-yachts and stuff. Valve makes a ton of their money from gambling on loot crates in CS2 and TF2, and have not done enough (imo) to stop even more predatory third party item gambling sites. And whenever I bring stuff like that up people keep defending Valve.
We should be able to praise their great games and hardware, at the same time as criticising other parts of the company.
Everyone is saying you don’t know what you’re talking about, but you’re obviously right. They’re one of the most profitable companies per employee in the world. Saying they could take a smaller cut and still be profitable is obvious to anyone who doesn’t have their head in the sand.
Valve is using their market dominance to force price parity too. This is an ongoing case, but all the documents seem to indicate this is true. For all the “Valve can’t do anything wrong” people, wouldn’t you rather pay less for games? If another market is allowed to sell a game for 10% less, isn’t that better for you? Maybe Valve sees this and cuts their share to drop 10% too, but isn’t that even better? Why are you so insistent on arguing against your own best interest.
Yeah, 30% is standard. Who the fuck cares? Don’t you want it to be lower? Do you know how that’s lowered? It’s by other stores competing on that cut. They aren’t allowed to (on the consumer end) though. Epic does on the developer end, but Valve prevents them from giving consumers a cut.
The 30% is not standard. Steam is practically the only one that takes this much on PC and beyond. Only console stores can be compared to it, but that’s at least justified by the consoles themselves being sold at a loss.