Technology

cough S Mode cough Windows RT cough

Thanks, I almost forgot about my experience using S mode. It is fucking awful.

If it was my own I would have just installed Linux.

Isnt the mode dead? I thought they discontinued it

The difference is availability of choice. On apple phones, Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation you are locked into a single source of software. On a PC there are myriad of game stores you can choose from. Sometimes you can even buy the software directly from the developer. Usually people are upset when this choice is taken away (for example epic exclusive games). Nobody would bat an eye if a developer offered their game on epic or their own platform with a ~20% discount compared to steam. But it is up to the developers to make their game available on any of the PC game stores.

In conclusion, steam is not a platform holder, they could charge whatever they wanted. If the markup was too high, you could simply choose to buy your games elsewhere. For most people, this 30% is worth it for the features and buyer protection that steam offers compared to other platforms.

I'd like to see a game developer chiming in but as a user, 30% cut by Steam feels justified.

They have helped me discover and buy many games that I wouldn't have even heard of otherwise. Compare that to Google Play Store which is full of dogshit shovelware and Pay2Win games.

And sometimes I've even bought Steam keys via Fanatical bundles, where I chose which games to buy by looking at their Steam store pages. Steam got nothing from these transactions as far as I know.

This is without getting into other useful stuff like guides and forums hosted by Steam which I can look at whenever I get stuck. Or Steam workshop which allows users to easily mod the games.

Call me a fanboy but I'm tired of this 'what about Steam' comments.

Ask Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Nintendo to improve their stores instead.

I agree that the 30% cut is too much. The only reason I give them a pass is because Steam is really good (at least, as a user). But I still want them to lower it.

I get why people like steam. But as a steam hater, if GabeN ever dies and the kids or whoever is heirs are decide to sell to VCs or private equity. That 30% will be just as oppressive as anyone else’s.

Steam is not the only means of distribution anywhere, and you can often buy the same game both from Steam and directly.

It's too early to hate it.

(Well, I mean, I want a FreeBSD native Steam client with native Proton and all infrastructure, but I can understand that it's a small percentage, even if not that different from Linux support.)

It would be more comparable if Apple, Microsoft (Xbox), Nintendo, or Sony allowed anyone to make a third party game launcher but they just keep sucking.

You get value from Steam for paying that.

What value do you get from Apple for paying the Apple tax? A higher price for a phone that could cost 500€ less?

I'm less mad at Steam and Google because there are clear, simple ways to avoid their cuts.

I have no basis to say whether they're providing a service worth the 30% charge. I'm also less mad at Steam than at Google because they're being less shady about trying to push people into their store too.

Perhaps that's because Steam doesn't seem to be trying very hard to "lock in" developers to their platform. Devs are free to sell their PC games on Gog or Epic or whatever. Steam is popular because it's a good platform. This freedom for developers or customers mostly does not exist on mobile or on consoles, except for the EUs efforts here.

Even their "console" the Steam Deck can, relatively easily, run games from other stores. I'm not saying a 30% cut should be considered fair but they do seem to take a different approach to digital sales than the other large players.

Steam gets a pass because they actually offer buyer protection, refunds if it doesn’t work, refunds under certain requirements which can be waved under certain circumstances, removal of day one season passes, refunds for dlc that gets delayed too long for example.

If an actual competitor gave a shit about things that matter to actual players than they have a shot. Epic Game Store is a joke because no one wants a store that only focuses on what corporations want. GOG is good but just doesn’t market itself well, seriously outside of launching CDPR games I don’t see it at all.

Getting companies to offer their games on platforms that offer a higher margin is easy. Getting players over to a platform that offers less protections and features is not going to happen.

Steam isn’t a monopoly.

The PC is an open platform, you can use any game store or launcher you want - unlike the iPhone, Android (without sideloading), PlayStation, switch, or Xbox.