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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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Steam Hardware
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Yeah, it won't be more profitable. It isn't a choice. There is a small choice for some games of distributing it yourself. This is incredibly cheap (which proves Valve's profit margin is insane), but 99% of players won't leave Steam. This means it isn't a choice for all but a few niche games. Starsector, for example, distributes it on their own, so they get a 100% cut. The players who want to play that are generally more intelligent and can get it off of Steam. For something like CoD, that's marketed towards mass appeal go the absolute minimum of technological literacy, you have to be on Steam. There isn't a choice.
You've already agreed it's worse than it being lower. You don't think it's bad enough to be upset over, but you agree it's worse than it could be. That's the difference. I won't stop at "better than it could be." I'll always argue for more from a company, and you should too.
Everything is worse than it can be. We're not living in a utopia.
I'm not expecting a business to always act in the best interest of everyone, that is just completely unreasonable. I'm not even expecting individual people to always act in the best interest of anyone but themselves. And the fact that valve has never raised prices, never worsened their service (intentionally), never tried to shaft anyone and in general never attempted to extort their presumed "monopoly" is the highest bar I can reasonably set for any entity, business or personal.
Maybe you heard of don vultaggio, the founder and CEO of arizona ice tea. That company has never increased their prices since 1992. In an interview, when asked why, he said: "We’re successful, we’re debt free, we own everything. Why have people who are having a hard time paying their rent pay more for their drink?". You're not going to see me ask him to lower the price because clearly he "can afford it" (his net worth is 6 billion. Not quite gabe, but still extraordinarily wealthy). The man is doing everything I can reasonably expect from a business: Not squeeze consumers, not treat staff shitty and not worsen their product for profit. Valve is doing the same thing, just on a much much larger scale.
I feel you have completely unreasonable standards when it comes to businesses. Which is your right to have, I'm not gonna sit here and say your standards are wrong. I just think that, in a realistic world view, while your intentions may be good, your expectations are unreasonable. And I also think that is just something we're fundamentally never going to agree on.
Clearly you aren't doing the last bit, though you should. If you're excusing Valve, for acting in their best interest, you should at least have the backbone to ask for your own best interest. You're giving them your money. Demand the best outcome possible for yourself. Either that's cheaper games (if they just decrease price by 10% but still take 20% of what they currently do, you save money) or better outcomes for developers, which means more games, and niche games that can afford to make fewer sales.
Steam is a marketplace. They don't set the prices. They provide a place for games to sell their product at whatever price they want. There are plenty of $70 games, and quite a few much higher than that. What are you even talking about?
But they have. You aren't allowed to sell your game cheaper someone else. If you want to distribute on your own website and sell on Steam, you have to charge the same price, even though you could sell for ~30% less and get the same amount of money. You essentially have to sell on Steam though, or you get far fewer eyeballs. There are also other ways they've extorted their market control.
Yeah, these aren't even remotely similar. His tea is priced incredibly low for the market. Yes, he makes a lot of money, but it's through volume of sale. Their margins aren't that large. Steam has insane margins. The operating cost of the server infrastructure is pretty cheap (we can't have specific numbers, as they're private, but servers aren't expensive). Their margins are absolutely ridiculous and they have high volume. If we're going to make the comparison of these totally different markets (selling a product VS providing a service), Valve is incredibly greedy. If you like what Arazona Tea does, you should be asking for far lower margins from Valve.
Consumers should demand absolutely everything for what they purchase. Expecting to get everything you ask for is not expected, but you won't even ask. If you actually have this capitalist mindset, where we shouldn't be asking them to do good, then we should ask them to do whatever we want as consumers. Without us they're nothing. Demand that they do better. It's your money.