jwiggler

I’ll have to read this a little later but just want to say now thank you for your genuine response

Sorry to be like this, but I don’t think you’re getting it still. Like I said, colloquially Steam has value. And especially in relation to you, the gamer. How much you personally value your games more because of Steam, though, is irrelevant, and Valve creating a new product is similarly irrelevant to what I’m saying. Steamdeck does not increase the economic value of any other product (though, I love my Steamdeck)

Again, you are not the consumer of Valve’s (main) product. Valve’s business model is to sell shelf space to the dev. It’s to allow the peasant into the walls of the city to sell their grain in the market square.

The value I’m referring to is the value inherent in a production of a commodity that originates from the raw materials and labor that workers put into it. I’m talking labor value. It’s the value of the grain that originates in the workers toil and the raw stuff.

Valve might help realize gains from the game, but it is not involved in the production and does not create nor add labor value to the game. Their business model is predicated on extracting rents from developers, the people doing productive labor.

You could maybe argue Valve creates value in the production and maintenance of the commodity that is Steam’s infrastructure and sell it at a fair price. But in this context, the whole point of that infrastructure is to realize the value created from the labor of developers, making it extractive in nature. Do you see what I mean? You’re right back at the point where they’re charging developers a rent to access the marketplace. And the whole thing falls apart without devs (workers) creating a commodity (games) from which to extract value. This is what I mean when I say Steam is not value-adding – not that Steam doesn’t have (colloquial) value.

Does that make sense?

I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying valves infrastructure isn’t valuable, or what they offer to gamers isn’t good. Again, Steam is not a product to gamers. It’s a marketplace that charges rents to game devs. I’m saying it’s not value added to the product that is produced. The product that’s produced by the game dev is the same regardless of whether they put it on steam or not.

Most of your points are about how much value Steam offers to gamers in a colloquial sense. Of course, its a lot. But it’s not in an economic sense value added to the good produced. Valve taking a 1/3rd cut is more akin to an extractive feudal lord than a collaborator in the making of the good (the game) and sharing in the profits.

I think you may be focusing a little too hard on the monopoly thing. Tbh I only said that in the initial reply to mirror the OPs comment in my response. Sorry, I shouldve been clearer in my other comment where I said they’re the only big player. I’ll grant you there are others in the market of distributors, and that Valve is one of the few big players, rather than the one big player. My bigger point is more that their business practice is extractive and more like feudalism than traditional capitalism.

And I hear what you’re saying. I think you probably make total sense particularly in the eyes of neoclassical economics, maintaining Valve is totally justified and completely in the bounds of acceptable business practices-- particularly according to our current economic system and notions of private property. But I, personally, just don’t buy them (pun, erhm, intended?)

For one thing, I think there are several good examples of infrastructure going public. And the other, larger thing, is that this passage from Pyotr Kroptokin kinda illustrates my attitudes toward private property.

The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers–in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage.

The money spent by the owner was not the product of his own toil. It was amassed, like all other riches, by paying the workers two-thirds or only a half of what was their due.

Moreover–and it is here that the enormity of the whole proceeding becomes most glaring–the house owes its actual value to the profit which the owner can make out of it. Now, this profit results from the fact that his house is built in a town possessing bridges, quays, and fine public buildings, and affording to its inhabitants a thousand comforts and conveniences unknown in villages; a town well paved, lighted with gas, in regular communication with other towns, and itself a centre of industry, commerce, science, and art; a town which the work of twenty or thirty generations has gone to render habitable, healthy, and beautiful.

A house in certain parts of Paris may be valued at thousands of pounds sterling, not because thousands of pounds’ worth of labour have been expended on that particular house, but because it is in Paris; because for centuries workmen, artists, thinkers, and men of learning and letters have contributed to make Paris what it is to-day–a centre of industry, commerce, politics, art, and science; because Paris has a past; because, thanks to literature, the names of its streets are household words in foreign countries as well as at home; because it is the fruit of eighteen centuries of toil, the work of fifty generations of the whole French nation.

Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage?

the offices that negotiated with local governments to arrange on-sight shooting, or production studios that fronted funding, or people who provided QA and support for the animation software the CGI studio is using

But these are value-adding things too, wouldn’t you say? They end up being integral to the making of the thing itself. Different from distribution which is just, as I see it, granting access to a market that you control so the good can be sold.

I’m definitely not being disingenuous – I’m not a Valve-hater out here trying to convince people they’re evil. I use Steam and would rather use it than any other platform. It’s simply better. But that’s not really relevant to what I’m saying, besides it’s implication that it makes Steam more attractive to potential buyers of games. In relation to me, these platforms aren’t a product at all. They’re marketplaces devs have to pay a tax to access. As you note, it’s possible to bypass them – but I’d wager that makes things much much harder for the dev. I’d guess Factorio and Minecraft are exceptions to the rule.

But yeah, you do have a point that are others out there. I’d consider them extractive, too. As I see it, theyre less so a service and moreso based on ownership and control of infrastructure that probably should be common property.

Listen, I’d be happy to talk about my perspective more, but why would I when you begin your response with

You’re drinking all the tech bro Kool-Aid that the lawyers and paid bots/shills have thrown out there on the internet.

Just totally rude.

But it’s like seeing a long list of credits at the end of a movie when you were only aware of the signature voice of the lead actor.

It’s not like this, because most (not all) of those credits actually worked on the movie, itself. Their labor went into the thing that was produced in the end. I’m not arguing there’s no cost to distribution. It’s just not value-adding and so it ends up being extractive imo.

So, host a game on your own website, with its own patching process, payment systems, and forum. See how long it takes you, and how many sales you get out of it.

I’m also not trying to claim there’s no productive work involved with maintaining a distribution platform, or that they aren’t necessary. That’s one of the issues, they are necessary, and there is one big player, and anyone who wants to sell their good is beholden to them. Valve still has a feudal-lord-like position in relation to the people who actually make the games, themselves.

Edit: also, im sensing some indignation. hope i didn’t push your buttons or anything, just saying things as i see them and if you don’t see it that way, that’s fine.

Ahh, I gotcha. Thanks for the clarification – I didn’t know you could be charged by bandwidth, but it makes sense. I always just think of paying for the cpu and ram and disk.

I’m inclined to agree with you. I’m sure many just chalk it up to the cost of doing business. But, like I mentioned, it seems there are at least some game devs unhappy about the position Valve maintains in the chain.

it’s really undercutting the value that Valve provides developers who utilize steam for distribution

I think I’d actually disagree here. In a classical sense Valve offers no value to the product (game). They just own the digital marketplace. It’s like saying, “well, the Lord does maintain the roads and walls and the square, and he does a good job. He adds a lot of value for the craftsmen and peasants who use the roads and are protected by the walls.” But in the end, the Lord is still extracting a rent from the workers actually producing the goods.

Yeah, no I definitely agree they’re good to gamers. I also love how they have a flat structure, and I think Gabe seems like a smart guy. He’s given some interesting talks about economics. They’ve made a great platform for gamers, but it doesn’t quite change that their business model is based on taking a cut of the profit of work done by others. In most other scenarios, it’s easy for us to recognize when companies do this – amazon, Walmart, etc, but in Valves case they have such a great reputation among gamers and a fanbase of their own, I think the escape a good amount of warranted scrutiny (game dev side, not gamer side)

Valve’s fee is more than earned however.

Maybe. I’m not a game dev, so Im not sure I can say for sure. But it still remains that there isn’t much of a choice for game devs and Valve holds most of the cards. That level of centralization of power isn’t good, earned or otherwise. It’s evident that at least some devs aren’t happy how much of a cut Valve is taking.

Meanwhile if a developer were to do that themselves then they pay each time a user wants to download that game.

I’m not sure this is exactly right. They’d have to buy and maintain their own servers, or rent them from a cloud provider, but it wouldnt necessarily be a charge for every download. But maybe I’m being pedantic – you’re right that it costs some amount of money to store data and keep computers up.

I think probably from a game dev perspective, the issue here is Valve takes far more of a cut than whatever value they add to the experience itself. If you’re a team that just spent years of work on a game, the one-third cut Valve takes is just not proportional considering the amount of dev work, and is therefore considered extractive. Does that make sense?

I’m trying not to cast too much moral judgement here because we live in a capitalist system and corporations are going to seek profit in whatever way possible, and we are all indoctrinated into it, but from a perspective critical to that system, Valve are not good.

From a gamer perspective theyre a fucking godsend lmaooo

The fact that they don’t pull this shit is the reason they have the distribution market cornered.

We have to remember that gamers are not Valve’s primary customers. Game devs are. The market you’re referring to is the market of distributors available to game devs – NOT the market of storefronts available to gamers. In the PC space, the market of distributors is cornered by Valve and it allows them to take a big chunk of each sale from the game devs.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Steam and I think Valve has done some great things for gaming on PC and for gamers in general. That doesn’t change the fact that they are another cost a game dev must pay in order for them to create their goods, in an economic sense. Valve’s got the shelf space and devs don’t have much choice but to rent it out.

AYE