Steam isn't perfect, that's for sure and one particular issue that constantly comes up is how some developers have been abusing the release date display.
Previously, it seems developers were able to change their upcoming release date whenever they wanted to. Some took advantage of this, to constantly ensure their game showed up on the first two pages of the Coming Soon section on Steam. The issue is that it constantly pushed games with legitimate release dates back, sometimes multiple pages of searching. I saw it all the time and it was a massive nuisance, when clearly a lot of these games had no intention to release then.
Going by this Reddit post, which included the image below, it seems like Valve are finally starting to do something about this:
Going by that, it seems Valve will now be requiring at least some developers to contact them if they want to delay their release date. While a lot of people do value a more open store, there has to be limits somewhere.
Hat tip to Mr. Doomguy in Discord.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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doomiebaby Aug 6, 2019
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.
How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
I think it's pretty clear EGS is running a strategy where they run up short term losses, which they can afford to do thanks to a huge war chest from fortnite and certain investors, in order to grab market share; once they've pushed that as far as it will go they can be expected to boost the price up again. But the question of what cut is fair remains open--we don't have information about just what the expenses and revenue are, so we're forced to judge based on not very relevant data, like wossname from EGS seeming like kind of a jerk.
In theory this whole war of each against all in the marketplace is supposed to lead to efficient pricing and not overly huge profit margins due to competition. But that lack of information (among other things, like barriers to entry, network effects creating economies of scale and many, many more) mean that doesn't necessarily happen.
So it may well be that Valve's cut of each sale is in fact excessive, giving them windfall profits while most devs barely get by, and they've been guffawing all the way to the bank for years. Or, it may not. We don't have the info we would need to tell the difference. (If it is true, EGS are still not our saviours, they're just an outfit who wants to replace Valve as the ones grabbing the dough, and they see the only way to do it is by loss leaders)
The only people in the whole biz who seem pretty clearly not driven by greed is itch.io. They're weird, I like them.
i don't think asking for compensation for your time, or coming to an agreement on what time, effort or a product is worth, or renegotiation make you greedy. i don't think simply wanting something is quite the same as greed. sure you could work just for food, but what if you want to work harder and have more than just needs? i know yall wanna turn this political, but really... if you don't think an asking price for a service is reasonable, do something else. capitalism isn't even required, technically, and lack of it never stopped anyone from making agreements and trading.
Quoting: AsuI don't mind Lord Gaben laughing all the way to the bank. He's the only reason I can play on linux and was able ditch windoze finally.
Epic supports blender and unreal engine is on linux. Still no store on linux...
I'm angry at GOG because galaxy is still not on linux, yet I'm still shoveling money their way. And I still need to use 3rd party launcher. God bless gamehub.
Cyberpunk2077 better be on linux. Or on wine at the minimum. Still undecided on which store I want to buy it. If it needs proton then it's steam.
same, and i'm the anti-DRM zealot, but i consider some things a donation to the cause of getting a game market on linux. there are still better ways and one day i'll probably take em into my own hands, but hell, steamplay is idiotproof and the whole reality is pretty impressive
Last edited by doomiebaby on 6 August 2019 at 11:01 pm UTC
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Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.
How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
That seems like an overly negative attitude
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.
How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
That seems like an overly negative attitude
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: tuubiQuoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.
How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
That seems like an overly negative attitude
But calling _everybody_ greedy... that's kinda insulting. Even the less offensive "pursuit of personal gain" is hard to swollow. Is everything you do just for your personal gain? Don't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?
If you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.
2 Likes, Who?
Quoting: kuhpunktDon't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?Of course I do all of this and more, but the point was that in the end, all of this works outside or even against the system, not for it. Thankfully, most of us aren't mindless cogs in the machine.
Quoting: kuhpunktIf you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.Yes, it would be sad. Good thing I don't think that way. It's perfectly possible to see faults in how things work without falling into abject despair. Otherwise nothing would ever get fixed.
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Quoting: kuhpunktWell, let me give a contrast. Imagine there was a system where everyone got a certain amount of credit every year that they could dedicate to paying creative people via sort of patreon/kickstarteresque portals (and that's all--it's not money, it's just a sort of vote to award someone money). Musicians, writers, game developers and so on. They'd all get paid from that. The amount any given creator could get per year would have a sort of soft cap, with rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point--but that point would involve a pretty solid living. But then the stuff they created would be free to all, available on public websites, steam-like portals or what have you built with open source code.Quoting: tuubiQuoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.
How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
That seems like an overly negative attitude
But calling _everybody_ greedy... that's kinda insulting. Even the less offensive "pursuit of personal gain" is hard to swollow. Is everything you do just for your personal gain? Don't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?
If you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.
Of course this would all involve a fair amount of tax money. And might be inefficient, and so on, so it might not turn out to be a desirable setup, that's not my point.
But it would not push anyone to be greedy. The game designers could make a decent living without coming up with all kinds of tricks to boost revenue; they could just get on with making cool stuff. The "Steam" things would be public, not for profit. The public would get all the games, music, books or whatever they wanted, for free. Incentives would be very different. Our current system, for better or for worse, is based on greed, on harnessing the power of greed to (in theory) motivate productive effort. It is possible to imagine other systems based on other things, on harnessing different aspects of human motivation, but those would be different systems. Could be worse; the feudal system was largely based on pride and bloodthirstiness.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 7 August 2019 at 9:03 am UTC
1 Likes, Who?
Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: kuhpunktWell, let me give a contrast. Imagine there was a system where everyone got a certain amount of credit every year that they could dedicate to paying creative people via sort of patreon/kickstarteresque portals (and that's all--it's not money, it's just a sort of vote to award someone money). Musicians, writers, game developers and so on. They'd all get paid from that. The amount any given creator could get per year would have a sort of soft cap, with rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point--but that point would involve a pretty solid living. But then the stuff they created would be free to all, available on public websites, steam-like portals or what have you built with open source code.Quoting: tuubiQuoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.
How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
That seems like an overly negative attitude
But calling _everybody_ greedy... that's kinda insulting. Even the less offensive "pursuit of personal gain" is hard to swollow. Is everything you do just for your personal gain? Don't you share things? Don't you gift other people presents? Don't you think others should be treated and compensated fairly?
If you think that's how all people are... that would be just sad.
Of course this would all involve a fair amount of tax money. And might be inefficient, and so on, so it might not turn out to be a desirable setup, that's not my point.
But it would not push anyone to be greedy. The game designers could make a decent living without coming up with all kinds of tricks to boost revenue; they could just get on with making cool stuff. The "Steam" things would be public, not for profit. The public would get all the games, music, books or whatever they wanted, for free. Incentives would be very different. Our current system, for better or for worse, is based on greed, on harnessing the power of greed to (in theory) motivate productive effort. It is possible to imagine other systems based on other things, on harnessing different aspects of human motivation, but those would be different systems. Could be worse; the feudal system was largely based on pride and bloodthirstiness.
Even if that is/would be true... what makes you say that everybody is greedy? I'm not. Many others aren't.
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Quoting: PatolaAnd then again, Itch does not have regional prices, and to people in the third world like me, their prices are simply excessive, I have never spent 1 "real" (brazilian currency) there. Sometimes Steam is like 4 times cheaper than in there. So in my viewpoint, they are the greedy ones.
I'd guess that's just oversight. A bad one, but still.
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Graylisting would make sense. Works with e-mail, I see no reason why it shouldn't work with other kinds of SPAM. My guess is if a publisher (or a developer but aren't publishers bit "more guilty" of this shady practice?) modifies the release date for any of their products more than X times in Y period of time the privilege of doing so will be temporarily revoked.
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doomiebaby Aug 7, 2019
Quoting: tuubiQuoting: kuhpunktIt's also quite an accurate summary of capitalism. You can call it the pursuit of personal gain instead of greed if you prefer. But in the end, we have to be greedy if we want to be (financially) successful in a capitalist system. That's something we should all be able to agree on, no matter our political leanings.Quoting: Purple Library GuyQuoting: orochi_kyoWell, of course they're greedy. It's capitalism, everyone in the game is greedy. That's the point. Developers are greedy, portal owners are greedy whether Valve or EGS or even GoG, and we consumers all want cheaper games, we're greedy too. Everyone is, in effect, forced to be greedy.Quoting: HoriHowever I wonder when will the big elephant be addressed - namely the house's cut on each sale. That thing should definetely be more open (read: reduced), as it actually does affect the consumers. Devs aren't happy with it, at all (and for good reason) and decide to sell elsewhere, which is not ideal at all for the users.
How does affect consumers? Because Greedy devs wants a bigger cut
That seems like an overly negative attitude
"Should" all be able to agree on?? how's about we can all at least agree on definitions for words like 'greed'? that is if we're going to use them and bother trying to communicate at all. personal gain != greed. if i work for food, i want personal gain. that is not the same as greed.
" You can call it" .. tell ya what, i'll call it what's most accurate and not accusatory. sounds like a serious case of characterization. is it really honest to start making assumptions about people's motives?
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