Randy Pitchford on Steam: 'Valve is taking a larger share than it should'

Some of you seem to be hard of reading.

way to not get the point of the article

Way to make a stupid comment.

""Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service it's providing. It's exploiting a lot of small guys.""

So they think that Valve takes more money for it's digital distribution service than it should. Firstly, I want to know how they feel about the cut that box and mortar retailers take and why that's not "too much" and why the cut that Valve is taking is "too much".

Bandwidth costs money, maintaining a storefront costs money, building and maintaining servers and networks cost money. I don't know how much Valve takes compared to brick and mortar stores, which have similar overhead cost, but I'd like to know why Randy Pitchford thinks it's "too much" and what he thinks is a reasonable fee for letting another company distribute his product.

In the end, if Valve screws over the little guys by demanding too large of a cut, the little guys don't have to use Steam to distribute their product. Also, this is the first time I've ever heard a developer complain about the cost of listing on Steam, so I'm hesitant to believe that it's "too much."

So why don't you enlighten me with what the "point of the article" was, if not that Randy Pitchford thinks Steam is price gouging developers.

That's the thing though. It IS a great tool. But Valve is already filthy stinkin' rich, which makes this somewhat alarming. If they're taking a lot of money from those sales, it's a problem. They're comfortable enough at the top of the industry, they can afford to take less of that.

the problem is people aren't reading the article properly

Comment system is fine. Joystiq just needs a better comment system.

Shacknews does comments right.

Uh, I mean comment-thread format.

they have that its called games for windows live AKA XBOX 360 on PC, which is a pain in the ARSE when a game like DoW II installs into steam off of a disk based copy mandatory but instead of using steams servers and what not forces you to go through GFWL which constantly either tells me its updating cant log on and ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO PLAY OFFLINE YOU WONT GET ANY ACHIEVMENTS?

IM A FUCKING PC GAME ACHIEVMENTS ARE USELESS I DONT WANT THEM AND I HAVE A LIFE THAT DOESNT INVOLVE ME TRYING To get every little bitty point i can or buying AVATAR lengend of ang because someone said i can get a 1000 easy gamerpoints

Most brick and mortar stores won't let your return any game for any reason, unless it's sealed.

If you don't like steam, shut up and go the gamestop.

People who claim digital distribution is SO much better than physical media fall into the same category as Mac people who think PCs are just too difficult - they only say that because they really want to believe it.

1. Hate swapping discs? Yeah, it's very difficult to push a button on the front of your computer and swap a disc...
2. Waiting for an install? I guarantee that your DVD drive is faster than your Internet connection.
3. Full screen installer? Ever heard of Alt-Tab?
4. Going to the store? Ever heard of sites like Amazon.com? Plus, I'm guessing you shop at a Walmart or Target every now and then - why not buy the game then?
5. You don't play PC games from a DVD - you play them from your hard drive. Just like Steam. Except that you're not required to run a program in the background that's sucking up system resources.

It's all a matter of what you want, that's why digital distribution can sit side by side with retail.

1. Who cares if it's easy? It's one more thing I don't want to bother with, so why should I?
2. It might be faster, but it's more invasive. Most installers have you pressing next way too often, steam I just tell it to download, go about my buisness and later it's installed. I like that.
3. A lot of those installers don't work well with alt-tab and tend to take up more system resources than they should.
4. Amazon is GREAT, and I usually buy games there, but for PC games steam is still much more convenient for me, and I don't have to wait for games to ship to me (which will always take longer than downloading)
5. You still have to swap discs for each game, unless you crack it, which is another unnecessary hassle.

And right now steam is using up a whopping 14mb, out of my 4gb of ram. What a hog. And 0% of my CPU! Unbearable! Aim on the other hand is using up 50mb of ram.

Not to mention steam doubles as instant messaging software. A lot of games do NOT like it when you alt tab to talk to someone, but with steam I can shift tab to my friends list and invite them all to my TF2 game.

So you can stick to your DVD drives and boxes, but I just don't want to deal with it when I don't have to. Like a mac user who doesn't want to deal with a PC? Computers are SUPPOSED to make things easier, why make them harder on purpose? Maybe it's not better for you, but it's my platform of choice, so it's where I buy my games. Do you still buy music on CD's too, just because you love to have a physical product? If you do, that's fine, but don't bash other people because they want to use some of the conveniences that come with modern technology.

See, you're wrong - the whole point of the Internet is to bash people who don't completely agree with your views, even if their views don't really affect you or your life in any meaningful manner :P

And, you do raise valid points, but, I'll admit, I do like my physical media. I was just in a really argumentative mood this morning :)

Your opinion became unvalid after "But personally, I don't even see PC as a viable platform anymore" Just because it isnt the beast it used to be in the 90's, in the US, its still the #1 gaming platform in the world.

You're right, my opinion is "unvalid" because I don't like buying my games in an archaic format when platforms that are better (in my opinion) are available.

Valve did not make Zeno Clash.

Originality?

Portal: It's a spiritual sequel to a college project. And the original wasn't made by Valve

Teamfortress 2: Sequel. The original wasn't even developed by Valve.

Half life 2: Sequel - plus you're talking about a game that came out 5 years ago

Counterstrike source: Remake. The original was a community mod for HL (not made by Valve)

Left 4 dead: Okay, fine, I'll give you that one - but they're already driving it into the ground with their full priced expansion called L4D2.

Dod:source: Remake - plus, this began as a non Valve mod

Zeno Clash: This was published by Valve - Valve didn't develop it.

"So heres to originality check that the game industry soo needs right now." Yeah, too bad your examples don't prove your point...

Even if you owned HL2 and EP1, The Orange Box was still a good deal. Right now if you were to buy TF2, Portal, and EP2 it would cost you $55! I'm not sure what the price of each game was at launch, but they certainty didn't cost less than they do now.The Orange Box cost $50 when it came, so you saved $5.

Valve has done an amazing thing with Steam and just because they provide a service that they also deliver content to doesn't make them to powerful. If developers are worried about the cut, deliver the game somewhere else. As many have said, this is no different then bring your game to a console, where you have to deal with licensing fees through Microsoft, Nintendo, or Sony, who all also publish games for their platform. Steam is a platform, just like a console, except it runs on your computer.

Anything you buy for the xbox helps directly fund halo and gears and anything you buy for the ps3 helped fund uncharted and god of war 3. It's no different.