They’re doing 100% of the distribution though. And some of the marketing, when they promote a trending game or feature one in a collection.
I don’t know if a 30% cut is fair, but from my perspective, it seems to be working.
Sure, it seems to be working. That doesn’t mean developers should be complacent. You shouldn’t settle with an owner doing something that’s in their best interest but charging more for it. Stopping piracy and promoting games gets Valve more money. They aren’t doing it out of kindness. Just as they’re doing what’s in their best interest, devs should be too. They should be trying to get that 30% knocked down.
Valve is doing a lot of good stuff right now, but accepting them as some kind of hero is how you get fucked over. Don’t be complacent. They’re a capitalist company trying to make as much money as they can. As long as their goals align with the consumer it feels great, but don’t think it always will.
They’re a capitalist company trying to make as much money as they can.
Unlike publicly traded companies, Valve is not beholden to shareholders, so they, unlike most others, are in a unique position to not JUST maximize profits. I think it’s okay to point at Valve as an example for other companies to be more like, because most are still worse. But obviously we can always strive for better, as well.
(Also, out of curiosity: Under a capitalist system, can you have anything BUT a capitalist company?)
Yes, they’re privately traded, so all the profit goes to the owners. I don’t know why that matters. They’re still trying to maximize profit, which is at the expense of the consumer.
(Also, out of curiosity: Under a capitalist system, can you have anything BUT a capitalist company?)
You could have a worker owned collective or many other things. They’d still be capitalist under capitalism, yeah. It wouldn’t be beholden to the ideals of capitalist individualism though.
Regardless, the point was that they aren’t special. You shouldn’t hold them above other companies. They’re going to exploit you and developers. They aren’t working for you.
This is, at least in part, the topic of the book Capitalist Realism – basically the Reagan-Thatcherite thinking that no other system could exist https://archive.org/details/capitalist-realism-is-there-no-alternative 10 min vid using fallout to explain that
Now, Valve could today make the company entirely a worker-owned cooperative, with sociocratic decision making. They could even extend these to consumers, a gaming collective. That’d still participate in capitalism, but it would do a lot of good systemically, compared to other options.
