@TimSweeneyEpic Tim are you aware that if you put half as much attention toward making EGS not a mediocre user experience you might actually start getting somewhere with it?
@gabrielsethFT@XVIthPrimarch Funny, a person with common sense would see the trailer, then see the post, and then put two and two together to realize he is clearly talking about the Emperor on the Golden Throne.
Except it doesnt because if having a game on a lower price on a different platform is preferred for a developer then they can just do that instead whether Steam has to get involved or not but it is literally never worth it to do so for any size of game for any company not named Riot or Blizzard, though Blizzard is kind of tripping up the last few years.
But Steam is so committed to not letting its users be ripped off that if you buy a game right now for full price, and it goes on sale for 25% off tomorrow, that you can get that difference refunded. And they dont even enforce the sales being at the same time. If a game is on sale on EGS for any amount, Steam just wants to see a similar sale within a reasonable timeframe of a different platform. Like Cyberpunk, Red dead 2, God of War Ragnarok, Battlefield 6, and both Spider-Mans are on sale from 33-75% off and not on sale at all on Steam right now. But they all will be on some sort of sale probably within a week, if they didnt just come off of being on sale. That price parity is enforced for long term/permanent discounts. Thats the key thing that you really arent grasping about it it seems.
Those legal documents youre referring to all state Steam Keys as the main topic of discussion. And Steam does allow permanently lower prices on other platforms as long as Steam also gets that lower price point, which Valve has also explicitly stated, and doing otherwise is against their tos for publishers and developers when they release a game on Steam lol
Well first of all Steams price parity is entirely based on Steam Keys, and not games being available on multiple platforms. If it were the latter every single free game EGS has given out would have been delisted from Steam. That price parity rule has no effect on price competition.
Because I have a functioning brain. The Steamdeck was never a better option than a desktop, even before the price increase. After the price increase makes it and even worse sole option. But for people that already had a decent library of games, especially indie/console ports, it is a fantastic luxury use to play them on the go. I can promise you that an overwhelming majority of Steamdeck owners are people who already had a desktop and have been using Steam. That means that the Steamdeck isnt going to be generating any sort of extra revenue for Steam because its a minimal amount of new users, so it has to make money off the initial sale. Since the consoles all sell subscriptions to use their services they can take the hit each console losing money since they get made up for off software income. And while yes, Valve makes more than enough to sell them at a loss without hurting them too much, its just basic business to not do that. They might however do that with the Steam Machine since that IS definitely hoping to draw new users to Steam, but again since Steam doesnt charge a subscription it still will be a lot more expensive than a console would on initial costs.
Because the Steamdeck is sold as a luxury for current Steam users and tha Steamdeck doesnt generate any revenue itself after purchase. Sony, Xbox, and Nintendo can take substantially larger hits on the hardware since they sell subscriptions (which Sony has also been raising the price of regularly) and games themselves. There are a miniscule amount of new Steam users who only have a Steamdeck, so theyre not gaining additional revenue through the Steamdeck is a big reason to why they have to raise the price more than others.
@benarr4@Holdenthebuild3@Sanjar11759@NormBreaker3 They take a lower cut for games that sell a certain amount of copies, and the profit from a 5 person indie game even with the 30% cut goes a hell of a lot farther than a big studio game if it doesnt do extremely well.
Youre right there has been dev interest in it. But the facts are the devs that pursue that interest lose a a shit load when it comes to sales. Alan Wake 2 proves that. The game just did not sell well being exclusive to EGS. Every other launcher with the exception of Blizzard and now Riot were further examples of that where when they took games off Steam to use their own launcher they always ended up coming back because the lost sales nearly always outweigh the 30% cut.