I’m not sure where I stand there. Steam is a great platform, but for purely capitalistic reasons. The only reason they aren’t as bad as other platforms is because they’re privately-owned and take the long view because they don’t have to worry about the day-to-day fluctuations on stock value.
Gabe isn’t your friend. He’s a billionaire yacht-collector who makes the vast majority of his money by taking a massive cut from other company’s products because of their virtual monopoly that exists because they launched an online marketplace in 2004.
Let’s be a bit fair, your local store selling a physical copy is also taking a cut of the other companies profits. The 30% valve charges would be just the same as GameStop/other store would be marking up the game from wholesale prices. (I still would rather have physical copies, but valve charging a percentage on each sale has always been a bs argument against them)
This is a very bad comparison. Valve has by some estimates the highest profit per employee of any corporation in the world. Reasonable markups in a competitive market are a far cry from the ludicrous extraction tax Valve (and Apple, and Google) impose as monopolist app store operators.
Gacha trash. Let me know when they’re making Portal 3 or Half-Life 3. And really, it doesn’t even have to be those franchises, but I mean, a single-player game that you pay for once and that’s it, and it has puzzles that make you think. What they were known for before they started making money off other people’s work and stopped creating wonderful things.
I mean, I know they still work on their gacha games.
Might seem like I’m moving goalposts and maybe I did, but I’m just nostalgic for when they made unforgettable games like Portal and Half-Life 2.
I’m just talking about the talking point of them taking a cut of sales, it’s the exact same as a store adding markup. A store is adding way more than 30% on most physical goods. Data storage and bandwidth are fucking expensive and 30% honestly isn’t that much.
Valve represents the acme of capitalism, with likely the highest profit per employee of any corporation that has ever existed, and you’re out here sucking them off?
Open steam settings > Downloads, click the dropdown at the top. That whole dropdown menu? That’s what their cut pays for. Rack space, network capacity, and storage, to deliver ALL games on steam efficiently, across the planet. That ain’t cheap. And that’s only part of what it pays for.
Not 10 times the employees. 10 times the nunber of stores as Valve has employees.
Let’s look at the cost of just floor-level associates. If Gamestop employees made an average of $14 an hour and they have 2 employees working and were open 11 hours a day an average (standard is 10am to 9pm - they actually work shorter hours on Sunday, but there’s also time spent opening and closing the store and extra hours on holidays other than Christmas, so 11 is low). That comes out to over 100 grand per store just in nominal hourly wages for floor associates.
Valve would have to pay 7 figures on average per employee to have the same staffing cost as Gamestop’s lowest-paid employees.
I mean, sure. But I think you might be underestimating the infrastructure costs. They aren’t just using a few 10GB switches. They also aren’t just using a single data center to store and deliver games. Then, you have to consider all of the redundancies involved, the contractors, the data center contracts, etc. Even if they don’t have their own DCs, AWS or Azure at this level is $$$$$$.
Storing, transferring, and hosting at this scale is not cheap by any means. It makes GameStop’s tech infrastructure look like peanuts in comparison.
I’ve worked in retail and in tech. Tech infrastructure is expensive, but they save a metric fuckton by not requiring physical space. You could fit the entirety of all of valve’s Tech infrastructure in a single building. Of course, they don’t do that - they have it distributed in data centers all over the world. But they are renting space in server racks, whereas Gamestop is renting thousands of retail spaces for 100 grand a year, another 100 grand each on staffing them, and a metric fuckton on inventory. And their cut of the sales is tiny.
People saying they charge 30% are wrong. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo charge 30%. Gamestop’s margin on a new game is like 10-15 percent. They make more on used games, but only if they sell. Their 100% markup on used games versus what they pay doesn’t mean as much when lots of those games go unsold. At least new games can be returned to the manufacturer.
That is not true, they have multiple data centers. I completely disagree on the costs as well. A single high capacity switch can cost tens of thousands (of which they have probably hundreds) and that’s not even mentioning storage, electricity, rack space, server cost ($$$$). The land is the cheapest part of data centers.
Have you worked in or with a data center? It was most of my job for 6 years.
I didn’t mention Steam’s cut of sales, but I do want to mention that you can refund steam games as long as you don’t play them for longer than 2 hours. This is actually better than GameStop or retailers who normally only accept returns of sealed, new copies. So I’m not sure why you’d being that up when it defeats your point.
It varies depending on the product, the profit margin on soda for example is often over 100%, other products such as milk would be negative (loss leaders), but in general, most non-junk food groceries usually have a single digit profit margin
I’m not sure where I stand there. Steam is a great platform, but for purely capitalistic reasons. The only reason they aren’t as bad as other platforms is because they’re privately-owned and take the long view because they don’t have to worry about the day-to-day fluctuations on stock value.
Gabe isn’t your friend. He’s a billionaire yacht-collector who makes the vast majority of his money by taking a massive cut from other company’s products because of their virtual monopoly that exists because they launched an online marketplace in 2004.
Let’s be a bit fair, your local store selling a physical copy is also taking a cut of the other companies profits. The 30% valve charges would be just the same as GameStop/other store would be marking up the game from wholesale prices. (I still would rather have physical copies, but valve charging a percentage on each sale has always been a bs argument against them)
This is a very bad comparison. Valve has by some estimates the highest profit per employee of any corporation in the world. Reasonable markups in a competitive market are a far cry from the ludicrous extraction tax Valve (and Apple, and Google) impose as monopolist app store operators.
The store isn’t also making games.
Like how Apple gets to take 30% of Spotify subscriptions and they operate a competing music service. That’s where it becomes wrong.
Of course, Valve doesn’t make games either now, so maybe it’s a moot point.
Deadlock would like a word
Gacha trash. Let me know when they’re making Portal 3 or Half-Life 3. And really, it doesn’t even have to be those franchises, but I mean, a single-player game that you pay for once and that’s it, and it has puzzles that make you think. What they were known for before they started making money off other people’s work and stopped creating wonderful things.
I mean, I know they still work on their gacha games.
Might seem like I’m moving goalposts and maybe I did, but I’m just nostalgic for when they made unforgettable games like Portal and Half-Life 2.
Okay, so you’re just a nostalgic hater. Deadlock is a masterpiece.
I’m just talking about the talking point of them taking a cut of sales, it’s the exact same as a store adding markup. A store is adding way more than 30% on most physical goods. Data storage and bandwidth are fucking expensive and 30% honestly isn’t that much.
CIA bot out here defending capitalist exploitation as reasonable lmao
Oh fuck off, out of all the fucking companies out there fucking raping the world steam isn’t one of them
Valve represents the acme of capitalism, with likely the highest profit per employee of any corporation that has ever existed, and you’re out here sucking them off?
30% makes sense for a physical store with high overhead, inventory, staffing, and other expenses.
Valve could take a 5% cut and still make a ton more than a retail store for the same product.
Open steam settings > Downloads, click the dropdown at the top. That whole dropdown menu? That’s what their cut pays for. Rack space, network capacity, and storage, to deliver ALL games on steam efficiently, across the planet. That ain’t cheap. And that’s only part of what it pays for.
STOP👏DEFENDING👏MONOPLIES
Relative to the money being spent on games it is incredibly cheap.
You know what it costs to run a retail store? And even in 2025 GameStop had 10 times as many retail store locations as Valve had employees.
And it’s not like retail has no tech infrastructure expenses.
Each Valve employee also makes about what 10 GameStop employees do, salaries at Valve are often mid to high 6 digits.
Which is not to say that GameStop is cheap to run, but hey, neither is Steam.
Not 10 times the employees. 10 times the nunber of stores as Valve has employees.
Let’s look at the cost of just floor-level associates. If Gamestop employees made an average of $14 an hour and they have 2 employees working and were open 11 hours a day an average (standard is 10am to 9pm - they actually work shorter hours on Sunday, but there’s also time spent opening and closing the store and extra hours on holidays other than Christmas, so 11 is low). That comes out to over 100 grand per store just in nominal hourly wages for floor associates.
Valve would have to pay 7 figures on average per employee to have the same staffing cost as Gamestop’s lowest-paid employees.
I mean, sure. But I think you might be underestimating the infrastructure costs. They aren’t just using a few 10GB switches. They also aren’t just using a single data center to store and deliver games. Then, you have to consider all of the redundancies involved, the contractors, the data center contracts, etc. Even if they don’t have their own DCs, AWS or Azure at this level is $$$$$$.
Storing, transferring, and hosting at this scale is not cheap by any means. It makes GameStop’s tech infrastructure look like peanuts in comparison.
I’ve worked in retail and in tech. Tech infrastructure is expensive, but they save a metric fuckton by not requiring physical space. You could fit the entirety of all of valve’s Tech infrastructure in a single building. Of course, they don’t do that - they have it distributed in data centers all over the world. But they are renting space in server racks, whereas Gamestop is renting thousands of retail spaces for 100 grand a year, another 100 grand each on staffing them, and a metric fuckton on inventory. And their cut of the sales is tiny.
People saying they charge 30% are wrong. Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo charge 30%. Gamestop’s margin on a new game is like 10-15 percent. They make more on used games, but only if they sell. Their 100% markup on used games versus what they pay doesn’t mean as much when lots of those games go unsold. At least new games can be returned to the manufacturer.
That is not true, they have multiple data centers. I completely disagree on the costs as well. A single high capacity switch can cost tens of thousands (of which they have probably hundreds) and that’s not even mentioning storage, electricity, rack space, server cost ($$$$). The land is the cheapest part of data centers.
Have you worked in or with a data center? It was most of my job for 6 years.
I didn’t mention Steam’s cut of sales, but I do want to mention that you can refund steam games as long as you don’t play them for longer than 2 hours. This is actually better than GameStop or retailers who normally only accept returns of sealed, new copies. So I’m not sure why you’d being that up when it defeats your point.
Hundreds of things that cost tens of thousands of dollars versus thousands of things that costs hundreds of thousands a year.
You’re literally saying that Steam’s server costs are orders of magnitude less than Gamestop’s retail store location costs.
Grocery stores in my experience take on average 30-50% of the cut of anything they sell.
From working at one and managing orders/invoices.
It varies depending on the product, the profit margin on soda for example is often over 100%, other products such as milk would be negative (loss leaders), but in general, most non-junk food groceries usually have a single digit profit margin