Currently valve has never walked back a pro-consumer policy (afaik). so yes. they currently ensure one; its a policy I’d expect EA/ubi to drop at the earliest convenience or first indicator they could make more money without it. for example: see apples reaction to being told to fuck off with their market place antics vs valves. valve lost the case in one minor country and rolled out the policy globally. I can’t imagine apple/google/ea/ubisoft doing that.

but apparently you can. you seem to think anyone who backs up valve is somehow been misinformed. no, we just know valve is the best consumer facing company around based on their current / past behaviors.

are they perfect? nope. but they are miles better than their competition like EA and microsoft. GoG is fine afaik and are not struggling. no one here has shit on GoG afaik beyond a ‘missing functionality’ argument. but they’re also not supporting the open source ecosystem to the same extent valve is.

The problem EA/microsoft/ubisoft have is not a technically one its a reputational one. they’ve done and continue to done so much misbehavior people don’t trust them at all and are not willing to support them and no amount of money thrown at the problem will fix such a problem. Which is why EA has resorted to trying to sue valve for checks notes not following the capitalist playbook.

valve understands what they currently have and until a change in leadership or gaben demonstrates he and valve are no longer a BDFL people like me will continue to support them over EA/microsoft/ubisoft.

your problem is you think gabe’s wealth and the fact 10+ years ago they only added a return policy at the conclusion of a law suite somehow changes this equation. which it doesnt for many people, because the good behavior of valve is more valuable than a few dollars here and there to us.

Yes, I gave them credit for have a generous policy for over a decade. which is a fucking fact. it isnt a fucking lie. lol. the mental gymnastics you’re performing right now.

kindly fuck off and stop wasting everyones time.

and your point? its still a better policy than both GOG and EA origins provided. and the regulators where in a country steam likely gave 0 thoughts about. and then applied the change everywhere for everyone.

this is literally a non-issue now. so anything more recent than 2013 that any reasonable person would give a shit about?

context for everyone else:

• origins as the underdog identifies a weak point in steam’s userbase loyalty and tries to leverage it.
• an australian government agency notifies steam they’re in violation and legal action would follow if steam doesn’t comply with australian return regulations.
• steam says ‘my b.’ and updates their policy everywhere instead of implementing a region based policy.
• the update undercuts EA and improves the situation for all their users.

or anything relevant to any of the points I made or you just going to keep tossing out decade old information as if its relevant.

Valve hasnt increased their %age since steams inception. you can argue its too high. but its certainly not a squeeze which requires an unnecessary and increasing rate that is detrimental to the developers.

its hilarious how well the publishers propaganda arm has influenced you to your own detriment. do you know much EA and other publishers demand as their cut? 50%. valve as a publisher is actually a fucking discount.

you’re so uninformed its hilarious. PS5 is a single hardware platform that almost certainly (if they continue as they historically have) on top of free bsd. their software stack is almost certainly an open source base with some small additions for developer friendliness on top. its small time compared to what steam does: multiple OS support with massive and varied hardware support.

Nor does sony contribute much back to the open source ecosystems they leech off of. meanwhile steam has been funding linux gaming improvements for over a decade now and are a huge reason that its as amazing as it is today.

the idea that sony spending a higher $ value vs steam is probably the most retarded thing i’ve heard all day. the $ value isnt what matters. its the impact/$. and steam leaves sony in the dust on this. again linux gaming wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is without steam. meanwhile sony barely contributes anything.

Valve literally has funded the compatibility layer to bring DX games to linux. point to a single thing sony has done that’s comparable.

Never mind all the benefits valve has ensure for gamers. a strong return policy. ongoing predictable sales. easy of use and cross platform support.

Never mind all the tooling they provide to developers of games.

Valve has very much earned the loyalty from gamers it has and i have no problem with them profitting off that fact. long as they keep up the good work we’ll keep using and supporting their platform.

oh no, a person at the head of a company that has created a great environment has profited from it! the horror.

Gabe’s wealth isnt a problem. if you dislike his yach the problem is in the taxation system of the country not the individuals wealth.

BBB hasnt been relavant for decades its a dead ratings system that was bought out years ago by corpo interests. citing them is like citing donald trump on medical treatments for covid.

oh no! 80 employees? the horror. thats literally what software is about. its economics of scale are insane. you dont need more than a couple dozen people if they’re competent.

finally: geoblocking is a feature developers enable. they don’t have to. steam doesnt force them to. if you dont like it don’t by those games. I promise you there are plenty of games you can buy that dont have it.

really if this is all you have as complaints thats pretty small time. compared to google/apple/microsoft/EA/nabisco mistreatment of their employees, funding of fascist politicians, etc. quite frankly I have bigger concerns than gabe being wealthy.

This is likely 100% misinformation. Only EU lawsuit i found was about geo blocking games. Which is a game developer/publisher decision not valves.

From there we can extrapolate the rest of their comment is nonsense.

What valve produces is a user friendly platform. That’s their value proposition and its worth many times its weight in gold

Thats worth 30% of the sale to me as a user. And is something epic and other publishers are completely unable to replicate. (I.e. no one in their right mind would ever trust epic to maintain such a position)