• chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It makes the cost of developing games more expensive. They have to charge nearly 20% more for games on Steam to make the same money they do on EGS.

    It’s also why Valve hardly makes games anymore. They sell 4 games made with other people’s money and they’ll have the same gross income as selling a game they paid to develop. Throw in the cost of development, and they just can’t justify game development as a major part of their business.

    The last time they made a full-sized game was Half-life 2, which launched the same day as Steam.

    • emax_gomax@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      This argument about cost of development would hold more weight if the game store savings were passed onto the users rather than just eaten up by the publishers. Borderlands 3 base game has the exact same price on steam vs EGS atm, £49.99. Clearly those 20% savings are just extra money the publisher wants to pocket rather than actual necessary costs to the game. If their happy to pass it off to steam when sold on the steam platform rather than raise the price to recoup the platform tax.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Yes, but with EGS more money goes to the company making the games. AAA games have never been more expensive to produce, and developers are shutting doors left and right. After the costs of marketing and overhead, more of the proceeds of the game are going to the fucking download service than the people making the game when it’s on Steam.

        • emax_gomax@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Blame the publishers then. They set the price and they dictate the bonuses of the devs based on sales. Choosing to believe more money from the game store is actually making its way to devs instead of shareholders is naive at best.

      • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Alyx was a tech demo, and it, Portal, and Portal 2 combined are about the size of Half Life 2.

          • chiliedogg@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            It’s litterally a tunnel shooter with endless repetition to pad it out and pretend it’s a full game, when in reality it’s a tech demo to bundle with VR hardware and try and make Steam the default home of VR games.