51–60 of 98 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
you wish their headcount was for the customer safety team! their lobbying team is probably larger than this one.
False, according to OpenSecrets, lobbying is under $2M a year. https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...
Steam might have a very disproportionate market share, but no one complains a lot because the competition is downright laughable. Internet companies are very low maintenance It has a very low barrier to entry for devs and a permissive DRM compared to other stores. A powerful review system and a return policy better than anyone else I've seen so far. Very community friendly and has an entire feature dedicated to hosti…
And the Workshop and Steam MP might be very convenient for some, but are walled garden features that ought to be boycotted.
P.S.: More of a monopsony than a monopoly :
https://medium.com/@KingFrostFive/steam-monopoly-monopsony-4...
Ride share and delivery app companies could take some notes on how to stay lean and profitable while operating an online marketplace. I know ride share apps are more complicated, but I don't think we're talking two orders of magnitudes more complicated (300 employees vs. 30,000 at Uber). The bloat at Uber/Lyft/Doordash is insane.
Is it lean when your biggest payroll is "admin"? More like fattened up and held up by big margins and little competition.
"Admin" is less than "Games" in every year.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When every city or even district is forcing you to honor arbitrary rules there… your sw becomes complicated
Steam has to deal with local tax regulations, censorship rules, distribution rights, etc…
Steam might have a very disproportionate market share, but no one complains a lot because the competition is downright laughable. Internet companies are very low maintenance It has a very low barrier to entry for devs and a permissive DRM compared to other stores. A powerful review system and a return policy better than anyone else I've seen so far. Very community friendly and has an entire feature dedicated to hosti…
Microsoft could certainly compete, if they invested more into improving the experience on Windows, and released their own handheld device.
Though I guess that's now probably what Battle.net is ?
Ride share and delivery app companies could take some notes on how to stay lean and profitable while operating an online marketplace. I know ride share apps are more complicated, but I don't think we're talking two orders of magnitudes more complicated (300 employees vs. 30,000 at Uber). The bloat at Uber/Lyft/Doordash is insane.
Is it lean when your biggest payroll is "admin"? More like fattened up and held up by big margins and little competition.
Ride share and delivery app companies could take some notes on how to stay lean and profitable while operating an online marketplace. I know ride share apps are more complicated, but I don't think we're talking two orders of magnitudes more complicated (300 employees vs. 30,000 at Uber). The bloat at Uber/Lyft/Doordash is insane.
But isn't the whole idea for those companies to burn a lot of money to show investors that big things are happening?
Where does all the money go if it isn't being reinvested into the business? Are the massive profits immediately syphoned out by the execs and owners? It's interesting there isn't a well-known real competitor to Steam (the Blizzard and Ubisoft stores, etc, don't count, because so few external parties publish there). My gut says the lack of reinvestment could be someone else's opportunity, especially considering many o…
There are plenty of competing stores, all of which pales in comparison. I don't know what their secret sauce is, but for me personally what makes a difference and why I keep preferring them is their dedication to Linux as a platform and a general feeling that they are not just driving me towards rent seeking. I know that last bit is slightly absurd, and I can't quite explain, but I think the fact that they are privat…
They perceive the Steam launcher as something positive that provides them convenience. The network effect also makes it hard for game companies not not be on Steam, allowing Valve to enforce some customer-friendly policies like refunds, further making the platform nice to use.
Epic is trying to break through this by giving away endless free games. All other stores are generally forced upon the player through exclusives (you buy the game on Steam, but you still have to install their shitty launcher-store because the parent company owning the game wants some of the store-platform cake), breeding resentment and further cementing Steam's position.
(GOG being an exception, but they don't have enough major/interesting games to get players to use them as their primary platform.)
Ride share and delivery app companies could take some notes on how to stay lean and profitable while operating an online marketplace. I know ride share apps are more complicated, but I don't think we're talking two orders of magnitudes more complicated (300 employees vs. 30,000 at Uber). The bloat at Uber/Lyft/Doordash is insane.
Is it lean when your biggest payroll is "admin"? More like fattened up and held up by big margins and little competition.