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Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

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Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#441

Post by mschuster91 »

charcircuit wrote: post #372
mschuster91 wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It still is a damn good deal. Steam abstracts a whole lot of messes. In ye olde times you as a game developer had to acquire a publisher for each country you'd plan on selling your game to deal with local distribution structures and laws, taxes, payments, update distributions, DRM and anti-cheat, user management... Steam conveniently abstracts all of that for you. One stop shop. No complex deals just to deal with get…

>taxes, payments The market rate for this is low single digit percents. >update distributions Bandwidth is not worth a percentage of game revenue. If it were it would be >DRM Steam's DRM is terrible. >anti-cheat Also terrible. >user management... This is not worth a percentage of revenue. All of these together is not worth 30%. The only thing worth 30% is the ability for the Stram store to put your game in front of a…

> The market rate for this is low single digit percents.

We're talking about virtually every country on Earth. Good luck trying to replicate that, the taxes/legal entity part alone will cost you an arm and a leg in setup time, not to mention ongoing costs in accounting, filing reports and dealing with other bureaucracy BS.

> Bandwidth is not worth a percentage of game revenue.

I'm not talking about bandwidth or a CDN here. I'm talking about a reliable and easy mechanism to get updates distributed to end-users - consisting of a management backend, the CDN and finally a client side software that's actually doing the upgrades. And the latter is something many have tried and failed to do or ended up getting 0wned in the process (e.g. just recently notepad++ [1]).

> Steam's DRM is terrible.

Is it? Sure, for some AAA titles you'll see Denuvo slopped on top, but for the wide masses, Steam's DRM is more than enough.

> [user management] is not worth a percentage of revenue.

Managing user data is an utter PITA in the era of GDPR et al, and on top of that it creates a need for customer support resources - people forget their password, get hacked, god knows what else. As a game dev under any of the major storefronts, you don't have to deal with that at all.

[1] https://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/hijacked-incident-info-up...

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#442

Post by fnands »

blitzar wrote: post #438
herpdyderp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes I wonder what we did to deserve Valve and how long it can possibly last.

> what we did to deserve Valve Privately held company > how long it can possibly last Till VC's or IPO day

Yeah, it seems that it is much easier to avoid enshittification when you are publicly held (and print money)

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#443

Post by [deleted] »

hbn wrote: post #371
opan wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to utilize all features of an 8BitDo controller at once, you also need Steam. XInput mode means no gyro, no back buttons bindable in software, Switch mode gives you gyro but makes your triggers digital, and you still can't bind the back buttons in software. You're limited to duplicating an existing input via the 8BitDo app and binding it globally at the firmware level. If you use the 8BitDo Pro 2 with Ste…

THANK YOU It's been driving me crazy seeing all the hate Valve is getting over compatibility concerns when Valve is the only one making controller support on Windows outside of an Xbox controller work. For years I just assumed I couldn't use many of my controllers on Windows, until Steam added the ability to act as the in between and properly handle it. Microsoft has no interest in making anything other than their Xb…

[deleted]

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#444

Post by mschuster91 »

Spacemolte wrote: post #431
xingped wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with most of your statement, but Valve has and continues to make lots of money from loot boxes in both CS and TF2. Just want to point out that they do do stuff like that too.

They also didn't/don't put a stop to the gambling sites, scams and non-scams, done with those lootboxes. We have an epidemic of addiction to gambling in youth, where the arrow points at lootboxes as the gateway drug..

Valve is far from the first, only, or worst actors in this field. Skin lootboxes are not much more than a flex.

If there is one to blame for the gambling epidemic, look at EA and FIFA.

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#445

Post by grumbel »

protimewaster wrote: post #417
grumbel wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prior to Steam there was StarForce and other copy protection messing up your OS and DVD drives, and plenty of stuff needed online activation as well. Of the last few physical games I bought, none work anymore, Bioshock couldn't be installed due to lack of patch servers last time I tried and Arkham Asylum failed due to GFWL being dead. Even when everything worked, you often had to manually go hunt for patches, sometim…

There were definitely issues, but I think that some of those basically extend from Steam and the way it worked. GFWL was Microsoft's competition to Steam, so it just copied Steam (~3 years after a Steam came out) and worked similarly to the way other physical releases worked after Steam became popular. It's true that some of the heavy DRM was an issue back then, but I'm not convinced that's guaranteed to be less of a…

> I'm not convinced that's guaranteed to be less of an issue going forward.

I am sure it's going to be an issue at some point in the future, it already is an issue when it comes to sharing games or keeping older versions around, but what's the alternative? The alternative isn't no DRM, it's whatever DRM Apple, Google, Microsoft, Epic, EA and friends come up with, and of all of those, I take Steam any day.

Even GOG kind of loses to Steam here, as while GOG gave us DRM-free downloads, Steam gave us Linux support and Windows-emulation and I'd rather have Steam DRM on Linux than being stuck on Windows with DRM-free GOG games. And unless I am missing something, GOG's DRM-free games didn't lead to a used digital games market either, they explicitly forbid selling or sharing in their user agreement[1]:

>> 3.3 Your GOG account and GOG content [games] are personal to you and cannot be shared with, sold, gifted or transferred to anyone else.

Digital goods ownership is just not a thing that exists at the moment. There was an attempt based on blockchain with Robot Cache[1], but that just shutdown.

[1] https://support.gog.com/hc/en-us/articles/212632089-GOG-User...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Cache

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#446

Post by fc417fc802 »

kombine wrote: post #409
fatal94 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relevance isnt anti competitive. Comparing them to Microsoft who not only monopolized but enforced it via product bundling is not the same at all. They simply have the best product and won the market.

They are headed Apple/Microsoft way though with SteamOS and Steam Deck/Machine.

I can see why you might think that but I believe that's actually insurance against Microsoft going the Apple route and hamstringing Steam in the process. They needed a near first class platform that would never be used against them to exist and they needed the switching cost for end users to be near zero. By leveraging pre-existing FOSS projects they managed to avoid the vast majority of the development costs which would otherwise have been prohibitive.

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#447

Post by ga_to »

golph wrote: post #434
mock-possum wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t understand that world. I wanted one, I was willing to drop a hundred bucks on a controller I wanted but did not need - but they messed up the launch, they didn’t have enough supply to cover demand, so I shrugged and moved on with the my life. Who is actually out there 1) buying up these controllers to scalp them and 2) who is actually buying them at an inflated price from scalpers? Like what is the p…

Valve is "messing up" all launches in my opinion if I go by your definition. They always are out of stock pretty fast. Look at the Steam Deck. To this day you have to check every day (at least in Germany) if there is any stock now. For the scalpers part; I know a lot of people who would pull out a stack of money for anything Valve/Steam branded. I personally needed a new controller and when I saw the release date I s…

In my (german) memory, I could buy my steam deck quite problem free. The supply issues only really started end of last year/start of this year, due to the global RAM shortages. Before that, I can't recall there being availability issues. (at least in germany)

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#448

Post by fxwin »

numlock86 wrote: post #406

It sold out in less than an hour. Scalpers are at it again. Units are showing up for as much as $300 in resell-value already. What I don't get is why their shop page just gives me an "out of stock" panel, instead of the purchase button. Why won't they just let me buy and pay it, and have it ship whenever? Is having customers to regularly check for new stock (and potentially missing it) better than ... just having the…

> It sold out in less than an hour. Scalpers are at it again.

"Underpriced good at it again" would be more accurate.

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#449

Post by fc417fc802 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #441
charcircuit wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>taxes, payments The market rate for this is low single digit percents. >update distributions Bandwidth is not worth a percentage of game revenue. If it were it would be >DRM Steam's DRM is terrible. >anti-cheat Also terrible. >user management... This is not worth a percentage of revenue. All of these together is not worth 30%. The only thing worth 30% is the ability for the Stram store to put your game in front of a…

> The market rate for this is low single digit percents. We're talking about virtually every country on Earth. Good luck trying to replicate that, the taxes/legal entity part alone will cost you an arm and a leg in setup time, not to mention ongoing costs in accounting, filing reports and dealing with other bureaucracy BS. > Bandwidth is not worth a percentage of game revenue. I'm not talking about bandwidth or a CDN…

> Good luck trying to replicate that,

Why would you need to? Notice that the comment you replied to used the phrasing "market rate". The service you're describing is commoditized today and none of the major players charge anywhere near 30%.

Re: Valve releases Steam Controller CAD files under Creative Commons license

#450

Post by scubadude »

Pay08 wrote: post #403
Rohansi wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> imo Valve is no better than the iOS app store You can't buy the top search result position on Steam. That alone sets them far apart for me.

You can buy the rotating banner at the top.

You can sponsor a promotion; sales on a bunch of games - but it's not "Brought to you by the cool refreshing taste of Pepsi" it's like "Berlin Game Developers".
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