People are underestimating how much money valve has put into proton, Mesa and Linux development over the years to make the steam deck work. they had 100+ developers on payroll for years to do that.
Yes. But let’s be honest: every store that has arrived to pc to “kill steam” has done what to actually kill steam?
It’s like every time someone thinks of creating a steam competitor the process goes like this:
“Hey, let’s see what is Steam doing well, what do users love about the store… And do the complete opposite to it in hopes that users ditch steam for us!”
Sometimes a market you don’t even know exists opens up when you do something, so I get the logic of trying to open a competitor… But what did Origin or UPlay even do? Epic has freebies and a better profit share for publishers, GoG has their commitment to support old games, itch.io has the best profit share, indie focus, and I believe free listing? You need to do something to stand out from the monster that is Steam, or you might as well just stop.
I totally give them credit for that, but Steam was also a behemoth before all of that. They’ve been massive for over a decade at this point, maybe two. Everyone that’s tried to be a competitor has come in clearly not understanding the basics of Steam’s business model.
How much money did Valve put in? Where do those 100+ devs come from?
Improperly redacted documents from the initial Wolfire case — later hidden — indicated that Valve had only 336 staff in 2021, with just 79 of them working on Steam. We’ve remade it using data reported contemporaneously:
You made it sound like they had 100+ full time employees specifically („payroll”) but it could also mean they paid €1 bounties to 101 people. I know they subcontracted Proton to CodeWeavers (~50 people) who have been working on Wine for ~20 years by then.
People are underestimating how much money valve has put into proton, Mesa and Linux development over the years to make the steam deck work. they had 100+ developers on payroll for years to do that.
Yes. But let’s be honest: every store that has arrived to pc to “kill steam” has done what to actually kill steam?
It’s like every time someone thinks of creating a steam competitor the process goes like this:
“Hey, let’s see what is Steam doing well, what do users love about the store… And do the complete opposite to it in hopes that users ditch steam for us!”
Sometimes a market you don’t even know exists opens up when you do something, so I get the logic of trying to open a competitor… But what did Origin or UPlay even do? Epic has freebies and a better profit share for publishers, GoG has their commitment to support old games, itch.io has the best profit share, indie focus, and I believe free listing? You need to do something to stand out from the monster that is Steam, or you might as well just stop.
totally with you on that.
I totally give them credit for that, but Steam was also a behemoth before all of that. They’ve been massive for over a decade at this point, maybe two. Everyone that’s tried to be a competitor has come in clearly not understanding the basics of Steam’s business model.
The Linux development is about maintaining a viable option for a store if Windows went walled garden.
How much money did Valve put in? Where do those 100+ devs come from?
these were external developers. https://gigazine.net/gsc_news/en/20221219-steam-valve-support-proton-mesa
You made it sound like they had 100+ full time employees specifically („payroll”) but it could also mean they paid €1 bounties to 101 people. I know they subcontracted Proton to CodeWeavers (~50 people) who have been working on Wine for ~20 years by then.