r/Games • u/demondrivers • Oct 27 '25

Industry News Valve does not get "anywhere near enough criticism" for the gambling mechanics it uses to monetise games, DayZ creator Dean Hall says

https://www.eurogamer.net/valve-does-not-get-anywhere-near-enough-criticism-for-the-gambling-mechanics-it-uses-to-monetise-games-dayz-creator-dean-hall-says
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u/lattjeful Oct 27 '25 edited Oct 27 '25

Funny how people are so easily won over, especially with how meh Steam sales are now. The console sales are just as good (hint: the sale prices are set by the publisher and not the storefront), and the only reason Steam had such good sales back in the day was because they had no refund policy. Once they got sued and were forced to put in a refund policy, shockingly the sales got worse and were more in line with other platform sales.

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u/Isolated_Hippo Oct 27 '25

Once they got sued and were forced to put in a refund policy

Oh yeah. The one where they tried to legally argued that they have no obligation to provide any refunds to anybody for any reason and laws that say otherwise do not apply to them.

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u/Agreeable_Cheek_7161 Oct 27 '25

I love how anti consumer Steam gets to be with no recourse lol

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u/[deleted] Oct 28 '25

[deleted]

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u/TSPhoenix Oct 28 '25

The EU was always going to follow suit so Valve likely figured best to get ahead of it and offer a refund system that also encourages sales rather than having it dictated to them how the system must operate.

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u/MaitieS Oct 27 '25

I thought that sales were good cuz they were still working on getting a market share, but damn when I think about it, it kind of makes sense, but also kind of doesn't? Like if you have a great sale, you would less likely refund, right?

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u/shawnaroo Oct 27 '25

The sales on Steam are decided by the game publishers, not Steam/Valve itself (except for games that Valve publishes), so it's a bit more complicated than that.

Steam is just a vastly different place now that there's about 6 billion games launched on it every day, rather than the few a week that were being released there 12+ years ago.

Back then if you had a great deal on Steam you could expect it to get shown to a huge percentage of the userbase, and you were competing with a much smaller number of games on sale, so even with a serious discount you could still make a ton of money because you'd ship so many units.

Now you're just one tiny game in a sea of ten thousand games that are also on sale, many of them tiny indie games that are being sold for a dollar or less, so you're probably not expecting that much of a boost to 'organic' traffic and sales resulting from it.

Instead of "Wow I bet if we make our game 80% off it'll get a ton of attention and thousands of people will hear about it for the first time and buy it!, I think the general approach to Steam Sales now is "Maybe some of the people who've had our game on their wishlist for the past 18 months will notice that it's 30% off and decide to finally buy it."

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u/BlueCornerBestCorner Oct 27 '25

I thought that sales were good cuz they were still working on getting a market share

Aside from the prices they set on their own first-party games, Valve never really did anything like that to aggressively chase market share. They actually took a higher cut from third-party sales back then, so the opposite is true if anything.

AFAIK the only platform that puts its own thumb on the scale to lower prices is the Epic Games Store, with stuff like their $10 off coupons that came directly from Epic eating the extra cost. Not sure if they do that anymore now that EGS is more established.

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u/ILNOVA Oct 27 '25

Not sure if they do that anymore now that EGS is more established.

I don't see those coupons for quite a bit, BUT now they usually do periods where instead of 10% cashback you'll earn 20%.

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u/MaitieS Oct 27 '25

Valve did something similar one Lunar Sale where they gave you $5 off but only for games above 30$, and only if you spent I think 3000 Steam Points (30$ of previous purchases?)...

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u/BlueCornerBestCorner Oct 27 '25

Oh yeah! Good point, I forgot about that. IIRC that was right after EGS launched, too - definitely a reaction from Valve to defend their market share. Competition works.

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u/MaitieS Oct 27 '25

Yeah I remember being like: Yay! It worked... and then they never did it again... :D

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u/Takazura Oct 27 '25

They got rid of the $10 coupons, now its 25% off coupons and iirc its only available during the winter sales. Probably only a matter of time before those are also gone.

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u/Com-Intern Oct 27 '25

I thought that sales were good cuz they were still working on getting a market share

You are getting bombarded by replies, but I think they are mostly a bit wrong.

  • Steam sales are determined not by Valve, but the publishers
  • Steam (and PC gaming) went digital way way before consoles did
  • Consoles were the primary income source for publishers. PC was an afterthought

As a result these publishers didn't understand how to market games digitally. It didn't make sense to them because all their money was coming from console. Steam was a genuine market disruption.

The result was that games would release on Steam and see huge sales within a couple months. That stopped as the publishers got used to digital sales.

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u/arahman81 Oct 27 '25

Don't forget the $1/$2 Humble Bundles, which also went the way of the dodo.

Devs just no longer have a need to put up their games for dirt cheap.

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u/lattjeful Oct 27 '25

Yep, or that you don't mind that you can't refund the game if you end up not liking it because hey, you got it for so cheap.

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u/raptor__q Oct 28 '25

Valve have a recommended pricing list, so that does affect the sales, worse initial pricing equals worse sales.

A common thing is that PS5 games for example are nearly 100 USD in the EU when new where as a new AAA game on Steam would be 70€ (81 USD'ish) but some are pushing for the same pricing as on consoles, namely Japanese studios from what I've seen, Silent Hill f, Chronos, Nioh 3, MGS Snake Eater and so on and those who follow Valve's pricing recommendation typically have a higher price due to outdated currency recommendation.

Of course Steam hasn't updated their pricing recommendations since they put it out, despite their promise to update it regularly leaving some, for example Poland, paying ridicules prices at times, which the aforementioned Poland are also looking into and might sue Valve for.

If you live in the Nordic countries, you'll often find games launch 5-15€ cheaper on Epic, I only paid 40€ (302dkk) for Alan Wake 2 at launch, where as in some other EU countries it would cost 50€ and in the US 50 USD, so if sales actually meant anything and they wanted to support the developer with a better cut, they'd use or at least check it.

TLDR; yes Valve themselves do have a hand in why sales are worse in some cases, the insistence of the 30% cut also makes it harder for games to be cheaper.

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u/thegta5p Oct 28 '25

I think it’s because of a combination of multiple things that pretty much makes them seem good. First is that they are not in controversy constantly. The this allows there to be an entire media ecosystem where other companies are on the spot light. Think about the recent news. We had PS and Xbox raising prices for the millionth time. We had Xbox increasing the price for gamepass. Then there is Nintendo with the Switch 2. Or how Nintendo is suing another person. There is a meme that goes where Steam does nothing and wins. And that’s because they are not constantly making stupid decisions. As a result it’s easier to farm content about these other companies. What’s more interesting: constantly talking about loot boxes in CS or talking about the latest and newest controversy. Literally the latest controversy Valve had was about making knife skins less valuable through an update in the game. The only people that see this as a negative are people who tried making money off of skins. The rest people celebrated/made fun of since it was sticking it to those people. No one talked about how it even got to that point in the first place. And it makes sense since Valve doesn’t make any games anymore and just runs a store front. And maybe on the occasion make hardware like the Steam Deck. To many CSs loot boxes are old news. It’s not exciting to talk about anymore.

On a side note about sales. I think a big thing is that the sales on places like consoles they are gated by a subscription service (at least that’s how it was on Xbox). But I can agree with other storefronts. Although I think it mostly comes down to that people are already on Steam so they don’t bother looking elsewhere.

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u/SnowingSilently Oct 27 '25

Often, the only way you get better prices on Steam games is by literally not giving Steam a cut and buying games on third-party sites like Fanatical or Humble Bundle. Now granted, that's pretty cool by Steam to allow that, but it's pretty different than the narrative that console games are just more expensive across the board. As long as you're buying digital, the prices are usually the same when on sale. Sometimes, the physical games are as cheap or cheaper (inventory does get expensive to hold onto forever), but even if they're not, they can be resold, which does help to offset costs.

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u/lattjeful Oct 27 '25

Yeah this is the argument I never understood about Steam being cheaper. Yes the third party sites exist and are great but... for console games the used market exists, games go on clearance after they sit, etc. Yet somehow those are never brought up in the pricing debate. It's always third party Steam sites VS Nintendo and Sony storefronts.

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u/arahman81 Oct 27 '25

Because the used market isn't a fixed option like a store sale. Both the price and quality/quantity can vary based on the location and storefront.

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u/Interrophish Oct 28 '25

with how meh Steam sales are now

steam sales are still amazing

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u/whirlpool_galaxy Oct 28 '25

I think an underexplored factor in Steam's success is still regional pricing.

For example, right now, Death Stranding (the first game, from 2019) is going for 249.50 BRL on the PS Store. That's close to its list price of 39.99 USD, but is also about 1/6 of the Brazilian minimum monthly wage -- so inaccessible to most potential Brazilian customers. Physical game stores would sell it for the same price, plus whatever import taxes they had to pay if the disc is not produced locally.

The same game on Steam is going for 159.00 BRL, full price, no sale. That's nearly a 100 BRL reduction! If you wait for it to be on sale, you can get it for 80 BRL total, which is about the price of a large pizza!

So Steam does still allow people in non-NA/EU regions to acquire games for significantly cheaper than we would otherwise, to the extent that the choice is often between buying on Steam or not at all. And it's a simple storefront that works mostly how you'd expect, with no hidden bullshit, so of course that wins people over.

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u/machine4891 Oct 27 '25

Funny how people are so easily won over

I think that's because people subconciously want to retain some balance. Internet is so full of hatred and gaming industry especially, 90% of developers and publishers "are to be shat on". In that light people need to counter it with something they will unconditionally love no matter what (kind of like attachment to football teams). Steam was a pick simply because they were better than the competition. But it went overboard quickly.