That’s how taxes work, yes, and I consider them valuable. There’s a lot of work in actually deciding what work needs to be done, finding the people to do it, negotiating prices, things like that. So yes, I do think “the Lord” is adding a lot of value and making the whole operation possible in a way that probably wouldn’t work if you had everybody just trying to agree on how to spend the money and split the costs.
I will also point out Valve provides not just the platforms, but also some libraries for game development, including a networking library with NAT punchthrough (which is why on steam you can right-click a friend and join them, even on small indie games, without the game devs hosting their own servers for that) and a library for input handling (though less mandatory, but if used it makes input remapping in steam better integrated).
Another thing to note is that the value provided can be experienced more directly - if you want to try a great website/store that, to my understanding, doesn’t take any cut while providing hosting, try playing some games from itch. Depending on your gaming habits you might not notice much of a difference, and more of your money would go to the devs, but you might sorely miss some features like cloud saves, steam networking, steam input, proton, automatic delta/incremental updates.
I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying valves infrastructure isn’t valuable, or what they offer to gamers isn’t good. Again, Steam is not a product to gamers. It’s a marketplace that charges rents to game devs. I’m saying it’s not value added to the product that is produced. The product that’s produced by the game dev is the same regardless of whether they put it on steam or not.
Most of your points are about how much value Steam offers to gamers in a colloquial sense. Of course, its a lot. But it’s not in an economic sense value added to the good produced. Valve taking a 1/3rd cut is more akin to an extractive feudal lord than a collaborator in the making of the good (the game) and sharing in the profits.
I think I understand your position and disagree on many games (as others may have communicated better). I think most games I play are a better deal because steam and valve exist. Cloud saves and multiplayer setup both have definitely quadrupled the value of many many games for me, it is not close.
Also, valve created a new hardware to increase gamer access via the steam deck. Those sales and that user base both add value for devs. Similar argument for Linux, except valve doesn’t even rent seek on most of that. The drivers are for everyone.
Sorry to be like this, but I don’t think you’re getting it still. Like I said, colloquially Steam has value. And especially in relation to you, the gamer. How much you personally value your games more because of Steam, though, is irrelevant, and Valve creating a new product is similarly irrelevant to what I’m saying. Steamdeck does not increase the economic value of any other product (though, I love my Steamdeck)
Again, you are not the consumer of Valve’s (main) product. Valve’s business model is to sell shelf space to the dev. It’s to allow the peasant into the walls of the city to sell their grain in the market square.
The value I’m referring to is the value inherent in a production of a commodity that originates from the raw materials and labor that workers put into it. I’m talking labor value. It’s the value of the grain that originates in the workers toil and the raw stuff.
Valve might help realize gains from the game, but it is not involved in the production and does not create nor add labor value to the game. Their business model is predicated on extracting rents from developers, the people doing productive labor.
You could maybe argue Valve creates value in the production and maintenance of the commodity that is Steam’s infrastructure and sell it at a fair price. But in this context, the whole point of that infrastructure is to realize the value created from the labor of developers, making it extractive in nature. Do you see what I mean? You’re right back at the point where they’re charging developers a rent to access the marketplace. And the whole thing falls apart without devs (workers) creating a commodity (games) from which to extract value. This is what I mean when I say Steam is not value-adding – not that Steam doesn’t have (colloquial) value.
I apologize for not reading you carefully enough. Indeed, I simply disagree with your application of the labor theory of value, to the point that I think your claims in this specific case do not make sense. (Some of the arguments made here I think are strong reductions-to-absurdity against the labor theory, but I will try to explain my objections from within the theory.)
The value I’m referring to is the value inherent in a production of a commodity that originates from the raw materials and labor that workers put into it. I’m talking labor value. It’s the value of the grain that originates in the workers toil and the raw stuff.
I think you can salvage many cases of this theory of labor+materials by picking good boundaries for what a ‘product’ is. What the market chooses to say it is selling to you is generally lies, which we shouldn’t trust. What it actually is selling to you is often a large amalgam of things. We should consider the value of a whole bag of goods that the consumers/world can interact with because of the purchase. When you buy a train ticket, we do not judge its value by the quality of the printing (or, more generously, the labor+materials of the chair you sit on). It’s value comes from all of the train engine and the train car and the tracks they ride on and the stations they visit and the people who run them. In this lens, I think we should not consider a game as only the programming+assets made by the dev team. A game is thus, at least:
the infrastructure to sell it (storefront, payment processing, reviews, recommendation algorithms, marketting, hosting of data, etc.)
the hardware to run it (consoles or PC, drivers, operating systems and chip specs, special controllers, etc.)
the programming and assets (most of what you are talking about when you say game, but also cloud saving and account management. How a game manages saves when the power goes out is very much part of the game.)
the infrastructure to run it (multiplayer servers and connection protocols, anticheat and moderation systems, friends systems, in-game monetization systems, and the internet infrastructure probably counts too.)
You could maybe argue Valve creates value in the production and maintenance of the commodity that is Steam’s infrastructure and sell it at a fair price. But in this context, the whole point of that infrastructure is to realize the value created from the labor of developers, making it extractive in nature.
I cannot accept a theory of value that says tabletop simulator’s value is entirely independent of if you can play multiplayer. It is, to me, a multiplayer game. I am reasonably certain that the game devs don’t host that server, did not write the server code, and do not manage connecting different players together. That’s all part of the product, and I think it’s a part that valve should get credit/payment for.
I note that when game devs did not generally use steam, valve made their own (excellent) games. I suspect if people started leaving the platform, they would return to it. I think this refutes the claim in this quote. The infrastructure is so good that it genuinely improves many many games. (Now this has extended to marketting, so that even games that work great from itch.io also want to be on steam. I agree that these network effects are much closer to rent seeking and don’t add value under the labor theory. But I have not seen a strong argument that valve has been anti-competitive with this privilege, and I think it is just wrong to assert that valve does not contribute to many of the games cited in this thread.)
If you package a game as not just the assets and code, but also the things that make it possible to use those in the way the game dev intended, then steam is selling a large portion of each game. Every time I run a steam game, I am running a substantial number of lines of code written because valve exists, often more than the number of lines of code written by the game dev. If I bought the game elsewhere, this would often not be true.
Steamdeck does not increase the economic value of any other product (though, I love my Steamdeck)
Infinite effort and using up all the gold on earth, spent making a game that can only be run on temple OS installed into a vintage N64 in orbit around mars, is entirely wasted. The game would have no value because there are no consumers: it cannot enter the market. The labor theory of value only makes sense for things that are, in fact, sold. To take another example, train engines are valuable because train tracks exist and vice-versa. There is no service to sell with just one of the two. We live in a society.
(I do not intend to argue valve is perfect; in ways and cases they are a monopoly and have behaved as rent seekers. But I think your claims are too strong/sweeping.)
That’s how taxes work, yes, and I consider them valuable. There’s a lot of work in actually deciding what work needs to be done, finding the people to do it, negotiating prices, things like that. So yes, I do think “the Lord” is adding a lot of value and making the whole operation possible in a way that probably wouldn’t work if you had everybody just trying to agree on how to spend the money and split the costs.
I will also point out Valve provides not just the platforms, but also some libraries for game development, including a networking library with NAT punchthrough (which is why on steam you can right-click a friend and join them, even on small indie games, without the game devs hosting their own servers for that) and a library for input handling (though less mandatory, but if used it makes input remapping in steam better integrated).
Another thing to note is that the value provided can be experienced more directly - if you want to try a great website/store that, to my understanding, doesn’t take any cut while providing hosting, try playing some games from itch. Depending on your gaming habits you might not notice much of a difference, and more of your money would go to the devs, but you might sorely miss some features like cloud saves, steam networking, steam input, proton, automatic delta/incremental updates.
I think you misunderstand me. I’m not saying valves infrastructure isn’t valuable, or what they offer to gamers isn’t good. Again, Steam is not a product to gamers. It’s a marketplace that charges rents to game devs. I’m saying it’s not value added to the product that is produced. The product that’s produced by the game dev is the same regardless of whether they put it on steam or not.
Most of your points are about how much value Steam offers to gamers in a colloquial sense. Of course, its a lot. But it’s not in an economic sense value added to the good produced. Valve taking a 1/3rd cut is more akin to an extractive feudal lord than a collaborator in the making of the good (the game) and sharing in the profits.
I think I understand your position and disagree on many games (as others may have communicated better). I think most games I play are a better deal because steam and valve exist. Cloud saves and multiplayer setup both have definitely quadrupled the value of many many games for me, it is not close.
Also, valve created a new hardware to increase gamer access via the steam deck. Those sales and that user base both add value for devs. Similar argument for Linux, except valve doesn’t even rent seek on most of that. The drivers are for everyone.
Sorry to be like this, but I don’t think you’re getting it still. Like I said, colloquially Steam has value. And especially in relation to you, the gamer. How much you personally value your games more because of Steam, though, is irrelevant, and Valve creating a new product is similarly irrelevant to what I’m saying. Steamdeck does not increase the economic value of any other product (though, I love my Steamdeck)
Again, you are not the consumer of Valve’s (main) product. Valve’s business model is to sell shelf space to the dev. It’s to allow the peasant into the walls of the city to sell their grain in the market square.
The value I’m referring to is the value inherent in a production of a commodity that originates from the raw materials and labor that workers put into it. I’m talking labor value. It’s the value of the grain that originates in the workers toil and the raw stuff.
Valve might help realize gains from the game, but it is not involved in the production and does not create nor add labor value to the game. Their business model is predicated on extracting rents from developers, the people doing productive labor.
You could maybe argue Valve creates value in the production and maintenance of the commodity that is Steam’s infrastructure and sell it at a fair price. But in this context, the whole point of that infrastructure is to realize the value created from the labor of developers, making it extractive in nature. Do you see what I mean? You’re right back at the point where they’re charging developers a rent to access the marketplace. And the whole thing falls apart without devs (workers) creating a commodity (games) from which to extract value. This is what I mean when I say Steam is not value-adding – not that Steam doesn’t have (colloquial) value.
Does that make sense?
I apologize for not reading you carefully enough. Indeed, I simply disagree with your application of the labor theory of value, to the point that I think your claims in this specific case do not make sense. (Some of the arguments made here I think are strong reductions-to-absurdity against the labor theory, but I will try to explain my objections from within the theory.)
I think you can salvage many cases of this theory of labor+materials by picking good boundaries for what a ‘product’ is. What the market chooses to say it is selling to you is generally lies, which we shouldn’t trust. What it actually is selling to you is often a large amalgam of things. We should consider the value of a whole bag of goods that the consumers/world can interact with because of the purchase. When you buy a train ticket, we do not judge its value by the quality of the printing (or, more generously, the labor+materials of the chair you sit on). It’s value comes from all of the train engine and the train car and the tracks they ride on and the stations they visit and the people who run them. In this lens, I think we should not consider a game as only the programming+assets made by the dev team. A game is thus, at least:
I cannot accept a theory of value that says tabletop simulator’s value is entirely independent of if you can play multiplayer. It is, to me, a multiplayer game. I am reasonably certain that the game devs don’t host that server, did not write the server code, and do not manage connecting different players together. That’s all part of the product, and I think it’s a part that valve should get credit/payment for.
I note that when game devs did not generally use steam, valve made their own (excellent) games. I suspect if people started leaving the platform, they would return to it. I think this refutes the claim in this quote. The infrastructure is so good that it genuinely improves many many games. (Now this has extended to marketting, so that even games that work great from itch.io also want to be on steam. I agree that these network effects are much closer to rent seeking and don’t add value under the labor theory. But I have not seen a strong argument that valve has been anti-competitive with this privilege, and I think it is just wrong to assert that valve does not contribute to many of the games cited in this thread.)
If you package a game as not just the assets and code, but also the things that make it possible to use those in the way the game dev intended, then steam is selling a large portion of each game. Every time I run a steam game, I am running a substantial number of lines of code written because valve exists, often more than the number of lines of code written by the game dev. If I bought the game elsewhere, this would often not be true.
Infinite effort and using up all the gold on earth, spent making a game that can only be run on temple OS installed into a vintage N64 in orbit around mars, is entirely wasted. The game would have no value because there are no consumers: it cannot enter the market. The labor theory of value only makes sense for things that are, in fact, sold. To take another example, train engines are valuable because train tracks exist and vice-versa. There is no service to sell with just one of the two. We live in a society.
(I do not intend to argue valve is perfect; in ways and cases they are a monopoly and have behaved as rent seekers. But I think your claims are too strong/sweeping.)
I’ll have to read this a little later but just want to say now thank you for your genuine response
Sounds good; and thank you for taking the time as well.