Sorry dude, you have a right to your opinion – but most of what you just said isn’t true. I understand you think it’s ridiculous, but being against rent extraction is a classically leftist political philosophy. You’re right that it costs money to operate servers, but that doesn’t mean those servers are not the property of Valve. They utilize that property to collect rent from publishers.
That fact is not well liked by leftists. By liberals? Sure, go nuts. But I think you’re in the process of finding yourself in the latter camp, at the moment. I’d definitely encourage you to look up leftists vs liberals because I think you may have a misunderstanding.
Regardless, I agree the hate/vitriol can go overboard coming from these types of people. I agree with the political and philosophical underpinnings of their frustration, but we are all born into a rat race and taught that we should do anything to get out of it, so no one actually thinks about whether things like “passive income” are right or wrong. We are taught that’s what you gotta shoot for, and I’m not going to blame someone for still believing that.
The cut that Steam takes from publishers is a rent. It is the equivalent of buying property and allowing an individual or family to live in it, for a cut of their wages. The landowner and Steam do not produce anything – they are a place, physical or virtual, for people to operate out of, at a cost. Steam is not a store that sells their own products, they are a platform that sells other people’s stuff and they take a cut. If I own a big plot of land, and let a bunch of businesses operate on that land as long as they pay me monthly, I’m taking a rent. It’s the same thing.
I feel like I don’t even need to comment on your weird bragging about profiting off of war, but I’ll just say this – whether you like it or not, whether you are personally interested or not, you are financially interested in the suffering and death of other people. If you think that’s morally okay, good for you. Personally, I think that’s pretty monstrous. I’d wish you a good day, but after learning that, I hope you get some help.
Edit: In case anyone needs this broken down: Online videogame marketplaces are a resource. The supply of online videogame marketplaces is fixed. Valve is the owner of the largest online videogame marketplace, Steam. The publisher of a videogame pays Valve to list their game on Steam. A payment to the owner of a resource, the supply of which is fixed, is economic rent. Imagine how low you gotta be to downvote Wikipedia.
Lmao you’re the one misunderstanding rents here, you don’t need to try to spin it around on me. If you think you’re right, go ahead and tell me where I’m wrong based on that definition.
I’ll bother and explain why you’re being stupid and not understanding the thing you yourself posted.
From the definition of factors of production on Wikipedia:
"In economics, factors of production, resources, or inputs are what is used in the production process to produce output—that is, goods and services.
Simply put, rent is paid at INPUT, for things like land, in order to produce OUTPUT, which are things like goods and services. What Steam provides is a SERVICE, an output. You don’t pay economic rent on outputs, you pay economic rent for inputs. Steam’s service being: marketing and distribution of games in place of others, plus integration with analytics and a bunch of other features.
The comparison you’re making is the same as saying you’re paying rent to your team of marketers and accountants…
You could make a point and argue that artists are paying economic rent for Adobe suite, and that game developers are paying rent for unreal engine fees. Without those things, which are inputs for production, neither artists or game developers would have a product at all. Steam only comes into play once the final product is already done. You don’t need Steam before the game is a product at all, which corroborates that Steam is not economic rent, for it’s not a payment made for an Input in order to produce an output.
Also, in what way is the marketplace for games fixed? It’s not a finite resource. There’s no finite number of how many stores there are out there, anyone can go and make their own client and store. There are games and developers that up to this day make their own standalone launchers.
Steams offers a service, the best one in the block. You don’t want it? You’re entirely free to go and figure it out yourself.
No monopolistic behavior in sight.
A market is not a resource. It’s not coal in the ground that Valve came along, dug up, and provides to people for a fee. They built the whole market, it’s theirs, and they built it when there were no guidelines or examples to follow either. If you want your game on there it requires a mutual benefit because if only the game makers benefit then there won’t be a market anymore due to no doubt astronomical costs of servers, development, moderation, etc. If there were no charges there’d be no market and publishers would have to sell their games on the remaining markets which, at the time of Steam’s creation, was nowhere and even now is multiple inferior places.
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Sorry dude, you have a right to your opinion – but most of what you just said isn’t true. I understand you think it’s ridiculous, but being against rent extraction is a classically leftist political philosophy. You’re right that it costs money to operate servers, but that doesn’t mean those servers are not the property of Valve. They utilize that property to collect rent from publishers.
That fact is not well liked by leftists. By liberals? Sure, go nuts. But I think you’re in the process of finding yourself in the latter camp, at the moment. I’d definitely encourage you to look up leftists vs liberals because I think you may have a misunderstanding.
Regardless, I agree the hate/vitriol can go overboard coming from these types of people. I agree with the political and philosophical underpinnings of their frustration, but we are all born into a rat race and taught that we should do anything to get out of it, so no one actually thinks about whether things like “passive income” are right or wrong. We are taught that’s what you gotta shoot for, and I’m not going to blame someone for still believing that.
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The cut that Steam takes from publishers is a rent. It is the equivalent of buying property and allowing an individual or family to live in it, for a cut of their wages. The landowner and Steam do not produce anything – they are a place, physical or virtual, for people to operate out of, at a cost. Steam is not a store that sells their own products, they are a platform that sells other people’s stuff and they take a cut. If I own a big plot of land, and let a bunch of businesses operate on that land as long as they pay me monthly, I’m taking a rent. It’s the same thing.
I feel like I don’t even need to comment on your weird bragging about profiting off of war, but I’ll just say this – whether you like it or not, whether you are personally interested or not, you are financially interested in the suffering and death of other people. If you think that’s morally okay, good for you. Personally, I think that’s pretty monstrous. I’d wish you a good day, but after learning that, I hope you get some help.
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In neoclassical economics, economic rent is any payment (in the context of a market transaction) to the owner of a factor of production or resource, supply of which is fixed.[1] In classical economics, economic rent is any payment made (including imputed value) or benefit received for non-produced inputs such as location (land) and for assets formed by creating official privilege over natural opportunities (e.g., patents). In the moral economy of neoclassical economics, economic rent includes income gained by labor or state beneficiaries of other “contrived” (assuming the market is natural, and does not come about by state and social contrivance) exclusivity, such as labor guilds and unofficial corruption.
Edit: In case anyone needs this broken down: Online videogame marketplaces are a resource. The supply of online videogame marketplaces is fixed. Valve is the owner of the largest online videogame marketplace, Steam. The publisher of a videogame pays Valve to list their game on Steam. A payment to the owner of a resource, the supply of which is fixed, is economic rent. Imagine how low you gotta be to downvote Wikipedia.
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Lmao you’re the one misunderstanding rents here, you don’t need to try to spin it around on me. If you think you’re right, go ahead and tell me where I’m wrong based on that definition.
I’ll bother and explain why you’re being stupid and not understanding the thing you yourself posted.
From the definition of factors of production on Wikipedia:
Simply put, rent is paid at INPUT, for things like land, in order to produce OUTPUT, which are things like goods and services. What Steam provides is a SERVICE, an output. You don’t pay economic rent on outputs, you pay economic rent for inputs. Steam’s service being: marketing and distribution of games in place of others, plus integration with analytics and a bunch of other features.
The comparison you’re making is the same as saying you’re paying rent to your team of marketers and accountants…
You could make a point and argue that artists are paying economic rent for Adobe suite, and that game developers are paying rent for unreal engine fees. Without those things, which are inputs for production, neither artists or game developers would have a product at all. Steam only comes into play once the final product is already done. You don’t need Steam before the game is a product at all, which corroborates that Steam is not economic rent, for it’s not a payment made for an Input in order to produce an output.
Also, in what way is the marketplace for games fixed? It’s not a finite resource. There’s no finite number of how many stores there are out there, anyone can go and make their own client and store. There are games and developers that up to this day make their own standalone launchers.
Steams offers a service, the best one in the block. You don’t want it? You’re entirely free to go and figure it out yourself. No monopolistic behavior in sight.
I think you need to carefully read the quotes you just posted because they disagree with what you’re saying.
I don’t think they do, but if so I’m happily ready to admit I’m wrong. How do you find my interpretation wrong?
A market is not a resource. It’s not coal in the ground that Valve came along, dug up, and provides to people for a fee. They built the whole market, it’s theirs, and they built it when there were no guidelines or examples to follow either. If you want your game on there it requires a mutual benefit because if only the game makers benefit then there won’t be a market anymore due to no doubt astronomical costs of servers, development, moderation, etc. If there were no charges there’d be no market and publishers would have to sell their games on the remaining markets which, at the time of Steam’s creation, was nowhere and even now is multiple inferior places.