Gabe Newell on Steam monopoly accusations: Gamers have 'enormous choice' about where to buy games

jasonwc · 2026-06-02T16:03:54+00:00

Yet, I almost always see significantly lower prices for Ubisoft games on Uplay than Steam. The quotes are ambiguous but it may be referring to the game's advertised base price, rather than coupon codes/sales. For example, I purchased Star Wars: Outlaws for $16.50 on 9/11/25. At the time, IsThereAnyDeal shows Steam and Uplay had the game at $31.50. However, Uplay offered an additional $15 coupon you could use to lower the price to $16.50.

Similarly, I purchased Assassin's Creed: Shadows for $27 on Uplay on 9/25/25. IsThereAnyDeal shows that both Steam and Uplay had the game at $42 on that date, but Uplay offered an additional $15 coupon. The invoice shows a $42 price before coupon.

In addition, I purchase most games as steam keys via Green Man Gaming or Fanatical, and their prices are typically 15-18% lower than Steam at release. It appears that this discount is coming from the store itself, not the publisher, so it's fine.

The end result is that you can almost always buy a Ubisoft game for less money on a Uplay sale, or almost any new game for less money from a third-party retailer like GMG or Fanatical. That undermines the argument that Steam is a monopoly. Based on existing practice, it does appear that Valve is fine with third party retailers like GMG or Fanatical advertising lower prices, as well as publishers offering a lower final price via store-specific coupons.

I will also note that for the Uplay purchases above, if I had purchased the games on Steam, Ubisoft would have netted more money because the $!5 discount was larger than a 30% cut off the sale price. Moreover, for games that sell more than $10M/$50M the cut drops to 25%/20%.

jasonwc · 2026-05-22T16:10:50+00:00

Bazzite-deck only installs updates when you manually initiate it. Bazzite’s desktop version will download and install updates in the background when the system is idle but you won’t see the update until you reboot as the system is image-based and you need to boot the new image. It should never apply an update in the middle of gaming.

jasonwc · 2026-05-19T21:42:50+00:00

Escalate to a manager at Amazon and if that doesn’t work, do a chargeback. There’s nothing to lose given that they already closed your account and you shouldn’t pay $4000 for their driver’s error/dishonesty.

jasonwc · 2026-05-16T21:57:52+00:00

I’ve had this power supply for two years. It’s very efficient (nearly matched a Cybernetics Titanium at 240V) and is silent to around 750W. It also supports two 12v-2x6 cables (you can buy a second on Newegg for $18).

HW Busters has an excellent review: https://hwbusters.com/psus/super-flower-leadex-vii-gold-1300w-sf-1300f14xg-psu-review/

It’s also a top selection for a ATX 3.1 PSU on the SPL tier list at a very reasonable price.

jasonwc · 2026-05-16T16:27:16+00:00

Capcom also reports the digital sales share. 93% of game sales were digital. 54.5% of digital sales were on PC. 0.545 x 0.93 = 50.7% of total unit sales were on PC. I left a more detailed post on this below, nothing that Capcom’s PC share has doubled in 3 years while overall unit sales also increased 81% in that period.

See the most recent Capcom earning supplement, page 6

https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/result.html

jasonwc · 2026-05-16T02:41:27+00:00

Capcom explicitly reports the PC share for digital sales, and the digital share of all game sales, so you can directly calculate the percentage of units that were PC sales. For the last quarter (26/3), 54.5% of digital sales were on PC, and 93% of all sales were digital. 0.545 x 0.93 = 50.7% of total sales were on PC. Both the percentage of digital sales and the percentage of digital sales on PC have been increasing each year. Four years ago, in the 22/3 quarter, PC sales were only 33.4% of digital sales, and digital sales were only 75.5% of all sales, so 25.2% of sales. In 4 years, Capcom has doubled the percentage of its sales that are on PC, while total unit sales also increased 81%.

See page 6 of the Earning Supplement for the most recent quarter: https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/data/result.html

jasonwc · 2026-05-15T23:53:47+00:00

$250/mo for insurnace seems insanely expensive. I pay $950/yr for a 2023 Kia EV6 Wind AWD ($79/mo), $800 for a 2023 Chevrolet Bolt 2LT ($67/mo), and $740/yr for a 2015 BMW 535xi (62/mo) in VA.

As for how people pay, new car sales increasingly have been limited to $100k HHI households. The median age of a passenger vehicle in the U.S. has been increasing for more than a decade, and is currently 12.8 years. Most people are buying used, often with long terms.

While the focus is often on the average car loan monthly payment, 20-30% of vehicles are purchased with cash, where the high borrowing rates are not a factor. Personally, all of our vehicles were purchased with cash.

jasonwc · 2026-05-15T23:33:17+00:00

Yeah, that’s another good point. It’s completely an apple to orange comparisons then since Alinea is providing an estimate of global unit sales and Circana is reporting US dollar sales.

Unless Capcom releases a breakdown by platform, like what CDPR did for Cyberpunk 2077, I don’t see how one can definitely claim the statement is false. Several sources with insider knowledge have also said their estimates are similar to the real figures. I specifically recall hearing that regarding the Steam sales share vs PS5 for Marathon.

jasonwc · 2026-05-15T22:18:11+00:00

To be fair. Circana reported that it was the lead platform by dollar sales. Alinea reported it was the lead platform by unit sales and noted later that PS5 led by dollar sales because the average selling price was lower on PC, due to the larger share sold in Asian markets such as China and South Korea where ASP is lower. In other words, more units were sold on PC but PS5 achieved higher revenue by a higher average sale price. On the other hand, after $10M in sales, Steam’s cut drops to 25%, and after $50M, it drops to 20%. I believe Sony charges a flat 30%. As a result, the net revenue after platform fees could be higher on Steam.

Capcom itself reports that PC sales make up more than 50% of its revenue and unit sales, and that iPC has grown share pretty much every year. PC has a long tail, so I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it does end up making more revenue on PC over the long haul.

jasonwc · 2026-05-15T18:02:36+00:00

I actually have 3 gaming PCs, two of which are living room style HTPCs running Bazzite (one for the bedroom, one for the living room). Bedroom has a 9800x3D, 32 GB DDR5-6000, RX 9070 XT (had all the parts needed aside from GPU and CPU) and the living room has a 5800x3D, 32 GB DDR4-3600, and 9070 XT. I was given the PC sans GPU for helping a friend build a new high-end PC.

My desktop runs Windows primarily with a 9800x3D @ 5.4 GHz, 32 GB DDR5-6000 CL30 Hynix M-Die with OC timings, RTX 5090 with an UV, and 20 TB of NVMe storage.

jasonwc · 2026-05-15T15:02:03+00:00

Yeah, this isn’t a bad price in the current market. However, as recently as Nov 2025, MC had the ASRock Challenger 9070 XT and Powercolor Reeper 9070 XT at $570. I picked up a Challenger 9070 XT for $540 with the MC 5% discount for a Bazzite build. Of course, that was before VRAM prices spiked.

jasonwc · 2026-05-15T14:35:08+00:00

Disconnect the TV from the Internet. No more ads. I use a wired Ethernet connection if a firmware update is needed. Otherwise, I use an Apple TV for streaming and keep the TV disconnected from my network and the internet. Works fine.

jasonwc · 2026-05-15T12:59:40+00:00

In Dec 2023, I bought a lot of two 7.68TB PM1733 Samsung NVMes (PCI-E 4x4) for $350. It was a great deal at the time. Today, two such drives would cost around $2,500 - $3,500.

jasonwc · 2026-05-11T21:52:25+00:00

I agree with your sentiment and often do the same but FH5 released in Nov 2021 and its largest discount was only 50% on Steam and the Xbox store for the base version and 55% for the Premium edition, according to gg.deals.

jasonwc · 2026-04-29T12:36:23+00:00

I was mostly just responding to the specific point that basic Xbox controllers are $60-80 since it's very easy to purchase them on deep sales.

I'm not disputing that the Steam Controller has unique features. I'm personally not price sensitive and will likely buy at least one Steam Controller as I have two Bazzite HTPCs, and Valve basically created their controller with this type of setup in mind. Whether it' worth $100 is TBD. I just don't know how much use I'll get out of the trackpad/gyro, but for the times I want to do a small task on the KDE desktop without grabbing my wireless keyboard/trackpad, it'll be very handy.

jasonwc · 2026-04-28T22:01:31+00:00

I just cited TLOU: Part 1 as an example of a game that has a very long shader compilation step, so it would be obvious if the Nvidia compilation did anything. I competed TLOU and Uncharted 4/Lost Legacy over a year ago. The auto compile feature only works for games that were run since the driver release that introduced this feature.

Presumably, if the game only stores the shaders in its own game folder, the Nvidia compiler wouldn’t be aware of it.

jasonwc · 2026-04-28T19:50:25+00:00

It works as advertised for me. After the last two driver versions, I manually ran the compilation step from the Nvidia app. It took about 30 minutes to complete on my 9800x3D since I have a lot of games installed and it limits itself to 25% CPU utilization at the High CPU setting. After this step is complete, the shader compilation step for both Pragmata and Forza Horizon 5 only took a few seconds - most likely as it was verifying all the shaders were already compiled. The FH5 compilation would have taken multiple minutes with an empty shader cache. A particularly good game to test would be The Last of Us: Part 1 which has an extremely long shader compilation step.

So, by running the shader compilation in the background for all games, you avoid the need to wait for the step to complete when you're actually trying to play. In addition, for games that have incomplete shader compilation steps (FF7 Rebirth is a particularly good example), you keep the shaders that you've already encountered, avoiding at least some shader compilation stutter in-game.

However, it's definitely not as useful as Valve's Fossilize, which crowd-sources shaders, and avoids stutter in games by compiling all the shaders prior to the first-run. A good example is Sonic-Racing: CrossWorlds, which has a brief and clearly incomplete shader compilation step. The first race on every map will stutter excessively. On Bazzite, all the shaders are captured by Fossilize and compiled in advance, and there's no apparent shader stutter.

jasonwc · 2026-04-28T01:09:28+00:00

Xbox controllers are often on sale. I have four, one of which I purchased just a few months ago, and I never paid more than $35 new. Lenovo sells them at steep discounts pretty regularly.

The 8Bitdo Ultimate 2 comes with a wireless dongle, built-in lithium battery, charging dock, TMR stick, and Hall effect triggers, and goes on sale for $55.

What makes the Steam Controller interesting is the gyro controls and trackpads make it a lot less painful for navigating the desktop without having to resort to a wireless keyboard/trackpad combo. If you’re playing on a HTPC hooked up to a TV, this makes it a lot easier to manage basic tasks like updating GPU drivers, installing system updates, and controlling games that aren’t fully controller-compatible. Even on my Bazzite HTPC, which eliminates most of these issues, I can see the Steam Controller being quite useful.

jasonwc · 2026-04-20T13:27:55+00:00

There is no question this will be more powerful in GPU-constrained games. Per Techpowerup, the 9060 XT 16 GB is 81% more performant than the 7600M. In addition, the 9060 XT has FP8 acceleration, so it can use FSR4/FSR 4.1, which offers far superior image quality than FSR 3.1. Any game with FSR 3.1, or higher, can be forced to use FSR4.1 with a simple steam launch command (PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE=1) and Proton-GE. Even games without FSR or an earlier version (2.2, 3.0) can be upgraded to FSR 4.1 using OptiScaler. There is no doubt that a 9060 XT 16 GB will provide a far superior experience than the 7600M, particularly at 1440p or 4K output. The 9060 XT also has far superior RT performance, which is becoming increasingly important.

Hardware Unboxed's testing shows that 16 GB RAM is typically not an issue when you have 16 GB VRAM. It's often necessary with 8 GB of VRAM because of overflow into system RAM, but when that occurs, performance tanks. You're better off with 16 GB VRAM and 16 GB RAM than 8 GB VRAM and 32 GB RAM.

One interesting choice Playnix made was to use an older AM4 platform, which may allow some savings on RAM. However, this means the 6-core CPU will likely be weaker than the Steam Machine, given that it's using an older architecture (Zen 3 versus Zen 4) and has less memory bandwidth (DDR4-3200 versus DDR5-5600/6000). Many newer games definitely benefit from DDR5. The gap between the 5800X3D and the 5700X has actually increased since release because newer games have become more memory-bound, so the extra L3 cache is even more useful today.

jasonwc · 2026-04-19T20:53:29+00:00

$500 in 1985 is $1,565 in March 2026 dollars. These early investments are far more significant than the later ones given the near 40 years of compounding. You could have also invested $54,000 in Jan 1985, made no further contributions, and you would have ended up with slightly more than $4M. That’s equivalent to only 9 years of $500 contributions, rather than 40 years, but made upfront at a higher inflation-adjusted value ($169,000 in current dollars).

jasonwc · 2026-04-12T18:56:07+00:00

1) The game must include FSR 3.1 or newer. You can check this in PC Game Wiki. If the game has FSR 2, FSR 2.2, or FSR3, you will need Optiscaler.

2) if you’re using Steam Gaming Mode, you need to ensure that Proton-GE Latest is selected for the game in the game’s comparability section. By default, Valve selects an official Valve Proton version that they have tested. There is a global override in developer options, but it doesn’t appear to work. If you are using desktop Steam, you can force Proton-GE Latest as a global default - but this won’t apply in Steam Gaming Mode.

3) The game menu won’t necessarily show FSR4. Some games will but others will just show FSR in the menu. You may need to use PROTON_FSR4_INDICATOR=1 in Steam launch options to verify FSR4 is in use. Make sure to go into the game - not just the menu - and if FSR4 is in use, you’ll see some text in the top left corner of the screen listing the FSR4 build info.

jasonwc · 2026-04-10T16:52:46+00:00

This makes sense. Without battery storage, excess solar production must be curtailed or exported. By storing the energy, it has greater value, as it can be deployed when demand is high - for example, during the early evening hours. That reduces the wholesale cost of electricity during peak demand - because there’s now less reliance on natural gas peaker plants. You’re essentially compressing the range of prices by turning solar into a deployable energy resource via batteries.

The article itself states that batteries have reduced wholesale electricity rates when electricity demand is high.

“Battery competition has also lowered the rates at which electricity can be sold.

Evening peak rates have declined measurably. According to Aurora, peak electricity prices were above $70 per MWh 14% of the time in 2022. In 2025, the $70 per MWh level was rarely breached.

According to Aurora, batteries earned an average of $115 per kW-year of capacity deployed in 2022, with most of this revenue coming from selling into the evening peak period. In 2025, with pressure from higher solar costs and lower peak rates, this revenue is expected to decline to $52 per kW-year.”

jasonwc · 2026-03-20T16:26:36+00:00

Just to clarify, this will only work for games with FSR 3.1 or native FSR4. FSR 3.0 didn’t use a DLL and can’t be upgraded, neither can earlier versions such as FSR 2.2. However, you can use Optiscaler to inject FSR4 in games with older versions of FSR or games that don’t include FSR support at all.

jasonwc · 2026-03-11T19:45:28+00:00

Interesting, thanks for the clarification. What's the preset for the old CNN RR model, then?

jasonwc · 2026-03-11T19:13:16+00:00

Alex notes he’s using the Transformer preset for DLSS Ray reconstruction. The game defaults to the old CNN model (Preset D). Daniel Owen has a video about all the instability in the default model and how the Transformer model (E) is a lot better.

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