People never grasp what I mean when I say that, in order to understand a corporation like Activision-Blizzard and why they won't change their stance on China, you have to understand who their actual customers are.

Spoiler Alert: It isn't you, the gamers.

CC: @Slasher @Grummz Public corporations live and die by their stocks, not their product/service sales. The product/service sales are just a means to sell stocks. Their customer is investors, not consumers.

So, when Act-Blizz sees this graph, you know they have been panicking for just over a year.

There is a point to discuss on this front regarding the importance of distribution selection to the end consumer. Yes, it is more than just a "delivery medium". Distribution plays a key role in consumer cost and experience. Let's break this down: First, the choice of distribution has the greatest impact on consumer cost/value consideration. In the context of Steam versus EGS, the first example is the distribution costs leading to higher product costs versus the value that the product *and* distribution provides.

Many have seen me criticise @EpicGames lately, which has lead some Epic apologists call me a Steam fanboy.

Well, I think it's about time the Valve apologist be angry at me, because what follows won't be pretty. In the words of @AngryJoeShow, you done fucked it up, @steam_games. Let's discuss Information Security. It's not well understood by technical people, much less an average person. Suffice to say there is this thing called a vulnerability that can, by itself or when combined with other vulnerabilities, allow bad stuff to happen to your computer.

@PixelTwitchTV @CristianCeo @TheRagingShadow @TimSweeneyEpic Now, we are starting to get into a lot of my professional experience here, so please bear that in mind when I say that it is demonstrably true that exclusivity commonly seen as the "Scorched Earth" strategy. Let me explain that... Bear with me, this is a bit complicated: @PixelTwitchTV @CristianCeo @TheRagingShadow @TimSweeneyEpic So exclusivity, or vertical integration as I know it, ultimately sees one product/service lean on another product/service as a crutch. To keep the context relevant, Epic leans on exclusive games to get people to buy on the Epic Games Store. However, there are consequences...

This was an evidence-backed statement, that the majority of developers are either unsure or do not believe @steam_games justifies it's 30% cut. (Caveats, of course, but the benefit of the doubt here.)

So, just like before, let's put this through our Critical Thinking test.

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1140385601579081730

For reference, the segment of focus is pictured here:

Part of what I set out to do is provide correct information to consumers so they can make informed purchases. But how do I do that?

Let's use this claim "stores extract more than half the profit" and it's context as an exercise in Critical Thinking. First, we need to ask When... Is the info backing the claim created? Is it current? Since no source is provided to back the information, we do not have any basis on how current the claim is. Red Flag #1.

Just as a bit of a more in depth explanation to completely dispel @TimSweeneyEpic's allegation that developer's make less profit than Valve on a game sold on @steam_games. Bottom line: My educated guess is that Valve makes 8% profit on a game sold on Steam. Let's break this down @TimSweeneyEpic @steam_games Valve charges 30% off the top of a game purchased directly through the Steam Store, which accounts to about 66% of all activations on Steam. Remove the 33% of Steam Key activations and you end up with 19.8% made off a game available on Steam. Moving on...