Dont people do that already?
Honestly, I've not seen it bought up a whole ton, especially not relative to how much money people assume they have.
I hesitate to dive back in and give the hornets nest yet another good hard kick, having done it enough already in this thread, but I do think there is some kind of psychological difference between assuming a company has loads of money, and seeing the actual number written down and confirmed.
Apple, Amazon and Google are all in the headlines almost daily due to their large swaths of cash. Valve seems to fly under the radar most of the time.
Or maybe I'm not reading the right articles? I dunno. Matters of perception like these are all a bit subjective. Its not really a hill I'm going to die on, so If you've read a good number of articles etc that question Gabe/Valve's billions, then fair enough.
One point here is that its not only valves data, is data that those developers gave valve under the asumption that it stays undisclosed?
It includes third party data and i find that scary, thats all im saying.
Fair point I guess, though I'd argue its up to the developers to then justify those profits. In theory, their 70% cut of what they made on Steam should be justified by development costs, a fair-to-generous salary, and re-investing into their next game. If a developer is just profiteering then that's their own moral hazard to deal with as and when the facts come out.
The agreement does also work both ways, with some (possibly quite a few) publishers wanting to release sales statistics, but being NDA'd from doing so by Valve.'s terms.
Also Apple might not disclose all those details publicly once they are handed the info. Though at this point, given how proceeding have gone, I kinda expect them to take all the info they are given and shove it wholesale into the appendix of a publicly-filed court document just because - y'know - if yer airing dirty laundry, might as well air it all right?
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