336 people
30% grabbed from every game
8.56 billion in revenue
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I love Steam and I love Gabe, but the system we have that let Steam extract so much money out of the gaming industry is broken.
And that’s true for software or online services in general, and I’m saying that as someone who benefit from that system as a software engineer.
Then why are publishers and customers so loyal then? There has been attempt after attempt to create a competitor but they all fall short. Steam offers so so so much in comparison to the competition it’s not even funny. The 30% is justified.
I’d argue that Valve does more than just take 30% as a middle man. Between Steam Input, Proton, the beta built in recording system, the Forums for every game, community system and the marketplace, having your game on Steam is a massive value generator for the consumer and by extension developers.
30% might not be what the industry standard should be, but Valve isn’t just providing a standard digital distribution service.
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It is broken in the sense that it’s absolutely insane that they can take 30% and nobody can build a competing product that only takes 20%.
It is not broken in the sense that they keep doing what they are doing and developers and customers consistently choose their offer.
It’s not a monopoly because they exploit their position.
It’s a monopoly because nobody else is trying hard enough.
It’s a monopoly because gamers go where games are, and developers go where customers are.
For the same reason Apple App Store / Play Store is a duopoly.
What do you suggest, when the alternatives like epic or Ubisoft are exponentially worse?
Steam is the best, and we’re lucky that Steam is the one that won rather than another. Which could definitely have happened because once one of them is in place it’s extremely hard to change.
So the situation is good for gamers, but from an economic point of view it’s bad.
Damn, working for Valve pays very well.
What a great company!
Because they don’t pay any of their actual workforce: the game devs they steal 30% from for every game sold.
You mean the game devs they provide CDN at no additional costs, networking features a dev environment that is far more comfortable than any competitor and various additional revenue streams (such as trading cards and items)?
“steal” lol.
As if people are forced to publish there.
There aren’t many option and all of them except one are predatory. Regulation that would limit the amount taken would be a real boon to the industry. Steam, Epic, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo are all guilty of this. The government should step in but they don’t because of lobbying and donations.
No one defends Microsoft when it comes to this. Gaben gets a free pass because he pretends to be a cool guy when he’s just another billionaire essentially robbing his workforce and customers.
Steam is the only store putting the customer first. The refund policy is top notch. Heck just making proton, giving gamers the choice of os, is the best thing for gamers since computers was invented!
Putting the customer first? Call me when I can transfer my license to anyone else I want without valve having to okay it like I can a physical copy then we are talking about putting the customer first.
That they are miles better then the competition, does not mean there are no room for improvements.
Microsoft’s refund policy is top notch too and I see proton as leveraging open source to avoid dev costs.
More importantly, everything steam does could be done with 5% instead of 30% and Gaben would still be filthy rich.
Steam is as greedy as the other platforms and it’s us, the consumers, and the indie scene that suffer for it. Are you okay with your favorite indie studio closing and your favorite game not getting a sequel because Gaben wants 8000 million a year instead of 1000 million a year?
There is most likely collusion and soft monopolies, these platforms are clearly not competing in good faith.
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Taking a different and hopefully more productive stance than the other guy, I just want to explore people’s thoughts.
People already have built these alternatives. Itch.io, EGS, Humble Store, Microsoft Store, GOG. These platforms exist, but they struggle to achieve the full market dominance that Steam has as the “default” platform, meaning Devs are borderline forced to accept the 30% cut if they have any hope of making sales.
As shown by Steam’s huge profits, they certainly take a higher cut than they have to, and they can definitely stomach a smaller cut
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You pay less because you get less. I’m selling a product. The last thing I’m going to cheap out in is sales. I’m not going to see great sales from the EGS because A)Nobody uses it
That’s exactly it, Devs have to accept Steam’s cut because it’s essentially the only place you can sell things. It makes logical sense, but do you not see why this is a disadvantageous position for the Devs to be put in?
It’s like trying to sell your hand made Combs. The gas station on the corner is happy to take only 20% of the profit. They’re all over the place and accessible. But you really want to sell it at the boutique shops because they have more comb-seeking customers.
This would be a fine analogy, if there weren’t a single digit amount of storefronts. Steam and EGS are more equivalent to supermarkets. Sure the odd person is going to go to speciality stores on occasion, but the vast majority of sales are done through supermarkets. Steam is a supermarket competing against speciality stores. The only other real supermarket in town is EGS and as you’ve discussed, it’s such a dumpster fire no one shops there.
I’m not disagreeing that Steam deserves its position, it does for sure. But we live in a world where it has no meaningful competition, and one of the ways it exercises its position is by maintaining their 30% cut. A cut which was established by stores that had to manage the logistics for real physical copies of the games.
My point is that there isn’t a reason that Steam has such a high cut, other than it wants more money, and has the market saturation to command more money
Me: “Rent seeking is an illegitimate practice, landlords steal money from laborers by extorting them for a necessary good!”
You: “Oh yeah? Why don’t you just buy your own land and build your own apartment building?”
You’re a dumbass.
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What point? That you’re a corporate bootlicker?
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You’re the type of person who would call universal healthcare “socialism”, and it really shows.
Tell me you know nothing about the gaming industry without telling me lol
Gabe is the smartest guy in business. Guy is rolling in cash, only for himself and those he choose to share it with.
Idk what they teach you in business school, but it’s probably wrong.
