Valve could reduce their cut honestly, perhaps some program for independent developers to help them get on their feet. I don’t think the top games or big publishers should be getting cut reductions.
Either way, Valve haven’t been buying out studios for exclusive games, so Epic and Sweeney can go fuck themselves, they are scum.
At the same time it’s not like Valve is not making use of the extra money to use it only for taking in profits. It might of been what made it possible to try entering the hardware market with VR and the Steam Deck and putting resources in trying to make Linux gaming for accessible for regular people. Might of been what allowed them to not be deterred after the failure of the Steam machine and Steam Controller.
I do think Valve could drop it to 25% and not lose much sleep over their coffers.
It would effectively not do anything for game devs to reduce it by 5%.
On the dev side steam provides distribution and a bunch of tools while you develop your game. Tomorrow you can pay 100$, and steam will support you with keys, releasing and publishing your game, reviewing it for free etc.
I have a game I’ve been developing for 5 years part time. I have steam keys I share with testers, and can distribute version for free, with all the patch notes and update features from steam for 100$.
When I do release, they’ll have earned the 30%, and if I don’t release I’ll have saved a ton and steam will take the costs. This greatly reduces the barrier to self-publishing. Out of all the companies I deal with, this is by far the fairest and lest predatory model there is. Gaben could have just bled us of our money even more and it would have worked. They are very rich because they are very humble in a sense.
I mean I don’t know how much money steam is banking, but they provide quite a good service for their share.
Max download rates at all times (almost).
Amazing steam overlay. Online gaming. Online saves. Workshop. Linux support.
And many more. Some of that epic has too but in comparison epic launcher is shit.
The reason big studios get better rate is because they have leverage. Just as Amazon has leverage against apple in app store
Its based off revenue, obviously more revenue made overall gives Valve more money with less cut than small revenue at a larger cut.
If I recall correctly valve did lower their cut in the wake of EGS having better terms for devs.
For the first $10m earned it’s 30%, then it’s 25% until $50m, then it’s 20% from then on.
Ok yeah that’s still pretty shitty
Why?
If steam has to do the work to host the game then the majority of effort is going to be getting to the published and available to buy step, which is recouped along with server costs early on. As it scales, the efficiencies kick in and the price gets lowered a bit.
A company keeping 70% of retail price is still a higher cut than they would get for a game on a shelf at a store, and most likely with a far higher number of sales through steam. Plus it is digital so they don’t have all the physical distribution costs. For smaller games those additional costs and advertising are going to keep them from being feasible.
Valheim and Palworld wouldn’t have been massive successes on store shelves. 30% for visibility and unlimited scaling if the game is more successful than expected is a pretty good deal for the benefits it provides. It actually does buy something, it isn’t the mob’s cut for pretending to protect your business.
Why?
I am not going to pretend to understand the economics involved but 30% is an absurd amount of money to charge someone to do nothing but provide a storefront to sell games. I’d wager Sweeney is correct that Valve makes more profits than the actual developers. You know, the people who do the actual work of creating and maintaining the game.
Valve is exploiting their market dominance to rake in absurd profits for what is in all likelihood, very little actual work.
Valve makes more money per employee than fucking Apple. If that’s not an indicator of giant profit margins, I don’t know what is.
And while they do use that money to improve the gaming industry, and they’re a relatively ethical company, that don’t make those profit margins any less ridiculous.
A company keeping 70% of retail price is still a higher cut than they would get for a game on a shelf at a store
And I’d argue that’s also exorbitant and that there are far more logistics and other costs involved.
Valheim and Palworld wouldn’t have been massive successes on store shelves.
They could have been significantly more successful if Valve charged 15%. And Valve would remain extremely profitable.
Also want to note that Sweeney would absolutely begin charging 30% if and when he could, but right now that’s literally all they have going for them.
To be fair, Steam provides a lot more than “just being a storefront”. There’s large feature set there in Steamworks which is ‘free’ for developers to use.
The game developers would probably spend more than 30% of revenue hosting their own game on their own store, so the value is there already.It would be strange if Valve’s cut went up the more money your game made, but it would be better for independent developers.
To be fair, Steam provides a lot more than “just being a storefront”.
Meh. I wouldn’t call it “a lot”. And most of the hardware they’ve made has been a huge flop, SD being the (amazing) exception.
The game developers would probably spend more than 30% of revenue hosting their own game
…what? How do you figure that?
It’s the other overheads too, publishing cuts, marketing cuts, QA etc before you get down to the money made for wages etc.
Valve are absolutely in a position to take less, but the service they provide is like no other.
I don’t give a fuck about EA/Ubisoft etc getting a smaller cut, but independent developers could absolutely benefit from some sort of program.
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my problem is people conflate pro develper and pro consumer actions as the same thing, when they arent. what epic does is very pro developer(better cut, money in advance if exclusive), but the platform is far from being pro consumer(removes consumer choice in platform to buy it on, lower competiuon, inconplete community, store, workshop, and os functionality). I’m in open arms for competition, but it actively is a worse consumer experience, then its very hard to support.
I said this in another place, but the single only reason that Epic is pro developer is because they have miniscule market share.
If they gain significant market share, they will 100% absolutely guaranteed, no doubt, double their cut from developers.
It is the exact scum tactic that has been done dozens of times before like amazon.
Do you know why steam is dominating? There are no better alternatives. They actively work on projects that benefit everyone, including their competition.
For the time being, there’s nothing to be said other than other companies need to stop being so shitty.
Valve forever more have my support just because of proton. Letting me get off windows to game has been revolutionary for me.
I don’t understand this mentality. It has no loyalty to you, why be loyal to it?
Be loyal to people, not to organizations.
Support is not the same thing as loyalty.
By your logic, it makes sense to be loyal to Gabe, who has long thought to be the driving force behind steam remaining what they are and not falling down the capitalistic hole of exploiting their users for every red cent.
Gabe doesn’t know you, you don’t know him, Gabe represents a concept to you all. To be loyal to him is at best a parasocial relationship. He is not your dad, he’s not your professor, he’s not any kind of mentor to you, he’s just someone who doesn’t speak much publicly, and gets good PR because his capitalist interests happen to align with consumers right now. 15 years ago, Elon Musk fell into the same boat.
Look, I enjoy gaming on Linux as much as the next person, but I’ve also seen gamers make this completely unnecessary fanboy move over and over for decades.
not falling down the capitalistic hole of exploiting their users for every red cent.
The concept of a “hat shop” was literally invented by TF2 and every other game copied them. And they’re arguably exploiting small devs for every “red” cent while cutting breaks to the billionaire publishers. They also make devs eat the full cost of a refund. You’re not going to defend that behavior, you can only say “doesn’t affect me specifically” and ignore it.
But what if we didn’t ignore it? What if instead we praised their good behaviors AND rebuked the bad? What if we just behaved like responsible consumers? Imagine…
I don’t think that taking a cut for the sheer exposure of the platform is the same as exploitation. Even small devs make more money by an order of magnitude through steam than they would if they did not.
Steam costs money to operate. I really don’t understand why people think steam should just be valorous and noble and not make any money. Labeling them the middleman implies they don’t do anything. They provide a service in the same way a grocery store is there to make sure you don’t have to drive to a different farm every time you want a different kind of vegetable.
That’s really the only problem I have with what you said. Of course people shouldn’t be loyal to companies, I’m just pointing out the flaw in your logic that people should be loyal to people instead. Any type of figure that you don’t personally know is primarily a concept.
But also, “Behaving like a responsible consumer” is an idealistic fantasy that mostly fails because of the prisoner dilemma. If not enough people do it, the only people who suffer are the ones doing it. That base mindset might be overcame on an individual basis, but it’s rarely popular enough to gain the traction required for actual change, and it becomes more and more difficult the more people are content with the service.
It doesn’t help that steam is essentially the only game launcher that isn’t tiny or garbage.
Steam costs money to operate. I really don’t understand why people think steam should just be valorous and noble and not make any money.
This is exactly the point I’m making. Or rather, I really don’t understand why people think steam IS valorous and noble and not just making money.
I’m just pointing out the flaw in your logic that people should be loyal to people instead. Any type of figure that you don’t personally know is primarily a concept.
Agreed. I don’t follow why that means you should have loyalty for them.
“Behaving like a responsible consumer” is an idealistic fantasy that mostly fails because of the prisoner dilemma.
Totally agree.
It doesn’t help that steam is essentially the only game launcher that isn’t tiny or garbage.
I agree with basically everything you said. I just think the rational implication is to be reservedly greatful for the parts that benefit you, and readily critical of the parts that don’t. And I don’t understand why people instead reach the conclusion that one or two random alignments in interests means they should swear their allegiance to a corporation that cannot possibly do the same for them.
Being loyal to people can be pretty bad actually (see, idk, Darth Vader’s biopics).
I’m obviously not saying “be unquestioningly loyal to anyone with a pulse”. My point is that, if you’re going to have loyalty, direct it toward a fellow human being, not an ephemeral hive mind whose only “loyalties” are legally required. (And a picture of a person you’ve never met and who doesn’t know you doesn’t count as a person, for obvious reasons).
We worry about companies that aren’t anywhere near as dominant as valve. Just because their interests align with ours today doesn’t mean they will tomorrow.
Valve is dominant because they treat users well. Is your argument here seriously “Yes, Valve is a better platform that treats you well, but you shouldn’t use it because other people already do! You should use a platform that’s not as good because competition!”
A competitor in any industry needs to do more than “exist” to be worth using. If Valve starts acting shitty I will stop using it, much like how I have stopped purchasing or playing Blizzard games.
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While you may have a point that we can’t know what any company will do in the future, the fact remains that Valve has earned their place by 2 factors alone:
1.- Constant innovation to make their platform a place where everyone wants to be, without crippling the competition, despite having the means to do it. 2.- years of building trust with their users and providers alike by being transparent and clear on what they offer, while adding value which costs money that they absorb.
Yes, 30% of so much money is a shitload of money, but I have yet to see one good reason why that’s a bad thing other than the usual “it’s too much” bullshit argument.
Unity, Reddit, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, these companies have 1 common denominator: they have gone out of their way to destroy anything that would present a risk to 10 cents of their revenue, including, but not limited to, absorbing any potential competition, regardless of if they represent a risk to their dominance or not.
Do not compare valve to these assholes. Valve is making tons of money? Unless you can show me, with evidence, how this is detrimental to anyone else, other than the fact that you are not making as much, all you have is bullshit and a fucking tantrum.
Here’s the difference. When we talk about companies dominating an industry, we’re usually talking about practices that keep competition from even forming. Monopolies are formed as a result of big companies buying out or making it impossible for their competition.
Steam doesn’t do that, which is a big reason they won their monopoly suit. They just provide a better model than anyone else is willing to, and they rake in the cash because of it.
Compare this situation to books-a-million in the states. Books-a-million doesn’t have a monopoly on books, they just have created a better environment for selling them. They aren’t stopping other book stores from opening or buying chains to shut them down, they just sell you a cup of coffee and give you a place to sit while you browse their massive selection.
That’s not a monopoly, that’s just better business.
Valve isn’t dominating an essential industry. They could control 100% of the game market and it would make no difference to anything important.
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It matters if people are captive consumers of the product. It does not matter if they can simply stop using the product with no ill consequences.
The same goes for movies, TV, music. You can simply stop buying these commercially with no ill effect.
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I don’t like Valve. I don’t like the non-ownership model of game distribution.
Users aren’t captured at all, since none of them need to purchase video games. Game developers may be captured by Valve, but game developers aren’t producing anything of importance.
I’m for legal restrictions on industry practice that are predatory towards the users, but there’s no need to protect the industry itself from control by Valve, since nothing important is being controlled.
Valve also can’t control the gaming industry if they don’t control the OS gamers use. They may be trying to control the OS, but they haven’t done it yet. Until then, they can’t prevent users from installing games outside of Steam. If Developers are locked in to Steam, it’s because users buy games in Steam and refuse to buy games outside of Steam. The users behave this way because Steam provides lots of value to them.
If Steam starts to abuse users instead of serving them, there’s nothing stopping them from purchasing games some other way.
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I’m not arguing none of this matters.
This is what I’m arguing: if Valve had control of the gaming industry, which it doesn’t yet but might later, it would matter so little that we’d need no public policy to address it. Anyone who isn’t in the industry needn’t concern themselves about it.
Neither is Tiktok. But the US Congress is still freaking out about it.
The US congress is freaking out about TikTok because of national security concerns about china potentially harvesting data on americans and influencing politics, not because TikTok is a monopoly.
This is not at all the same thing.
People hated Steam and were very skeptical initially. Respect was earned over time
They were literally selling physical game boxes with a code and an installer for Steam in it instead of the game.
Steams initial tactics are as scummy as Epic’s. The reason they don’t need them anymore is because of their semi monopoly.
Those DVDs usually had the game backup files on it too, so you didn’t even need to download most physical copies you purchased. And I can still download the original CS game I bought like 20 years ago. Seems like a good deal since that game cost me like $40 in store.
Human rights principles? Tim needs to quit sniffing his own farts. He’s trying to sell digital video games on iPhones, not end human trafficking.
Is epics cut still 12%?
And in the same court case - it was discovered it was not profitable despite their more limited offerings.
If the percentage was the most important part, why isn’t every game on Epic?
Afaik it was a deciding factor for a lot of playstation exclusives that started porting to PC.
Yes. Since nobody else seems to want to answer. Also, they waive the Unreal Engine revenue share from sales on the Epic Store.
I appreciate Epics pro developer stance, but the need a better consumer experience and innovation in that space if they want to be serious about the store.
Valve has spen’t much of the last 25 years pushing the industry forwards in distribution. That’s why there’s so much loyalty to them.
They are only pro developer because they aren’t breaking into the market well at all.
I guarantee that if they ever have a breakthrough and start approaching 40% sales or more, they will double their cut for sure.
Their cut is literally only to draw in developers and operate at a loss, subsidized by other income or investors, to gain as much market share as possible before jacking up prices.
It is the exact scummy playbook that amazon went by to drown their competition with their bare hands. The only difference is that Epic doesn’t understand the market at all and won’t commit resources to improving their store.
The “you mad bro” is found among internal Valve communication (Valve COO Scott Lynch to Erik Johnson and Newell, i.e. in the sense Johnson/Newell being “mad”, not Sweeney). It was particularly not sent out as a response to Sweeney. Another outlet already got tripped over this and had to make a correction: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2024/03/valve-coo-on-epics-tim-sweeney-you-mad-bro-when-launching-the-epic-store/
This is not quite as sensational as some people are framing it.
If scale is no longer an issue, why can’t Epic create a store with similar functionality to steam? Because it’s not about that. It’s about Tim not being able to pocket as much.
Epic simply doesn’t want to be consumer friendly. Epic sees the money Valve is making, but not the effort Valve puts into their store. Just how consumer friendly Valve is the reason Valve basically a monopoly. Valve gives so many tools to the devs too such as SteamAPI to make their games better and accessible to a wide range of consumers with a wide range of devices.
Epic knows that the way it can fight Valve is by pointing out their 30% cut. Everything else, involves making their store better, which Epic doesn’t wanna do.
Less drama more context would be nice from headlines, but man does it feel like I’m asking too much
Sweeney is a third-rate Carmack
That’s insulting to Carmarck considering how intelligent and talented the man is. Sweeney is a mediocre programmer and a hack businessman at best.
Which Carmack is the chud hack and which Carmack is the one that had his hands in Unreal Tournament
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Fuck does that mean there’s a third Carmack I’m forgetting about? 'Cause I’d swear there’s a Carmack in the credits for UT2k4.
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Y’know after wracking my brain for the past 15 minutes you might be right; I might’ve somehow mentally mondegreen’d the credits screen of Quake 3 Arena over that of Unreal 2k4
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Steam community or not, the glib defense of rent-seeking behavior on lemmy.ml is wild.
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Steam is just perfect at keeping the gamers behind them as they are only assholes behind doors to the Devs on their platform.
30% is an absurd cut for a store that has such a monopoly that if you don’t release there your game is pretty much cancelled even if you release at your own store without DRM and with additional goodies (Looking at GOG and The Witcher - they released the Gwent standalone like a year later on steam because it didn’t sell at all on GOG and then it apparently outsold the GOG version without a week)
People are just too lazy and Steam is keeping them happy enough to not bother looking another way.
Epic isn’t a good guy in any case but the exclusive deals on AAA Games they do is probably the only way to get someone to buy the game there instead of Steam
The exclusive on epic game store is a cancer that should not exist. And epic should remove their parody of launcher from existence because they somehow managed to make this a cancer too.
30% is an absurd cut for a store that has such a monopoly that if you don’t release there your game is pretty much cancelled
That’s exactly why they take 30%. Because having your game on Steam is a huge deal. Because Steam is very popular and lucrative. Because it’s well-made and useful. Little Timmy wants to skip to having a popular and lucrative platform without first doing the step of making it well-made and useful.
I will buy from other storefronts if the deal is good, I have bought plenty from GOG. Epic are just anti-consumer and I refuse to support that store.
Steam just offers peace of mind with refunds and the feature set they provide is next to none, I haven’t been given a reason to look elsewhere primarily.
It seems you think some of that is valve’s fault.
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Their criticism of Steam seems pretty valid
people use ‘u mad bro’ like it’s some great insult. people get mad. it’s a human emotion. it exists for a reason. it’s not a glitch. anger is a motivator, and a damn good one. get mad, folks. use that energy. most people aren’t mad enough these days.
u mad bro?
maybe. whacha gonna do about?
Cry :(
See https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/u-mad, in particular the “Due to the agitating nature of the phrase, it is often considered a form of trolling.”
