So I really hate epic. And the Ai BS. And this moron. But I have an unpopular opinion on steam/valve.
I will say, a couple friends are game devs and they have a very negative outlook on the 30% cut. One told me that there’s something like 80 games a month added to steam and that most have a 1-5% success rate. In other words, most of these game developers are being milked by steam(punny coffee joke). So rough math aside, between the steam cut, taxes–I don’t know if the steam cut is taxed, overhead; then splitting up pay and likely getting taxed on that, you’re basically making pennies. Bantering for Valve is like bantering for Google. Think of it this way, you go to work get paid but 30% of your paycheck is taken but you get nothing out of it. And you’re told worship your employer, just like you should worship amazon and walmart.
Your friends can just request Steam keys and sell them outside of the Steam Store. Then there’s no 30% cut. That cut only applies to games and software sold on the Steam store.
Valve does offer the best features on their storefront by far, thus the 30% cut. And honestly comparable storefronts (Sony also 30%, Microsoft also 30% up until August 2021, and Nintendo also 30%) all take comparable cuts. This isn’t anything new or unique to Valve.
As an indie dev myself: Indie devs forget during the brick and mortar days up to 80% or more of revenue is consumed by middlemen before reaching the consumer. Steam absolutely makes indie dev sales easier.
Only restriction I know for this scheme is you can’t sell the keys outside steam for less than you sell on Steam. Otherwise you can just undercut them while still using their services
But easy to get around by discounting it for less than the listed price. Isthereanydeals and gg.deals is a great source for historical price trends across multiple storefronts from official to approved key selling stores.
The real crime is that Valve requires price parity when you independently (no Steam keys) sell your game on a different store, as well as the Steam store. (“Most Favored Nation” clause.) It means that developers are allowed to pocket the profits if a game is sold on a store that has a lower percentage cut, but they aren’t allowed to share the lower cost with the customer, because that could encourage people to not use the Steam Store when buying games.
I’ve looked through court documents for this. They’re sneaky about it, but they implicitly threaten you with your game’s sales being crippled by being taken out of their recommendation algorithm. With Steam being the biggest store, that’s a death sentence for most indie developers.
The real crime is that Valve requires price parity when you independently (no Steam keys) sell your game on a different store, as well as the Steam store.
They don’t. Only if you are selling steam keys do they require price parity and only for steam key sales. You cannot sell a Steam key for less than you sell your game on Steam for. You can sell a non-Steam game key on other store fronts for any price you want.
This is what is being alleged in court by only a handful of developers but there are countless examples of the exact opposite thing being true.
They must’ve changed their tone recently, because I’ve read an actual leaked court document, and the Valve representative / employee states (very defensively) that this is what they did. There’s accounts of developers confirming this as well, including apparently in the (secret?) contract you sign when you sign up as a developer with Steam.
Valve offers an awful lot for that 30%. It’s not their fault every game doesn’t take off. It’s not like indie devs can’t sell the game themselves on their own site if they want. It just means they have to take on all the marketing responsibilities themselves and are going to miss selling to people that only buy off steam because it’s so much easier to manage your updates and shit on that platform.
Way more than 80 games are being released. It not 2 decades ago anymore where a decent indie title was enough to get you noticed.
Biggest challenge now isn’t even the 30% cut but just people even knowing your game exists with the massively low barrier to games now. You aren’t just competing against triple a titles, but every other aspiring indie dev hoping to make the next Balatro.
Its a plus now if your games get pirated, since that means among the thousands of gamss released per month you have a chance to actually have people know your game exists.
It’s the eternal dilemma for game devs. They loathe the 30% cut (even though it’s the same for every console, except you don’t have any choice there) but at the same time steam does offer discoverability and platform features the devs and gamers love.
I would have loved if Epic could compete with steam, but they instead chose to just throw money at gamers instead.
“Get nothing out of it?” Go ahead and spin up a store front that processes payments with every major channel, then come back to me in a decade when you’ve got that up and I’ll give you your next task.
Could just as easily argue it’s Valve who isn’t getting anything for your ten shovelware asset flip titles getting no sales, but they still have to pay for your overhead.
If you want to kiss valves’ ass, be my guest. A company with 300 or so employees making a 3-4 billion profit last year is the same as Uber. Everyone’s just a contractor and should be happy they use the platform. I’m not arguing if walmart or amazon is better. They both suck and they’re stores. Valve has a nice history of suck as well as all the rest, everyone turns a blind eye to this. So I’m not going to pretend they’re the good guys.
You say it like it is bad, but isn’t it actually a good thing that a company chooses the profitable route over an unsustainable model that requires infinite growth and leads to constant employee turnover?
Practice of running companies at a loss and only being kept afloat because of VC money seems to make everything worse. Company that is losing money while those at top rakes money seems to be what makes competitors harder as it requires huge outside capital to survive long enough for over a decade losing money.
Most people that go into making games don’t go into it for profit. Do you think my friend went to make a Halo game because it was to make money or because it was fun to have a lan party?
I’m talking about you bringing up Uber as a positive example of a way to run a business. I don’t think you know what you are talking about if you are using Uber to defend your position. Because Uber is one of the worst examples of a good company.
That you think it is some indie passion project is very questionable when it comes to the grasp of companies and how terrible they can be for customers and employees. Unsustainable mass corporations like Uber is what is leading to bunch of borrowed money flowing around and inflating the stock market while those at top get rich, get government subsidies, and firing their employees with all they care about being projected valuation.
I think that was misinterpreted. Uber is absolute trash of a company.
I know what it’s like to be a contractor. All work and none of the benefits.
I was trying to bring up the mess 343 was without saying it. Hundreds of “contractors” got laid off on release. There was a whole lot of tom-fuckery around that game. Microslop didn’t want to give a few hundred people a crumb of the pie.
A lot of companies enjoy the dancing monkey in a top hat. So we’re on the same page, sorry auto correct messes up what I write sometimes.
Yeah, there was a misunderstanding. Uber made me think you thought it would be better if Steam started overspending and overhiring and going public, which hasn’t really worked out well for customers with the services undergoing enshitification as increasing profits every quarter becomes the goal.
And leads to people being fired too despite record profits the previous quarter with bonuses for upper management.
So Uber being brought up was confusing, since I hadn’t understood the angle you were going for.
How is it not? The market is gaming platforms for developers (i.e you’re not in the market as a gamer), and every other platforms are either 30% with good features, or 12% but no features.
I meant market in the real sense not the American polemical form.
A real market-driven price/cut is determined by supply and demand, the 30% figure was chosen by some American oligarchs that Valve decided to copy.
Have you ever wondered why it’s not 29.1% or 34.5% and the 30% figure never changes (other than than for well connected insiders?). How can market driven price never change, especially in a highly dynamic globalized market like gaming?
The market has spoken, no one has been able to provide a better service for less, so 30 stays. Technically they could even have increased the cut because of that if you follow market rules.
But even then, you can get a lower cut on Steam if you are a very big publisher, so the 30% figure is not set in stone.
And again, the market is not gaming as a whole but gaming platforms, of which there are very few players, and none have tried to really compete with steam as a platform. Most publishers platforms were entirely driven by maximizing their profit, not competing. Most of them are basic digital storefronts, and not platforms.
It just so happens that all major service providers have the same 30% figure irrespective of their specific vertical focus, the geographic component of their industry or even the developments in their vertical over the past 20-25 years?
That’s how a market works! Right?
P.S. You can also set it to 100% (you physical can if you want), that’s not what we are discussing though.
You’re free to build your own platform to undercut Valve and others if you think the market is wrong. Epic has been trying (barely I know) but haven’t succeeded afaik
have you ever wondered why no one can provide the services Valve does for cheaper than Valve does? Is it because of their famously anticompetitive practices, their notorious lobbying and threats to politicians, their strong-arm manipulation of vendors against each other? Perhaps they have some other method of defeating market forces?
Yeah most people don’t remember being forced to get steam to play cs. And the fun of going from 150fps to sub 30fps. Nor buying HL2 day one and having to wait 3 weeks to play it–I should have just bought the cd version at the local store sigh
I hated steam for years because I was forced to use it for HL. It’s good now though. I always find it surprising when people think it’s worshipping to say “this product actually is better than the others”. It is. And that is all I see anyone saying. That is not worshipping.
So I really hate epic. And the Ai BS. And this moron. But I have an unpopular opinion on steam/valve.
I will say, a couple friends are game devs and they have a very negative outlook on the 30% cut. One told me that there’s something like 80 games a month added to steam and that most have a 1-5% success rate. In other words, most of these game developers are being milked by steam(punny coffee joke). So rough math aside, between the steam cut, taxes–I don’t know if the steam cut is taxed, overhead; then splitting up pay and likely getting taxed on that, you’re basically making pennies. Bantering for Valve is like bantering for Google. Think of it this way, you go to work get paid but 30% of your paycheck is taken but you get nothing out of it. And you’re told worship your employer, just like you should worship amazon and walmart.
The only two storefronts that don’t charge 30% base cut are EGS and Microsoft Store.
Your friends can just request Steam keys and sell them outside of the Steam Store. Then there’s no 30% cut. That cut only applies to games and software sold on the Steam store.
Valve does offer the best features on their storefront by far, thus the 30% cut. And honestly comparable storefronts (Sony also 30%, Microsoft also 30% up until August 2021, and Nintendo also 30%) all take comparable cuts. This isn’t anything new or unique to Valve.
As an indie dev myself: Indie devs forget during the brick and mortar days up to 80% or more of revenue is consumed by middlemen before reaching the consumer. Steam absolutely makes indie dev sales easier.
Is that the case? I didn’t really ask much about it since it becomes a heated discussion.
YES
Also your friends should figure out how much it costs to host and distribute themselves with infinite scaling in case their game catches on.
Only restriction I know for this scheme is you can’t sell the keys outside steam for less than you sell on Steam. Otherwise you can just undercut them while still using their services
But easy to get around by discounting it for less than the listed price. Isthereanydeals and gg.deals is a great source for historical price trends across multiple storefronts from official to approved key selling stores.
The real crime is that Valve requires price parity when you independently (no Steam keys) sell your game on a different store, as well as the Steam store. (“Most Favored Nation” clause.) It means that developers are allowed to pocket the profits if a game is sold on a store that has a lower percentage cut, but they aren’t allowed to share the lower cost with the customer, because that could encourage people to not use the Steam Store when buying games.
I’ve looked through court documents for this. They’re sneaky about it, but they implicitly threaten you with your game’s sales being crippled by being taken out of their recommendation algorithm. With Steam being the biggest store, that’s a death sentence for most indie developers.
They don’t. Only if you are selling steam keys do they require price parity and only for steam key sales. You cannot sell a Steam key for less than you sell your game on Steam for. You can sell a non-Steam game key on other store fronts for any price you want.
This is what is being alleged in court by only a handful of developers but there are countless examples of the exact opposite thing being true.
They must’ve changed their tone recently, because I’ve read an actual leaked court document, and the Valve representative / employee states (very defensively) that this is what they did. There’s accounts of developers confirming this as well, including apparently in the (secret?) contract you sign when you sign up as a developer with Steam.
Link the leaked court document.
Valve offers an awful lot for that 30%. It’s not their fault every game doesn’t take off. It’s not like indie devs can’t sell the game themselves on their own site if they want. It just means they have to take on all the marketing responsibilities themselves and are going to miss selling to people that only buy off steam because it’s so much easier to manage your updates and shit on that platform.
Way more than 80 games are being released. It not 2 decades ago anymore where a decent indie title was enough to get you noticed.
Biggest challenge now isn’t even the 30% cut but just people even knowing your game exists with the massively low barrier to games now. You aren’t just competing against triple a titles, but every other aspiring indie dev hoping to make the next Balatro.
Its a plus now if your games get pirated, since that means among the thousands of gamss released per month you have a chance to actually have people know your game exists.
all the actual good games on steam seem to do fine
i want anyone saying their game isn’t getting a fair shake on steam to post it
if it’s actually not trash i’ll buy it
he can just not use steam
It’s the eternal dilemma for game devs. They loathe the 30% cut (even though it’s the same for every console, except you don’t have any choice there) but at the same time steam does offer discoverability and platform features the devs and gamers love.
I would have loved if Epic could compete with steam, but they instead chose to just throw money at gamers instead.
which just proves the overhead is reasoable
also pretty sure there are programs for true indie devs to reduce that price
“Get nothing out of it?” Go ahead and spin up a store front that processes payments with every major channel, then come back to me in a decade when you’ve got that up and I’ll give you your next task.
Could just as easily argue it’s Valve who isn’t getting anything for your ten shovelware asset flip titles getting no sales, but they still have to pay for your overhead.
If you want to kiss valves’ ass, be my guest. A company with 300 or so employees making a 3-4 billion profit last year is the same as Uber. Everyone’s just a contractor and should be happy they use the platform. I’m not arguing if walmart or amazon is better. They both suck and they’re stores. Valve has a nice history of suck as well as all the rest, everyone turns a blind eye to this. So I’m not going to pretend they’re the good guys.
You say it like it is bad, but isn’t it actually a good thing that a company chooses the profitable route over an unsustainable model that requires infinite growth and leads to constant employee turnover?
Practice of running companies at a loss and only being kept afloat because of VC money seems to make everything worse. Company that is losing money while those at top rakes money seems to be what makes competitors harder as it requires huge outside capital to survive long enough for over a decade losing money.
Most people that go into making games don’t go into it for profit. Do you think my friend went to make a Halo game because it was to make money or because it was fun to have a lan party?
I’m talking about you bringing up Uber as a positive example of a way to run a business. I don’t think you know what you are talking about if you are using Uber to defend your position. Because Uber is one of the worst examples of a good company.
That you think it is some indie passion project is very questionable when it comes to the grasp of companies and how terrible they can be for customers and employees. Unsustainable mass corporations like Uber is what is leading to bunch of borrowed money flowing around and inflating the stock market while those at top get rich, get government subsidies, and firing their employees with all they care about being projected valuation.
I think that was misinterpreted. Uber is absolute trash of a company.
I know what it’s like to be a contractor. All work and none of the benefits.
I was trying to bring up the mess 343 was without saying it. Hundreds of “contractors” got laid off on release. There was a whole lot of tom-fuckery around that game. Microslop didn’t want to give a few hundred people a crumb of the pie.
A lot of companies enjoy the dancing monkey in a top hat. So we’re on the same page, sorry auto correct messes up what I write sometimes.
Yeah, there was a misunderstanding. Uber made me think you thought it would be better if Steam started overspending and overhiring and going public, which hasn’t really worked out well for customers with the services undergoing enshitification as increasing profits every quarter becomes the goal.
And leads to people being fired too despite record profits the previous quarter with bonuses for upper management.
So Uber being brought up was confusing, since I hadn’t understood the angle you were going for.
Do you think Bungie initially developed Halo for fun, or to make money?
Honestly to fulfill the dream of making video games. It’s kind of how blizzard didn’t have requirements of a college degree, instead a portfolio.
Steam/Valve are not the good guys, they seem more normal because they are not complete shit like all other large gaming companies.
The 30% cut is clearly not market driven. Network effects are not an inherent property of Steam itself.
They also pioneered lootboxes and tried to do their best to scam on refunds (typical American bullshit).
How is it not? The market is gaming platforms for developers (i.e you’re not in the market as a gamer), and every other platforms are either 30% with good features, or 12% but no features.
I meant market in the real sense not the American polemical form.
A real market-driven price/cut is determined by supply and demand, the 30% figure was chosen by some American oligarchs that Valve decided to copy.
Have you ever wondered why it’s not 29.1% or 34.5% and the 30% figure never changes (other than than for well connected insiders?). How can market driven price never change, especially in a highly dynamic globalized market like gaming?
The market has spoken, no one has been able to provide a better service for less, so 30 stays. Technically they could even have increased the cut because of that if you follow market rules.
But even then, you can get a lower cut on Steam if you are a very big publisher, so the 30% figure is not set in stone.
And again, the market is not gaming as a whole but gaming platforms, of which there are very few players, and none have tried to really compete with steam as a platform. Most publishers platforms were entirely driven by maximizing their profit, not competing. Most of them are basic digital storefronts, and not platforms.
Totally! The market has spoken!
It just so happens that all major service providers have the same 30% figure irrespective of their specific vertical focus, the geographic component of their industry or even the developments in their vertical over the past 20-25 years?
That’s how a market works! Right?
P.S. You can also set it to 100% (you physical can if you want), that’s not what we are discussing though.
You’re free to build your own platform to undercut Valve and others if you think the market is wrong. Epic has been trying (barely I know) but haven’t succeeded afaik
have you ever wondered why no one can provide the services Valve does for cheaper than Valve does? Is it because of their famously anticompetitive practices, their notorious lobbying and threats to politicians, their strong-arm manipulation of vendors against each other? Perhaps they have some other method of defeating market forces?
First mover advantage is the biggest reason.
But they’ve been able to maintain it just by not being shitty.
Yeah, Valve suck and so does Tim Sweeney. I’m with you, buddy.
Yeah most people don’t remember being forced to get steam to play cs. And the fun of going from 150fps to sub 30fps. Nor buying HL2 day one and having to wait 3 weeks to play it–I should have just bought the cd version at the local store sigh
I remember… they killed WON.
I hated steam for years because I was forced to use it for HL. It’s good now though. I always find it surprising when people think it’s worshipping to say “this product actually is better than the others”. It is. And that is all I see anyone saying. That is not worshipping.
I did buy hl2 on disc and was furious when I realised I HAD to create an online account to play the game that I had physical discs for.
Meanwhile you ran it on Windows. So obviously you didn’t really care about being manipulated and fucked up the ass dry.