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

That’s a product of the prohibition. If it was legal we could have farm to nose traceability and accountability.

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.

The 30% cut is clearly not market driven

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.

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.

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

True but diluting the war on faschs onto anything AI slop is not gonna help either case.

It’s not even close to being similar. Omarchy is not (just) AI slop, it’s fascists slop