this post was submitted on 13 Jul 2024
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Because they don't pay any of their actual workforce: the game devs they steal 30% from for every game sold.
If you don't want a publisher to take a cut: self-publish. Every publisher takes a cut. Valve just takes 10% more than everyone else, while also providing more tools and support than anyone else to those devs.
What do you mean? 30% is used by almost every digital store.
Since when? Valve's 30% has always been contentious because everyone else had only been 15-20%. It's the main thing Tim Sweeny constantly whines about.
Valve is not a publisher they are a store. The percentage they take is in line with every other digital store, except itch.io Also compared to releasing in brick and mortar stores that percentage is low.
Valve is both a publisher and developer.
Steam is a store.
A publisher is merely any individual or business that makes others' works available for sale. Valve does this through Steam.
Okay Valve is also a publisher but how many games have they published from outside developers? The only one I can think of is Garry’s mod and a Portal spin-offs. So it’s virtually impossible to get your game published by Valve the publisher. The person above said that Valve takes a 30% cut, they were obviously referring to the store fee. But then you replied “don’t work with a publisher then” Which doesn’t make sense since Valve only publishes their own games.
Literally every game on Steam that isn't their own. 🤦♂️
It sounds like you don't know what publishing means.
Dude running a store isn’t publishing. 🤦♂️Like a book publisher and a book store are two different things. I work in the games industry nobody says that their games are published by Valve when they put their games on Steam. Valve distributes games which is different from publishing. Does Valve make the store art for each game, write the marketing blurb and game description, do they contact journalists/streamers for each game and create the trailer for each game? No Valve does non of that, since that’s the job of the publisher the developer works with. Steam has literally a text field on each game page that says who the publisher of each game is and only on Valve games it says that the publisher is Valve. Sounds like you don’t know what publishing means.
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)?
It's still stealing if the profit is this extremely high. Of course a successful business includes providing a useful product. But if you make so much more money per employee than any other company, that means the amount you're charging is disproportional. They could change Steam fees to 5% and still be extremely profitable. They choose not to because of greed.
This is not me condemning them by the way, I think their greed and what they do with the money available to them is still mostly better than what other people do, but it's still greed.
I define all excessive profit as stealing. In an ideal world everyone would be earning roughly the same. (Or no earning being necessary at all, but I don't want to go into every detail)
How much is the profit? 30% is revenue not profit.
Why is money per employee a useful metric? One would expect most costs of a store like steam to be in hardware and network not in labor.
So am I stealing from my employer because I earn more than the cost of my bills?
If the amount of money massively outweighs your bills, then I would say yes. Also if your "bills" are extreme luxury, then even without that. We really need to stop with this massive wealth inequality. Our economy works on transactions. If the profit margin on any transaction (including labor) is exorbitantly high, then something is going wrong. An investment banker is not more valuable than a teacher. A CEO is not more valuable than a janitor.
lol
Who said anything about costs/bills? I'm talking about excessive wealth extraction. If a group of people gets massively wealthy by taking lots of money from other people, one should wonder if they really need all that money.
It isn't 30% profit. It's a 30% charge. Servers, broadband connections, etc... are expensive. Those numbers may be pulled out of someone's ass, so I don't know their veracity, but 30% might not be too much.
This is a thread about how Valve makes over 8 billion dollars despite basically all their revenue coming from an in-game store that sells other people's content. Of course its too much.
Do they bank 8 billion dollars or does 8 billion dollars make its way from our hands to theirs. There is a difference. How much of that 8 billion goes to managing infrastructure?
In fact:
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/547025/steam-game-sales-revenue/
To be clear, I agree that the way our model works is broken. Wall street and infinite profit gains can only work so long until the system collapses, and Steam is a part of this. Some of the statements made here are just not factual and I feel the need to be pedantic, because I don't believe that spreading misinformation will help anything. Attack CEO pay disparity or something useful and true.
Edit: I woke up and answered you without fully reading your post. Apologies, I didn't answer you point, because I was on a soap box. The point still stands that the revenue they make could very well be going to infrastructure costs, necessitating a charge for using their store that is on everyone's computer. If all you have is potato servers then what quality will the store front be?
I stand my last paragraph in the above, especially the last sentence.
I prefer not to buy games on steam, and when a game is available from another channel (for example Factorio is available on the devs’ website) I will buy it there. And yet, most games are only on steam, so the devs really don’t seem to care about trying to avoid that 30% cut when they can.
This thread contains a lot of great bangers. But let's play devil's advocate for just a minute.
Let me know when you build a global distribution platform with 5-9 uptime, credit card processing, full compliance with all of the various laws in all the countries you serve and also provide a cdn for my game for free.
I'll be waiting. You better pull through on this, you owe the community your labor
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
I've made a comment before in the past when dealing with game publishing. All of the things Steam provides, including worldwide distribution to a lot of regions EGS, MS store, etc don't sell in because of a variety of laws, Steam just does better.
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 and B) the shopping experience is terrible. I don't have access to the same makers and (hearsay) the actual process of getting your game distributed is a pain. I wouldn't know, I don't sell on EGS.
Further, we were having a conversation about a problem that doesn't exist. You're more than welcome to use Steam and other storefronts.
Hell, you can handle all of the sales yourself AND put it on steam. Most people will buy it on steam simply because that's where all of the customers are.
Asking Steam to lower their prices because that's where you'd make the most money is a mind bender.
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. But then when they ask for 30% of sales, you balk and tell them that's too high and they should lower their cut to that of the gas station.
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?
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.
How is Valve supposed to pay for the infrastructure and maintenance without charging devs for using their enormous platform? I'm genuinely curious what ideas you have. Disregard everyone's non-sequiturs here, please.
By charging 3% instead of 30%? Do you really think their servers cost $8.5b? Does the work to distribute a game and process payment equal 30% of the labor required to make a game?
Unity was changing the rules after they were already set in place. Valve has never done such a move.
Imagine though if steam suddenly went to a flat fee per install instead of charging the 30% of the sale on their platform.
They would rightly be raked over the coals. But they won't make such a dumb fucking move because it's a dumb fucking move.
I'm not one for Corpos but as far as attacking them goes valve is certainly near the bottom of the list.
What a wild thing to assert without any reasoning.
Lmao, thanks for demonstrating my point for me better than I ever could.
What point? That you're a corporate bootlicker?
That you're like, 12 years old? Or at least have the fundamental world view of a 12 year old.
Fukkin lmao "steam is a necessity they owe me to make it cheaper"
Get the fuck back to reddit child. Enjoy your block.
You're the type of person who would call universal healthcare "socialism", and it really shows.
"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 cusromer first. The refund policy is top notch. Heck just making proton, giving gamers the choise of os, is the best thing for gamers since computers was invented!
https://youtu.be/gwoAmifo9r0
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.
Dude, unless you've ever tried publishing your own game you should stop parroting stuff you hear online. I've released a (borderline shovelware) game I made for educational purposes, and steam is god damned amazing and has such good support for a novice like myself. On the complete opposite of what you're claiming, the gamers and indie companies stand to gain the most from a service like steam.
It's not surprising that it's more or less only people from huge companies like blizzard and Ubisoft who complain and try to gaslight Valve. If I were to release a game again I'd rather publish it on steam if they took 60% of the cut than anywhere else. (Unless you want to pay me a godly amount of money for exclusivity Epic Games, then hmu lol)
You would have the same service if you paid 5% or 60%, steam is ridiculously profitable.
I'm a consumer and I care about the industry, I won't shut up just because you made one shovelware game and tell me to. This is literally against your own self interests, are you sure you aren't the one parroting stuff valves marketing team drilled into you?
Explain to me how regulations and limiting the rate to 5% wouldn't be a clear cut benefit to everyone involved including you. Do you think they go bankrupt? 336 employees and 8000 million. And no, their hardware cost for hosting games does not come close to costing 8000 million.
Hold up, how is proton leveraging open source to avoid dev costs? Are you referring to steam using and contributing to existing projects instead of reinventing the wheel? Or to game developers that use it as a reason for not making native Linux versions, which wouldn't be Valve's workforce in the first place?
I can see how the things Valve does contribute to their business model - steam input giving their controller compatibility with games, proton letting them launch a Linux-based handheld, and the new recording feature probably there for the steam deck... But the thing is, Valve is still providing all those things to customers for no extra charge, and they keep adding new stuff.
As a developer, I have no problem with this. Why do work that doesn't need to be done?
I don't either, that is what open source is for afterall. I'm trying to point out that this decision wasn't out of love for his customers but out of love for his bottom line. This let him compete with platforms with devices while having a seriously low entry cost compared to them. It's just a smart business decision but people treat it as if it was charity.
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.
They can even list there and sell Steam keys on their website and not pay any of that to Valve, with the only stipulation that Steam keys cannot be sold for less than on Steam itself.
So basically:
You only pay the 30% cut for sales made through Steam.
That's incredibly reasonable.
You mean the game devs that they take 30% from in a contract the devs agree to in order to list their game on the largest PC gaming store?
Besides that, steam has an incredibly low financial requirement to start selling your games on their platform. $100 usd per game (at least in the US) and you get it back if your game sells enough copies (100 maybe? I forget tbh.) It's a great platform for indie devs which is why we've seen indie PC gaming boom so much in the past decade or so especially.
Well said.