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You realize that it takes a lot of work to make a website to accept payment from a hundred countries in dozens of currencies and handle customer support and cha

You realize that it takes a lot of work to make a website to accept payment from a hundred countries in dozens of currencies and handle customer support and chargeback and fight fraud? You can try to run your own website, to save 10% fees on a minuscule userbase, it simply doesn't cover the costs.

azhenley 8y ago
Serious question: isn’t this what services like PayPal are for? Along with customer service services. Certainly not trivial, but it seems doable.
- mschuster91 8y ago
  Paypal only handles payment. You still gotta do customer support, CDN infra (with games running at over 60GB each, that's not easy!), fraud detection, client dev and technical support for over three platforms (Win with 3 major versions, OS X with probably the same, and a myriad of Linux distros/kernel versions/GPU drivers), social networking/messaging stuff and a whole lot of small-ish stuff to get at half the functionality Steam offers.
- notSupplied 8y ago
  What handling refunds? Some are legit, some will be fraudulent. What a out dealing with foreign currency? What if your game becomes popular in a country where PayPal isn't prevalent?
- richardknop 8y ago
  What about billing support? You need people on the phone to handle complaints and issues from customers, deal with chargebacks, refunds and thousands of various weird requests from people that will keep coming. Also you need a software engineer team to work on the payment processing system / website. It's not "build it once and leave on autopilot". These things need continuous maintenance, bug fixes and improvements. All of that costs a lot of money and you have to have a really large revenue to be able to handle this yourself.
kbwt 8y ago
Can't something like Stripe + Braintree provide the same at a fraction of the cost?
- user5994461 8y ago
  Not at all. For starter Stripe is only usable if you are a small US company selling to a US user base. It also restricts your audience to customers with a card and willing to enter it on your website. It's better than nothing but it's in no way comparable to what steam offers.
  - gomox 8y ago
    That's a dramatic misrepresentation. Source: operated startup selling to LATAM customers, used Stripe.
  - rblatz 8y ago
    Lyft uses stripe, I wouldn’t consider them small.
pnloyd 8y ago
Don't companies like stripe aim to make packaged solutions to problems like these?
- user5994461 8y ago
  Definitely not. It's quite the opposite actually. Stripe gives you a basic solution to accept payments in some locations and under some circumstances. Once a company reaches in the tens of millions in yearly turnaround or expand internationally, it has to move on and run multiple payment providers.
michaelmrose 8y ago
I would be interested in data but logically wouldn't most of revenue at present come from 12-18 countries?
- user5994461 8y ago
  That's the point. Doing internationalization and payments for 12-18 countries is a pain. Steam helps you with that. You could try to do better yourself but the effort is not worth saving a few percent of fees (on a lot less sales).
  - kbwt 8y ago
    Steam certainly won't internationalize your game for you.
    - user5994461 8y ago
      Steam is translated and comes with support for many languages. It takes all currency and it has region settings for pricing, currency and release dates. For the anecdote, it's maybe the only US service that sells well in Russia. It certainly won't translate the game for you, not that translating a bunch of text files is the hardest part, but it will help with everything else. Ask international users what they think of other platforms. Like the one they couldn't use because it didn't accept their names with an accent or couldn't enter a billing address without a state.
      - michaelmrose 8y ago
        How will that give your game an international user base? Woudn't the first step being making the game actually playable by users in a given language before worrying about being able to sell to them.
        mango7283 8y ago
        Not necessarily, assuming the game is in English, the payment barrier is higher than the language barrier. OTOH if the game is in Japanese and only sold on a Japanese internet platform then you have two barriers - language and payment
scarejunba 8y ago
Minecraft did it when it was tiny and it scaled all the way up.
- yellowapple 8y ago
  Just because one game managed to pull it off a decade or so ago doesn't mean that sort of success is the norm.
  - scarejunba 8y ago
    I just mean it’s possible.
gomox 8y ago
"Bitcoin is useless!" -- every HN comment thread ever

azhenley 8y ago

Serious question: isn’t this what services like PayPal are for? Along with customer service services. Certainly not trivial, but it seems doable.

mschuster91 8y ago
Paypal only handles payment. You still gotta do customer support, CDN infra (with games running at over 60GB each, that's not easy!), fraud detection, client dev and technical support for over three platforms (Win with 3 major versions, OS X with probably the same, and a myriad of Linux distros/kernel versions/GPU drivers), social networking/messaging stuff and a whole lot of small-ish stuff to get at half the functionality Steam offers.
notSupplied 8y ago
What handling refunds? Some are legit, some will be fraudulent. What a out dealing with foreign currency? What if your game becomes popular in a country where PayPal isn't prevalent?
richardknop 8y ago
What about billing support? You need people on the phone to handle complaints and issues from customers, deal with chargebacks, refunds and thousands of various weird requests from people that will keep coming. Also you need a software engineer team to work on the payment processing system / website. It's not "build it once and leave on autopilot". These things need continuous maintenance, bug fixes and improvements. All of that costs a lot of money and you have to have a really large revenue to be able to handle this yourself.

kbwt 8y ago

Can't something like Stripe + Braintree provide the same at a fraction of the cost?

user5994461 8y ago
Not at all. For starter Stripe is only usable if you are a small US company selling to a US user base. It also restricts your audience to customers with a card and willing to enter it on your website. It's better than nothing but it's in no way comparable to what steam offers.
- gomox 8y ago
  That's a dramatic misrepresentation. Source: operated startup selling to LATAM customers, used Stripe.
- rblatz 8y ago
  Lyft uses stripe, I wouldn’t consider them small.

pnloyd 8y ago

Don't companies like stripe aim to make packaged solutions to problems like these?

user5994461 8y ago
Definitely not. It's quite the opposite actually. Stripe gives you a basic solution to accept payments in some locations and under some circumstances. Once a company reaches in the tens of millions in yearly turnaround or expand internationally, it has to move on and run multiple payment providers.

michaelmrose 8y ago

I would be interested in data but logically wouldn't most of revenue at present come from 12-18 countries?

user5994461 8y ago
That's the point. Doing internationalization and payments for 12-18 countries is a pain. Steam helps you with that. You could try to do better yourself but the effort is not worth saving a few percent of fees (on a lot less sales).
- kbwt 8y ago
  Steam certainly won't internationalize your game for you.
  - user5994461 8y ago
    Steam is translated and comes with support for many languages. It takes all currency and it has region settings for pricing, currency and release dates. For the anecdote, it's maybe the only US service that sells well in Russia. It certainly won't translate the game for you, not that translating a bunch of text files is the hardest part, but it will help with everything else. Ask international users what they think of other platforms. Like the one they couldn't use because it didn't accept their names with an accent or couldn't enter a billing address without a state.
    - michaelmrose 8y ago
      How will that give your game an international user base? Woudn't the first step being making the game actually playable by users in a given language before worrying about being able to sell to them.
      - mango7283 8y ago
        Not necessarily, assuming the game is in English, the payment barrier is higher than the language barrier. OTOH if the game is in Japanese and only sold on a Japanese internet platform then you have two barriers - language and payment

scarejunba 8y ago

Minecraft did it when it was tiny and it scaled all the way up.

yellowapple 8y ago
Just because one game managed to pull it off a decade or so ago doesn't mean that sort of success is the norm.
- scarejunba 8y ago
  I just mean it’s possible.

gomox 8y ago

"Bitcoin is useless!" -- every HN comment thread ever