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It's not that hard at all, actually. The reason why stores like Steam charge a 30% fee for their services is so they deal with issues like this for you. I relea

It's not that hard at all, actually. The reason why stores like Steam charge a 30% fee for their services is so they deal with issues like this for you. I released my game only on Steam and had to deal with zero chargebacks because Valve handles it for me. What these indie developers complaining do is release their games on their own store, attach a Steam key to it (which you can generate for free), and then sell their game + Steam key externally. This means they get to circumvent Valve's 30% fee at the cost of having to deal with things like chargebacks.

SkyBelow 7y ago
>It's not that hard at all, actually. The reason why stores like Steam charge a 30% fee for their services is so they deal with issues like this for you. A problem that costs 30% of revenue is something that I would consider a hard problem to deal with.
- deleted 7y ago
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- cloakandswagger 7y ago
  Which is why I'm having trouble finding sympathy for the devs. They're complaining that they can't have the best of both worlds: They want to sell their game through their own storefront to avoid the platform fees, but they don't want to deal with chargebacks or fraud. They want to give away hundreds or thousands of free keys, but don't want the keys to be resold and don't want to exercise due diligence when giving the keys away. They want to recoup their losses when fraud does occur, but don't want to expend the effort of sending G2A evidence of the chargeback to get the 10x refund. This is called being a business--each dev needs to decide whether avoiding Steam's cut is worth the headache of being your own seller. Trying to fight the entire concept of reselling itself is a much more time-consuming and futile effort than just choosing one option or another.
vvanders 7y ago
Except that since indies are pretty visible you can't just hide behind Steam, your fans know how to reach out to you and will hound you when they feel like they've been wronged. The fact that indies are saying they'd prefer the game to be pirated than bought through G2A should tell you all you need.

SkyBelow 7y ago

>It's not that hard at all, actually. The reason why stores like Steam charge a 30% fee for their services is so they deal with issues like this for you. A problem that costs 30% of revenue is something that I would consider a hard problem to deal with.

deleted 7y ago
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cloakandswagger 7y ago
Which is why I'm having trouble finding sympathy for the devs. They're complaining that they can't have the best of both worlds: They want to sell their game through their own storefront to avoid the platform fees, but they don't want to deal with chargebacks or fraud. They want to give away hundreds or thousands of free keys, but don't want the keys to be resold and don't want to exercise due diligence when giving the keys away. They want to recoup their losses when fraud does occur, but don't want to expend the effort of sending G2A evidence of the chargeback to get the 10x refund. This is called being a business--each dev needs to decide whether avoiding Steam's cut is worth the headache of being your own seller. Trying to fight the entire concept of reselling itself is a much more time-consuming and futile effort than just choosing one option or another.

vvanders 7y ago

Except that since indies are pretty visible you can't just hide behind Steam, your fans know how to reach out to you and will hound you when they feel like they've been wronged. The fact that indies are saying they'd prefer the game to be pirated than bought through G2A should tell you all you need.