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You make a good point to bring up indie development (WoW excluded), but I think looking at the storefronts is also important. For these big conglomerates, the

You make a good point to bring up indie development (WoW excluded), but I think looking at the storefronts is also important. For these big conglomerates, the trendy thing is to have your own games store. Complete with exclusivity deals, privacy concerns, and plenty more. That's not to say that every game on a store has these issues. However, I think the lesson from mobile app stores is: don't discount the impact that a storefront can have on what's allowed to succeed. Stores can exert their control with more than just removals. Indies can't escape this. Even if they wanted to sell their game independently, not being on one of the big stores hurts visibility. Not all of them get the luxury to be able to expect their users to follow them to their own site/store/etc. Right now, Steam is still the leader and obvious home for a lot of these otherwise-independent developers. Again, if the big conglomerates get what they want, this won't always be the case.

Angostura 6y ago
> Right now, Steam is still the leader I wonder how they compare to Apple.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- ineedasername 6y ago
  Apple probably doesn't have much revenue from the OS X desktop store, but if we're talking about total gaming revenue, Steam is around $5 billion/year and Apple is around $20 billion/year. Although I'm pretty sure Apple's # represents gross sales, not their 30% cut. I don't know if Steam's # is the revenue they receive after their cut, or if it's gross sales. If their # is the cut they take, they'd be far ahead of the App Store in terms of gross profit.
  - tubularhells 6y ago
    From a gamedev friend, there is no money on macOS. iOS and apple arcade is a viable option, but on Steam, the macOS sales are not worth the headache support and development gives you. Lots of quirks to work around with macOS, and more to come with the ARM transition as apple will surely blame developers for performance problems with x86 titles. Not to mention that the yearly developer fees that you have to pay to keep a game's long tail on the store. It eats into profits for Indies.
    - mcphage 6y ago
      > but on Steam, the macOS sales are not worth the headache support and development gives you. [...] Not to mention that the yearly developer fees that you have to pay to keep a game's long tail on the store. What yearly developer fees do you need to pay to keep a macOS game on Steam? Is it to Valve?
      - tubularhells 6y ago
        Nothing yearly for Steam, it's a one-off fee, I think about 100 USD these days (it changed over the years). For the macOS store it is a 100 USD a year or so, and of course they take their cut from your sales. I prefer Valve's way of doing business.
        mcphage 6y ago
        Oh, okay. You started talking about whether it’s worth releasing a Mac game on steam, and then brought up a yearly fee, so I was having trouble following where you transitioned.
  - Macha 6y ago
    The mobile gaming market and PC/console gaming are basically two distinct markets with very little overlap though.
tinus_hn 6y ago
> For these big conglomerates, the trendy thing is to have your own games store. Complete with exclusivity deals How else are they going to get people to use these stores?
- nonbirithm 6y ago
  Also the fact that the Epic Games Store exists is a step towards countering Steam's monopoly on mainstream titles. People complain about the loss of functionality like screenshots or the in-game browser when using Epic. And there are exclusivity deals. Complaints against those things are valid, and the actual implementation of the storefront needs a lot of improvement, but I'm wondering if a Steam monopoly would have been any better for consumers and developers. To me it sounds like a lot of consumers were happy with the monopoly and saw the exclusivity deals as disruptive as they had to migrate their friends list and set up a lot of things just to play that one hyped title. But when it comes down to the hard issue of staying afloat I can see how the money Epic offers to game studios is enticing.
  - RealStickman_ 6y ago
    The exclusivity deals were disruptive because they took games that were promised to come to steam and made them exclusive. The customer has no benefit from the lower cut epic charges. Epic doesn't treat everyone equally. Big games like Cyberpunk 2077 are allowed to also sell on other platforms, while smaller games either go exclusive or go with everyone else. Competition is good, but I'd rather have GOG be that competition to Steam than Epic purely based on their anti-DRM stance.
    - eropple 6y ago
      I don't much care for EGS, but Epic is paying small developers a lot for that exclusivity. In the current indie market, that chunk of change can be the difference between profitability and failure.
      - johnnyanmac 6y ago
ehnto 6y ago
I also quite like a lot of the blockbuster games as well as the indie games. An indie dev will never release a game like Red Dead 2, for one example. I definitely play more indie games, but I would rather the blockbuster market be healthy too.
- cpach 6y ago
  I feel the same about the movie business. Indie films can be awesome, but some kinds of movies are hard to do without a large budget.
  - teddyh 6y ago
    Pyramids are hard to build without a super-feudal economy and society. But we got rid of that, losing the practical ability to make pyramids in the process, because we value other things like democracy higher.
    - bobthebuild123 6y ago
      Uhh we still build things like pyramids all the time - Three Gorges Dam, Burj Khalifa, One World Trade Center - it's just we don't build pyramids themselves anymore.
      - komali2 6y ago
        Hm. The pyramids were an architectural and supply chain genius stroke considering when they were made. It also took fantastic human sacrifice to achieve that. One world trade center was built with the assistance of trains and semi trucks brining ore to smelters and steel to the construction site, electricity, cranes etc. Minus the slavery, have we really expended that much human effort and equivalent wealth and time on something in the modern era? The only thing I can think of is Free software products, shit like Linux.
        TrevorFancher 6y ago
        This is only tangentially related, but because you are all leaning on this pyramid analogy so hard, I thought I would mention that many scholars now believe the pyramids to have been built by some type of salaried (and very skilled) labor. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_construction_techniques https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_constructio...
rodgerd 6y ago
> Right now, Steam is still the leader and obvious home for a lot of these otherwise-independent developers. HN: TEAR DOWN THE APPLE STORE MONOPOLY! Also HN: Steam is cool and pulls 30% from developers.
- larssorenson 6y ago
  It's worth drawing the distinction that Steam, as opposed to Apple and their app store, does not hold an exclusive monopoly and cannot dictate where users can install software from. If a Dev doesn't like Steam, there are other publishers and store fronts that they can peddle their wares through. Similarly users can go elsewhere to buy and install, even direct from the manufacturer. Steam being the de facto choice is another issue entirely, and yet another discussion for their fee structure.
  - Bombthecat 6y ago
    Also, steam is not as controlled as the apple store. I bet, if nvidia wanted to, they could publish geforce now there, for example.
- pier25 6y ago
  Steam does not control Windows, does it?

Angostura 6y ago

> Right now, Steam is still the leader I wonder how they compare to Apple.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ineedasername 6y ago
Apple probably doesn't have much revenue from the OS X desktop store, but if we're talking about total gaming revenue, Steam is around $5 billion/year and Apple is around $20 billion/year. Although I'm pretty sure Apple's # represents gross sales, not their 30% cut. I don't know if Steam's # is the revenue they receive after their cut, or if it's gross sales. If their # is the cut they take, they'd be far ahead of the App Store in terms of gross profit.
- tubularhells 6y ago
  From a gamedev friend, there is no money on macOS. iOS and apple arcade is a viable option, but on Steam, the macOS sales are not worth the headache support and development gives you. Lots of quirks to work around with macOS, and more to come with the ARM transition as apple will surely blame developers for performance problems with x86 titles. Not to mention that the yearly developer fees that you have to pay to keep a game's long tail on the store. It eats into profits for Indies.
  - mcphage 6y ago
    > but on Steam, the macOS sales are not worth the headache support and development gives you. [...] Not to mention that the yearly developer fees that you have to pay to keep a game's long tail on the store. What yearly developer fees do you need to pay to keep a macOS game on Steam? Is it to Valve?
    - tubularhells 6y ago
      Nothing yearly for Steam, it's a one-off fee, I think about 100 USD these days (it changed over the years). For the macOS store it is a 100 USD a year or so, and of course they take their cut from your sales. I prefer Valve's way of doing business.
      - mcphage 6y ago
        Oh, okay. You started talking about whether it’s worth releasing a Mac game on steam, and then brought up a yearly fee, so I was having trouble following where you transitioned.
- Macha 6y ago
  The mobile gaming market and PC/console gaming are basically two distinct markets with very little overlap though.

tinus_hn 6y ago

> For these big conglomerates, the trendy thing is to have your own games store. Complete with exclusivity deals How else are they going to get people to use these stores?

nonbirithm 6y ago
Also the fact that the Epic Games Store exists is a step towards countering Steam's monopoly on mainstream titles. People complain about the loss of functionality like screenshots or the in-game browser when using Epic. And there are exclusivity deals. Complaints against those things are valid, and the actual implementation of the storefront needs a lot of improvement, but I'm wondering if a Steam monopoly would have been any better for consumers and developers. To me it sounds like a lot of consumers were happy with the monopoly and saw the exclusivity deals as disruptive as they had to migrate their friends list and set up a lot of things just to play that one hyped title. But when it comes down to the hard issue of staying afloat I can see how the money Epic offers to game studios is enticing.
- RealStickman_ 6y ago
  The exclusivity deals were disruptive because they took games that were promised to come to steam and made them exclusive. The customer has no benefit from the lower cut epic charges. Epic doesn't treat everyone equally. Big games like Cyberpunk 2077 are allowed to also sell on other platforms, while smaller games either go exclusive or go with everyone else. Competition is good, but I'd rather have GOG be that competition to Steam than Epic purely based on their anti-DRM stance.
  - eropple 6y ago
    I don't much care for EGS, but Epic is paying small developers a lot for that exclusivity. In the current indie market, that chunk of change can be the difference between profitability and failure.
    - johnnyanmac 6y ago

ehnto 6y ago

I also quite like a lot of the blockbuster games as well as the indie games. An indie dev will never release a game like Red Dead 2, for one example. I definitely play more indie games, but I would rather the blockbuster market be healthy too.

cpach 6y ago
I feel the same about the movie business. Indie films can be awesome, but some kinds of movies are hard to do without a large budget.
- teddyh 6y ago
  Pyramids are hard to build without a super-feudal economy and society. But we got rid of that, losing the practical ability to make pyramids in the process, because we value other things like democracy higher.
  - bobthebuild123 6y ago
    Uhh we still build things like pyramids all the time - Three Gorges Dam, Burj Khalifa, One World Trade Center - it's just we don't build pyramids themselves anymore.
    - komali2 6y ago
      Hm. The pyramids were an architectural and supply chain genius stroke considering when they were made. It also took fantastic human sacrifice to achieve that. One world trade center was built with the assistance of trains and semi trucks brining ore to smelters and steel to the construction site, electricity, cranes etc. Minus the slavery, have we really expended that much human effort and equivalent wealth and time on something in the modern era? The only thing I can think of is Free software products, shit like Linux.
      - TrevorFancher 6y ago
        This is only tangentially related, but because you are all leaning on this pyramid analogy so hard, I thought I would mention that many scholars now believe the pyramids to have been built by some type of salaried (and very skilled) labor. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_construction_techniques https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramid_constructio...

rodgerd 6y ago

> Right now, Steam is still the leader and obvious home for a lot of these otherwise-independent developers. HN: TEAR DOWN THE APPLE STORE MONOPOLY! Also HN: Steam is cool and pulls 30% from developers.

larssorenson 6y ago
It's worth drawing the distinction that Steam, as opposed to Apple and their app store, does not hold an exclusive monopoly and cannot dictate where users can install software from. If a Dev doesn't like Steam, there are other publishers and store fronts that they can peddle their wares through. Similarly users can go elsewhere to buy and install, even direct from the manufacturer. Steam being the de facto choice is another issue entirely, and yet another discussion for their fee structure.
- Bombthecat 6y ago
  Also, steam is not as controlled as the apple store. I bet, if nvidia wanted to, they could publish geforce now there, for example.
pier25 6y ago
Steam does not control Windows, does it?