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Valve already did the evil part, they were just so early to the game (pun intended) no one knew how to react or what it meant. They somehow avoided mass critici

Valve already did the evil part, they were just so early to the game (pun intended) no one knew how to react or what it meant. They somehow avoided mass criticism, or I wasn't paying good enough attention. I question a 30% developer fee for using Steam. Loot boxes in CS and TF2 to get and keep kids gambling. Destroying nearly every mod and skin community. I don't think I'm willing to sweep all that under the rug because they made it easier to open a steam deck. I like Valve believe it or not, but I question a lot of these decisions.

theyinwhy 3y ago
Lot's of uproar back then. Many people did not switch to steam for as long as possible.
- ChoGGi 3y ago
  I switched as soon as I could, the beta was great. Once release happened it went in the crapper.
AceJohnny2 3y ago
> They somehow avoided mass criticism, or I wasn't paying good enough attention. Let me tell you about the Counter-Strike 1.6 Beta update in 2002... https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Steam https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Steam (Geez, 21 years ago!) But yes, you are otherwise correct. That said, I argue that Valve has done an overall good job providing value to their users and even developers.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
davrosthedalek 3y ago
I am with you on the loot boxes, not sure I agree on the rest. City skylines as an enormous modding community, on steam, for example. I am OK with the 30%, because it's not a monopoly. You can use any other store, "sideload", whatever, without restrictions. I think, but I am not sure, that you could actually offer your game cheaper on other channels in parallel. But because people like the convenience of steam (which is probably one if not the best implementation of a software store) that many would pay the premium to have the game on steam.
- I_am_uncreative 3y ago
  Well, Source was the last Counter Strike game that allowed people to use custom skins. CS2 enforces sv_pure when playing on official servers, so you can't make up your own skin and use it. It sucks.
  - 1una 3y ago
    Using custom skins on official servers by modifying game files has always been forbidden since CS:GO. CS2 doesn't make it worse. Join a community server if you want to use your own skin you made up. At one time[1] Valve even tried to ban community servers that offer custom models/skins. Though they doesn't seem to enforce it anymore. [1]: https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/server_guidelines/ https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/server_guidelines/
bisby 3y ago
While I won't argue loot boxes, and I dont know enough about mod/skin communities... The 30% developer fee makes a lot more sense if you consider that steam is much more than a game store. They host forums, guides, achievements, cloud saves, multiple versions of the game at once with beta channel access, screenshots, remote play, extras like Proton support, a friends list that will show you when other people are playing a game (advertising). And the store page has all sorts of stuff like ratings, reviews... a shopping cart and ability to purchase more than 1 game at a time (didn't know that was a feature, but apparently it is). And top of all that, it's just frankly where PC gamers are, so theres a ton of built in marketing. Not every game benefits from all these things. But it's hardly just a storefront. I would question Gamestop taking a 30% cut. I would question if EGS wanted the same 30% cut as valve gets. Gamers prefer Steam over EGS, and the reason they prefer it isn't just because "it's a nicer store front." It's a whole platform thing.
- _cenw 3y ago
  People Make Games did a great half-hour documentary on it. It's... pretty bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g
- Spivak 3y ago
  > I would question Gamestop taking a 30% cut Why? Physical distribution is way more expensive and they handle the entire consumer lifecycle.
  - bisby 3y ago
    Gamestop has a single interaction with the sales process. Once I've bought my game, unless I want to return it, I never have to think about gamestop again. So while the "get the game to the store" costs more, the act of swapping money in exchange for the game is basically 0 work. Gamestop has logistics to deal with as their primary service. Valve has a perpetual obligation. I might buy the game and then never even download it. Or I might download the game. delete it. download the game again next week. delete it ... etc... And take 1000 screenshots that I want them to host, and upload mods for a game that they have to host and people may download. And this may happen forever (or at least until Valve ceases to be a company). Fable III isn't even available in the Steam store anymore... but they have a repo hosting the game files. And they still take updates (the package was last updated in july 2023, even though its been off the store for years). According to SteamDB there are 14 people playing it right now. Steam has been supporting a game that they haven't even sold in the past 8 years. I'm willing to bet that if I ask gamestop for anything regarding support for a game from 8 years ago they'd just laugh at me. tl;dr - physical distribution has cut and dry limited obligations, but steam has to deal with stuff forever.
zamalek 3y ago
> Loot boxes in CS and TF2 It's apples and oranges. It's worth pointing out that this is for cosmetics. The largescale lootbox outcries have been exclusively about gameplay advantages. Games that only provide cosmetics are usually praised for being fair. For example, Overwatch also has lootboxes - but for cosmetics only - and nobody gives a damn. And then there's cards, which you earn for free, and can sell for a wallet balance in order to buy games. > keep kids gambling I don't believe this is their goal, even though they certainly aren't doing enough to prevent it.
- riversflow 3y ago
  Overwatch *had lootboxes. Now it has a BattlePass you buy, new heros are locked behind buying the BattlePass or grinding the first ~40 levels to get it for free, and also premium cosemtics in a FOMO-style "today's deals" daily rotation store. No lootboxes. I miss OW lootboxes. I'm not a gambler but the surprise/novelty was fun, and once I had most cosemtics I wanted I could also just collect them which was satisfying. I had >500 and double digits of every seasonal loot box at the end of OW1.
  - Lorin 3y ago
    Blizzard had the worst luck. Their loot boxes were fair and most reasonable, but because they also looked so visually appealing, they were used in the thumbnail and header of every major article describing the horrors of loot boxes in general.
    - isk517 3y ago
      Las Vegas had the worst luck. Their casinos were fair and most reasonable, but because they also looked so visually appealing, they were used in the thumbnail and header of every major article describing the horrors of gambling in general.
    - sensanaty 3y ago
      Honestly I found it crazy that out of all the lootbox systems that existed, Overwatch got the brunt of the outrage. CS to this day has a much more predatory and in pretty much every way worse lootbox system than OW ever did. I don't think I spent a single cent on that game (other than the 40EUR or whatever it was to buy it) and I unlocked most of the things for my main champs through the natural lootbox drops. It was such a neutral system and I literally never felt any type of FOMO or pressure to buy lootboxes, which can't be said for other games with similar systems.
georgeecollins 3y ago
When they established a 30% fee they were on the cutting edge of digital stores and doing something very risky. So to make what they made work was great for small developers. I would argue they still aren't evil (and Apple is, though I am a shareholder) because Steam, the Windows store and Epic can all live together on my PC as competing store / DRM. If a developer doesn't want to give up 30%, they have viable alternatives.
- BobaFloutist 3y ago
  Developers can also absolutely just sell exes directly from their website, or on itch.io. Is it a great way to get publicity? No. Is it a perfectly reasonable way to sell a game? Yes.
  - kemotep 3y ago
    Hacker News has dozens if not hundreds of threads about people complaining about bandwidth costs on their static blog going viral and getting inundated with views. Some games taking up 100+ Gb and getting millions of downloads for week’s can’t be cheap.
    - BobaFloutist 3y ago
      I mean if the cost of the game doesn't pay for the download cost that sounds like an arithmetic issue. Also, what small-time indie game is >100gb?
      - kemotep 3y ago
        ? This is a thread about steam charging a 30% cut and people asking about what costs they could possibly have? If Steam didn’t take a cut then they would not be able to pay for bandwidth. And even a 100 mb indie game downloaded a million times is still a lot of bandwidth times that by tens of thousands of games and it’s more than just games, screenshots, saves, mods, forum posts, video trailers, patches, etc. A one time sale of a 4 dollar game that could support 100 gb worth of mods with being able to delete, download, and reinstall dozens of times has ongoing costs. Selling on your own website, yes, you should be able to cover sending your own exe 100gb or not with each sale.
panza 3y ago
As a developer, I don't mind paying the 30% for the hosting, payment handling, discoverability, community management etc. I can't say if it's truly worth the 30%, but I sure don't want to be handling all those services myself or through others.
- simoncion 3y ago
  Yep. Valve takes that cut and serves up your game (and its patches) on demand FOREVER. No need to fight for shelf space, or bicker with store management on product positioning or any other shit. When a gamer wants your game, they get it, and if they're looking for something that might be like your game, they'll find yours, too. I also remember reading an article from way back when that said that brick and mortar revenue cuts were at _least_ twice what Steam was taking. Perhaps this memory is totally wrong... with today's Google I'll certainly never be able to find the source of the memory.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    Above GameStop is said to get a 25% cut, and that is NOT counting the distribution, the publisher, etc.
- ozim 3y ago
  If you are not Blizzard or CDProject it most likely is worth every cent. As a casual gamer I am not willing to dig around the internet to look for games. But if I stumble upon something random on Steam there is a chance I will buy it.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    most indies don't (and usually shouldn't, unless mobile) target casual gamers, and they can't bet on "stumbling upon a random game" to sell. That stuff isn't easy but fortunately Valve isn't the only one offering that, and pretty much every other storefront offers lower rates if that's important.
    - 3y ago
doublepg23 3y ago
There’s so many options for distributing PC games that the market clearly sees the 30% as fair. This is an ecosystem where you could sell a game on a website with a payment portal and nothing else…
- squeaky-clean 3y ago
  Plenty of publishers do try ditching Steam for their own storefront. They always come back to steam. Ubisoft is currently doing this with the latest Assassin's Creed game, PC sales are Epic and UPlay store only.
  - doublepg23 3y ago
    It seems like Steam is just that good for 30% then, can't say I'd call Valve evil for that.
Shekelphile 3y ago
> I question a 30% developer fee for using Steam. 30% was more reasonable in 2005-2006 when steam was getting it's first third party games on the platform (and games were cheaper as well, a selling point for digital distribution at the time, which has no longer existed for many years due to greed) and when compute and bandwidth was massively more expensive than it is today. These days the cut should be closer to 5-10% at most. > Destroying nearly every mod and skin community. I miss those days so much. When I was a teenager there was always new maps and mods for hl1/hl2 to try out. Now modding in pretty much every game and it's community doesn't compare, most developers won't ever release tooling for their engines and will sue people who reverse engineer their games to make third party tooling. Even 'mod friendly' developers like paradox and bethesda don't like people making changes that affect core gameplay too much and will strip out functionality to prevent people from doing it because they would rather pump out shovelware DLCs to make money. Valve lucked out by doing all the enshittification in the late 2000s/early 2010s when their reputation was at it's highest. If they had cultivated this same following today and then rug pulled in the way they did in the past they would have killed their business entirely. Imagine if CDPR/A ctiblizzard/EA announced they would never make a game again and would only sell third party games through GOG/Battlenet/Origin, their distribution platform. Their business would be gone in a matter of months.
- mortos 3y ago
  > These days the cut should be closer to 5-10% at most. It's interesting to see this randomly thrown out, I'm curious if there's any basis for this? Epic Games currently takes 12% and five years later they're still unable to turn a profit. That's for a store that wrote a brand new launcher that's worse than Steam's and they don't have nearly half the features Steam does. I believe Humble takes 5% and they're also not doing that well. 5% would hardly even cover the CC fees. Not to mention refunds.
adgjlsfhk1 3y ago
do we actually know if AAA studios pay the 30%? it seems very plausible that they all have secret deals with steam for a smaller cut
- Hikikomori 3y ago
  Pretty well known that they and others dont pay 30% after some number in sales.
- jamesfinlayson 3y ago
  Yeah I think it was publicised a few years ago that Rockstar had a special deal for Grand Theft Auto V at least. It may have been all developers get reduced fees at certain sales tiers but I don't remember the exact details.
- SXX 3y ago
  It is public knowledge that fee drops to 25% after $10,000,000 and down to 20% after $50,000,000 in game gross revenue.
redder23 3y ago
Yeah, facts here. Valve is of course already evil AF. And braindead gamers jump on that Epic hate train and defend the Valve money making machine that steals 30% from devs just because they can. I do not think Epic is great either, owned partially by Tencent ... but at least their competition and lowering devs fees and going to court vs Apple and things like that benefit the actual devs in the end. What does Valve actually make with all this money? That rake on billions for basically doing nothing and like since HL2 the amount of games they actually developed was very low. Alyx was a niche game for VR only. Maintaining and improving CS and calling it 2.0 is hardly anything considering what they could do. Dota 2 they just bought it. Steam machines failed and it was never that they actually sell hardware with a loss. So seriously where is all this money going? I can only assume straight into Gabens and other high level execs pockets at Valve.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Don't you see the topic? They developed Steam Deck platform, with paying for FOSS developers and opensourcing/upstreaming. I haven't expected such a great thing done by a private game company.
  - redder23 3y ago
    Well that's all great and all and I like Proton but they only use it for their own game. Its totally tight to Steam and its not recommended to be used with non-Steam games. So this is THE OPPOSITE of doing it the nice way and good open source should be done. The also did not start from scratch and just used Wine and build upon this and payed the guy who did DXVK ... its hardly eating up billions to come up with something like the Steam Deck and Proton. Steam OS is basically just Arch Linux now so its hardly anything revolutionary from scratch. Do not get me wrong I like all these things but I stand by what I said. I fail to see where all the money is going. Take a SINGLE AAA game where Valve rakes in 30% of the profits for a few distribution servers and a few forum mods. They have invented a money printing machine and for like 20 years the have been printing money and there is nothing visible for anyone to actually see. They do not even make games. Other game devs do not have billions at their disposal and develop games with high budgets and at a 100x faster pace. I stand by what I said, the money goes straight into Gabens and other exec pockets, the have nothing to show for it. The Index is expensive AF its not that they made a loss with it. They make profits with everything they do, especially the Steam Deck. Steam controller also failed but its not that they wasted billions on that failed product either. I never tried it, I think the idea was great but the layout was wrong, buttons should not be on the bottom. You tell me where all the money is going. Like do you really think they spend even more the a tiny tiny fraction of that they made on paying open source devs and deving the Steam Deck? The already had their money printing machine loooooong b4 the Steam Deck was even an idea. WTF did they do with it?
drngdds 3y ago
It's not even just loot boxes, but them letting people gamble with the items (which can be worth a lot of money!) on unregulated gambling sites that allow minors. It's insidious stuff. Good video on it: https://youtu.be/eMmNy11Mn7g?si=dwotdKXKu5mHLZWg https://youtu.be/eMmNy11Mn7g?si=dwotdKXKu5mHLZWg
hadlock 3y ago
30% fee is fine? If you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days. That's how Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem were sold for many years. Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam. They work for that 30% unlike smartphone ecosystems that offer a closed ecosystem and can lock competitors out of their platform.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  >f you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days. you're free to. I will offer Itch.io as a modern alternative: https://itch.io/ https://itch.io/ almost zero restrictions on games you can upload, and they let you set your own share, even down to 0% if you so please. I think the default is 10%, which seems reasonable. >Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam not really. they charge 30% because they can leverage their 90% market share on small devs. In fact, they already relented and offer a lower share if you sell more than like, 25m copies. That suggests that they do need to work to keep AAA stUDIOS from making their own stores (again). It's all about market dynamics. And I bet many steam users just use it for network effects.
kllrnohj 3y ago
> Destroying nearly every mod and skin community What on earth is this referring to? Steam doesn't inhibit moding at all. Heck, it has built in mod support that's used by games like Oxygen Not Included and Rimworld and it's huge ( https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/ https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/ ). Steam also doesn't bat an eye at mods from outside of the client and there's no shortage of mod managers that work with steam - Vortex, CKAN, r2modman, etc...
- ChoGGi 3y ago
  I was wondering about that as well. I think he's talking about cs, but last I checked it had a massive modding community. Unless he meant custom skins on official servers, but that's how you can cheat so.
voiceblue 3y ago
There is a tendency for people not to see evil where they don’t want to. Lego, for example, is responsible for producing a ridiculous amount of plastic every day. I am expecting to get downvoted just for mentioning it. They do know what they are doing to the environment themselves, though, despite the public’s blind eye they are making at least some effort to research more biodegradable materials.
baud147258 3y ago
I remember some pushback when the Steam store was launched, with people pointing out (rightfully) that with this you don't really own the games you buy
m_0x 3y ago
> I question a 30% developer fee for using Steam Devs are free to move to Epic Store/Microsoft Store if it bothers you that much. That's the beauty of PC, your computer is not tied to a single store. They don't because they know those stores don't have the market share Steam has. The people have spoken.

theyinwhy 3y ago

Lot's of uproar back then. Many people did not switch to steam for as long as possible.

ChoGGi 3y ago
I switched as soon as I could, the beta was great. Once release happened it went in the crapper.

AceJohnny2 3y ago

> They somehow avoided mass criticism, or I wasn't paying good enough attention. Let me tell you about the Counter-Strike 1.6 Beta update in 2002... https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Steam https://counterstrike.fandom.com/wiki/Steam (Geez, 21 years ago!) But yes, you are otherwise correct. That said, I argue that Valve has done an overall good job providing value to their users and even developers.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

davrosthedalek 3y ago

I am with you on the loot boxes, not sure I agree on the rest. City skylines as an enormous modding community, on steam, for example. I am OK with the 30%, because it's not a monopoly. You can use any other store, "sideload", whatever, without restrictions. I think, but I am not sure, that you could actually offer your game cheaper on other channels in parallel. But because people like the convenience of steam (which is probably one if not the best implementation of a software store) that many would pay the premium to have the game on steam.

I_am_uncreative 3y ago
Well, Source was the last Counter Strike game that allowed people to use custom skins. CS2 enforces sv_pure when playing on official servers, so you can't make up your own skin and use it. It sucks.
- 1una 3y ago
  Using custom skins on official servers by modifying game files has always been forbidden since CS:GO. CS2 doesn't make it worse. Join a community server if you want to use your own skin you made up. At one time[1] Valve even tried to ban community servers that offer custom models/skins. Though they doesn't seem to enforce it anymore. [1]: https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/server_guidelines/ https://blog.counter-strike.net/index.php/server_guidelines/

bisby 3y ago

While I won't argue loot boxes, and I dont know enough about mod/skin communities... The 30% developer fee makes a lot more sense if you consider that steam is much more than a game store. They host forums, guides, achievements, cloud saves, multiple versions of the game at once with beta channel access, screenshots, remote play, extras like Proton support, a friends list that will show you when other people are playing a game (advertising). And the store page has all sorts of stuff like ratings, reviews... a shopping cart and ability to purchase more than 1 game at a time (didn't know that was a feature, but apparently it is). And top of all that, it's just frankly where PC gamers are, so theres a ton of built in marketing. Not every game benefits from all these things. But it's hardly just a storefront. I would question Gamestop taking a 30% cut. I would question if EGS wanted the same 30% cut as valve gets. Gamers prefer Steam over EGS, and the reason they prefer it isn't just because "it's a nicer store front." It's a whole platform thing.

_cenw 3y ago
People Make Games did a great half-hour documentary on it. It's... pretty bad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMmNy11Mn7g
Spivak 3y ago
> I would question Gamestop taking a 30% cut Why? Physical distribution is way more expensive and they handle the entire consumer lifecycle.
- bisby 3y ago
  Gamestop has a single interaction with the sales process. Once I've bought my game, unless I want to return it, I never have to think about gamestop again. So while the "get the game to the store" costs more, the act of swapping money in exchange for the game is basically 0 work. Gamestop has logistics to deal with as their primary service. Valve has a perpetual obligation. I might buy the game and then never even download it. Or I might download the game. delete it. download the game again next week. delete it ... etc... And take 1000 screenshots that I want them to host, and upload mods for a game that they have to host and people may download. And this may happen forever (or at least until Valve ceases to be a company). Fable III isn't even available in the Steam store anymore... but they have a repo hosting the game files. And they still take updates (the package was last updated in july 2023, even though its been off the store for years). According to SteamDB there are 14 people playing it right now. Steam has been supporting a game that they haven't even sold in the past 8 years. I'm willing to bet that if I ask gamestop for anything regarding support for a game from 8 years ago they'd just laugh at me. tl;dr - physical distribution has cut and dry limited obligations, but steam has to deal with stuff forever.

zamalek 3y ago

> Loot boxes in CS and TF2 It's apples and oranges. It's worth pointing out that this is for cosmetics. The largescale lootbox outcries have been exclusively about gameplay advantages. Games that only provide cosmetics are usually praised for being fair. For example, Overwatch also has lootboxes - but for cosmetics only - and nobody gives a damn. And then there's cards, which you earn for free, and can sell for a wallet balance in order to buy games. > keep kids gambling I don't believe this is their goal, even though they certainly aren't doing enough to prevent it.

riversflow 3y ago
Overwatch *had lootboxes. Now it has a BattlePass you buy, new heros are locked behind buying the BattlePass or grinding the first ~40 levels to get it for free, and also premium cosemtics in a FOMO-style "today's deals" daily rotation store. No lootboxes. I miss OW lootboxes. I'm not a gambler but the surprise/novelty was fun, and once I had most cosemtics I wanted I could also just collect them which was satisfying. I had >500 and double digits of every seasonal loot box at the end of OW1.
- Lorin 3y ago
  Blizzard had the worst luck. Their loot boxes were fair and most reasonable, but because they also looked so visually appealing, they were used in the thumbnail and header of every major article describing the horrors of loot boxes in general.
  - isk517 3y ago
    Las Vegas had the worst luck. Their casinos were fair and most reasonable, but because they also looked so visually appealing, they were used in the thumbnail and header of every major article describing the horrors of gambling in general.
  - sensanaty 3y ago
    Honestly I found it crazy that out of all the lootbox systems that existed, Overwatch got the brunt of the outrage. CS to this day has a much more predatory and in pretty much every way worse lootbox system than OW ever did. I don't think I spent a single cent on that game (other than the 40EUR or whatever it was to buy it) and I unlocked most of the things for my main champs through the natural lootbox drops. It was such a neutral system and I literally never felt any type of FOMO or pressure to buy lootboxes, which can't be said for other games with similar systems.

georgeecollins 3y ago

When they established a 30% fee they were on the cutting edge of digital stores and doing something very risky. So to make what they made work was great for small developers. I would argue they still aren't evil (and Apple is, though I am a shareholder) because Steam, the Windows store and Epic can all live together on my PC as competing store / DRM. If a developer doesn't want to give up 30%, they have viable alternatives.

BobaFloutist 3y ago
Developers can also absolutely just sell exes directly from their website, or on itch.io. Is it a great way to get publicity? No. Is it a perfectly reasonable way to sell a game? Yes.
- kemotep 3y ago
  Hacker News has dozens if not hundreds of threads about people complaining about bandwidth costs on their static blog going viral and getting inundated with views. Some games taking up 100+ Gb and getting millions of downloads for week’s can’t be cheap.
  - BobaFloutist 3y ago
    I mean if the cost of the game doesn't pay for the download cost that sounds like an arithmetic issue. Also, what small-time indie game is >100gb?
    - kemotep 3y ago
      ? This is a thread about steam charging a 30% cut and people asking about what costs they could possibly have? If Steam didn’t take a cut then they would not be able to pay for bandwidth. And even a 100 mb indie game downloaded a million times is still a lot of bandwidth times that by tens of thousands of games and it’s more than just games, screenshots, saves, mods, forum posts, video trailers, patches, etc. A one time sale of a 4 dollar game that could support 100 gb worth of mods with being able to delete, download, and reinstall dozens of times has ongoing costs. Selling on your own website, yes, you should be able to cover sending your own exe 100gb or not with each sale.

panza 3y ago

As a developer, I don't mind paying the 30% for the hosting, payment handling, discoverability, community management etc. I can't say if it's truly worth the 30%, but I sure don't want to be handling all those services myself or through others.

simoncion 3y ago
Yep. Valve takes that cut and serves up your game (and its patches) on demand FOREVER. No need to fight for shelf space, or bicker with store management on product positioning or any other shit. When a gamer wants your game, they get it, and if they're looking for something that might be like your game, they'll find yours, too. I also remember reading an article from way back when that said that brick and mortar revenue cuts were at _least_ twice what Steam was taking. Perhaps this memory is totally wrong... with today's Google I'll certainly never be able to find the source of the memory.
- bombcar 3y ago
  Above GameStop is said to get a 25% cut, and that is NOT counting the distribution, the publisher, etc.
ozim 3y ago
If you are not Blizzard or CDProject it most likely is worth every cent. As a casual gamer I am not willing to dig around the internet to look for games. But if I stumble upon something random on Steam there is a chance I will buy it.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  most indies don't (and usually shouldn't, unless mobile) target casual gamers, and they can't bet on "stumbling upon a random game" to sell. That stuff isn't easy but fortunately Valve isn't the only one offering that, and pretty much every other storefront offers lower rates if that's important.
  - 3y ago

doublepg23 3y ago

There’s so many options for distributing PC games that the market clearly sees the 30% as fair. This is an ecosystem where you could sell a game on a website with a payment portal and nothing else…

squeaky-clean 3y ago
Plenty of publishers do try ditching Steam for their own storefront. They always come back to steam. Ubisoft is currently doing this with the latest Assassin's Creed game, PC sales are Epic and UPlay store only.
- doublepg23 3y ago
  It seems like Steam is just that good for 30% then, can't say I'd call Valve evil for that.

Shekelphile 3y ago

> I question a 30% developer fee for using Steam. 30% was more reasonable in 2005-2006 when steam was getting it's first third party games on the platform (and games were cheaper as well, a selling point for digital distribution at the time, which has no longer existed for many years due to greed) and when compute and bandwidth was massively more expensive than it is today. These days the cut should be closer to 5-10% at most. > Destroying nearly every mod and skin community. I miss those days so much. When I was a teenager there was always new maps and mods for hl1/hl2 to try out. Now modding in pretty much every game and it's community doesn't compare, most developers won't ever release tooling for their engines and will sue people who reverse engineer their games to make third party tooling. Even 'mod friendly' developers like paradox and bethesda don't like people making changes that affect core gameplay too much and will strip out functionality to prevent people from doing it because they would rather pump out shovelware DLCs to make money. Valve lucked out by doing all the enshittification in the late 2000s/early 2010s when their reputation was at it's highest. If they had cultivated this same following today and then rug pulled in the way they did in the past they would have killed their business entirely. Imagine if CDPR/A ctiblizzard/EA announced they would never make a game again and would only sell third party games through GOG/Battlenet/Origin, their distribution platform. Their business would be gone in a matter of months.

mortos 3y ago
> These days the cut should be closer to 5-10% at most. It's interesting to see this randomly thrown out, I'm curious if there's any basis for this? Epic Games currently takes 12% and five years later they're still unable to turn a profit. That's for a store that wrote a brand new launcher that's worse than Steam's and they don't have nearly half the features Steam does. I believe Humble takes 5% and they're also not doing that well. 5% would hardly even cover the CC fees. Not to mention refunds.

adgjlsfhk1 3y ago

do we actually know if AAA studios pay the 30%? it seems very plausible that they all have secret deals with steam for a smaller cut

Hikikomori 3y ago
Pretty well known that they and others dont pay 30% after some number in sales.
jamesfinlayson 3y ago
Yeah I think it was publicised a few years ago that Rockstar had a special deal for Grand Theft Auto V at least. It may have been all developers get reduced fees at certain sales tiers but I don't remember the exact details.
SXX 3y ago
It is public knowledge that fee drops to 25% after $10,000,000 and down to 20% after $50,000,000 in game gross revenue.

redder23 3y ago

Yeah, facts here. Valve is of course already evil AF. And braindead gamers jump on that Epic hate train and defend the Valve money making machine that steals 30% from devs just because they can. I do not think Epic is great either, owned partially by Tencent ... but at least their competition and lowering devs fees and going to court vs Apple and things like that benefit the actual devs in the end. What does Valve actually make with all this money? That rake on billions for basically doing nothing and like since HL2 the amount of games they actually developed was very low. Alyx was a niche game for VR only. Maintaining and improving CS and calling it 2.0 is hardly anything considering what they could do. Dota 2 they just bought it. Steam machines failed and it was never that they actually sell hardware with a loss. So seriously where is all this money going? I can only assume straight into Gabens and other high level execs pockets at Valve.

fomine3 3y ago
Don't you see the topic? They developed Steam Deck platform, with paying for FOSS developers and opensourcing/upstreaming. I haven't expected such a great thing done by a private game company.
- redder23 3y ago
  Well that's all great and all and I like Proton but they only use it for their own game. Its totally tight to Steam and its not recommended to be used with non-Steam games. So this is THE OPPOSITE of doing it the nice way and good open source should be done. The also did not start from scratch and just used Wine and build upon this and payed the guy who did DXVK ... its hardly eating up billions to come up with something like the Steam Deck and Proton. Steam OS is basically just Arch Linux now so its hardly anything revolutionary from scratch. Do not get me wrong I like all these things but I stand by what I said. I fail to see where all the money is going. Take a SINGLE AAA game where Valve rakes in 30% of the profits for a few distribution servers and a few forum mods. They have invented a money printing machine and for like 20 years the have been printing money and there is nothing visible for anyone to actually see. They do not even make games. Other game devs do not have billions at their disposal and develop games with high budgets and at a 100x faster pace. I stand by what I said, the money goes straight into Gabens and other exec pockets, the have nothing to show for it. The Index is expensive AF its not that they made a loss with it. They make profits with everything they do, especially the Steam Deck. Steam controller also failed but its not that they wasted billions on that failed product either. I never tried it, I think the idea was great but the layout was wrong, buttons should not be on the bottom. You tell me where all the money is going. Like do you really think they spend even more the a tiny tiny fraction of that they made on paying open source devs and deving the Steam Deck? The already had their money printing machine loooooong b4 the Steam Deck was even an idea. WTF did they do with it?

drngdds 3y ago

It's not even just loot boxes, but them letting people gamble with the items (which can be worth a lot of money!) on unregulated gambling sites that allow minors. It's insidious stuff. Good video on it: https://youtu.be/eMmNy11Mn7g?si=dwotdKXKu5mHLZWg https://youtu.be/eMmNy11Mn7g?si=dwotdKXKu5mHLZWg

hadlock 3y ago

30% fee is fine? If you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days. That's how Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem were sold for many years. Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam. They work for that 30% unlike smartphone ecosystems that offer a closed ecosystem and can lock competitors out of their platform.

johnnyanmac 3y ago
>f you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days. you're free to. I will offer Itch.io as a modern alternative: https://itch.io/ https://itch.io/ almost zero restrictions on games you can upload, and they let you set your own share, even down to 0% if you so please. I think the default is 10%, which seems reasonable. >Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam not really. they charge 30% because they can leverage their 90% market share on small devs. In fact, they already relented and offer a lower share if you sell more than like, 25m copies. That suggests that they do need to work to keep AAA stUDIOS from making their own stores (again). It's all about market dynamics. And I bet many steam users just use it for network effects.

kllrnohj 3y ago

> Destroying nearly every mod and skin community What on earth is this referring to? Steam doesn't inhibit moding at all. Heck, it has built in mod support that's used by games like Oxygen Not Included and Rimworld and it's huge ( https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/ https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/ ). Steam also doesn't bat an eye at mods from outside of the client and there's no shortage of mod managers that work with steam - Vortex, CKAN, r2modman, etc...

ChoGGi 3y ago
I was wondering about that as well. I think he's talking about cs, but last I checked it had a massive modding community. Unless he meant custom skins on official servers, but that's how you can cheat so.

voiceblue 3y ago

There is a tendency for people not to see evil where they don’t want to. Lego, for example, is responsible for producing a ridiculous amount of plastic every day. I am expecting to get downvoted just for mentioning it. They do know what they are doing to the environment themselves, though, despite the public’s blind eye they are making at least some effort to research more biodegradable materials.

baud147258 3y ago

I remember some pushback when the Steam store was launched, with people pointing out (rightfully) that with this you don't really own the games you buy

m_0x 3y ago

> I question a 30% developer fee for using Steam Devs are free to move to Epic Store/Microsoft Store if it bothers you that much. That's the beauty of PC, your computer is not tied to a single store. They don't because they know those stores don't have the market share Steam has. The people have spoken.