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The problem is not the 30%, the problem is that you apparently can’t sell on steam for a higher price than you do on other market places (or directly): e.g stea
by olliej 3y ago
The problem is not the 30%, the problem is that you apparently can’t sell on steam for a higher price than you do on other market places (or directly): e.g steam is abusing its market position to get a higher royalty payment because from the end users point of view every other store costs the same, but they already have steam because it’s dominant in the market.
- Tadpole9181 3y agoTo be clear, this clause only applies to Steam Key sales. You can't sell keys to redeem on Steam for less than the Steam price, or Steam could get tricked into eating distribution service costs for nothing.
- olliej 3y agoYeah, I subsequently saw that restriction in other comments, and that seems to significantly impact how "reasonable" the complaint is. The problem is I'm unclear what part of steam "steam keys" are for - some comments imply it's the steam DRM mechanism? but you're implying there's ongoing operating costs so is it the cloud syncing or similar?
- HideousKojima 3y agoWhen you buy a Steam key for a game on a site other than Steam, you have to redeem it through Steam. The download of the game (and any future re-downloads, updates, and potentially multiplayer services) will be hosted by Steam.
- olliej 3y agoAh so it’s the mechanism you’d use if you made a game and wanted to let people buy directly from your own site (say) without just saying “look for us on steam!”? If you sell the steam key yourself do you manually pay valve or is that “free” and they assume you’re managing the payment?
- HideousKojima 3y agoIf you sell a Steam key on another site you actually get 100% of the revenue, no 30% cut to Steam. It's actually extremely generous
- olliej 3y agoThanks for the answer that’s what I was curious about, and yeah that does kind of make it seem reasonable to me tbh. “You get to use our download and syncing infrastructure but not pay us anything for that” is a good deal.
- Hamuko 3y agoI'm not even sure how that works in practice since I've obtained a bunch of Steam keys for cheaper than the price on Steam. If you browse gg.deals, you can find Steam keys on legitimate third-party sites for cheaper. For example: https://gg.deals/game/horizon-zero-dawn-complete-edition/ https://gg.deals/game/horizon-zero-dawn-complete-edition/
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoYou probably got gray market steam keys which were cheaper than what you see when you log in from home, because they were gotten from more developing countries with high piracy, like Russia, Argentina, etc.
- Hamuko 3y agoI didn't, hence the phrase "legitimate third-party sites".
- happymellon 3y agoIs that how Humble Bundle works? That seems pretty high profile for dodgy tactics.
- johnnyanmac 3y agoHumble, no. They are talking more about storefronts like Green Man Gaming. Humble is done under charity and specific bundles (you can't buy any game at any time there for cheaper), so it's not really a good way thing PR-wise for Valve to tackle. And for the most part, it's not an issue anyway since it's still more people getting into Steam.
- Hamuko 3y agoGreen Man Gaming is not gray market and they get their keys directly from publishers, not by getting them from Argentina, Russia etc. If you want an actual gray market storefront, look up Kinguin. https://rgamedeals.net/store/5e70c https://rgamedeals.net/store/5e70c https://rgamedeals.net/store/y8rkz https://rgamedeals.net/store/y8rkz
- johnnyanmac 3y agoWoflire seems to claim otherwise. So I wouldn't be surprised if this is another under-the-table rules that many devs hit. Some can get away with it, others can't.