4 ms·

Steam contributes a great deal to the games under their platform. They include all sorts of cool features like achievements, reviews, downloads, DLC distributio

by foxyv 1y ago

Steam contributes a great deal to the games under their platform. They include all sorts of cool features like achievements, reviews, downloads, DLC distribution, Steam Workshop, user statistics, and other cool features on top of excellent marketing. In addition, Steam does not lock it's users into using just their platform. You can add non-steam games to your library and use other stores on your Steam devices. In addition, Steam happily allows publishers to sell their games on other platforms and does not create 3rd party exclusivity agreements. Personally I would consider Steam to be absurdly democratic in their distribution model.

protimewaster 1y ago
Many of those features just encourage technical lock-in, though. Microsoft offers DirectX and a bunch of features for free. Why? You'll (mostly) be using them on Windows, so it helps build/maintain the moat and makes it harder for limited-resources developers to move elsewhere.
- foxyv 1y ago
  I have yet to hear about "Lock In" being a problem for any Steam game developers.
- nightski 1y ago
  If that were true, you'd think you see more steam exclusive games. The problem is I can't think of a single one I own that is steam exclusive. I am sure there's at least one out there.
  - SkiFire13 1y ago
    The funny thing is that Epic was the one paying games for exclusively publishing on their platform.
  - realslimjd 1y ago
    Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, and their sequels are all Steam exclusive. The only mandated Steam exclusives are Valve games. Anything else is purely out of convenience for the developer.
    - bsammon 1y ago
      I realize you're probably referring to PC gaming specifically here, but it's interesting to note that Portal and Portal 2, at least, (haven't checked on the others) are available on the Nintendo Switch store.
    - nightski 1y ago
      Yeah I considered mentioning those but they are also on consoles.
  - protimewaster 1y ago
    PCGamingWiki has a list of ~31,000 games that are "believed to be exclusive to Steam". https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Steam https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to... Whether 31,000+ constitutes a lot of games depends on your personal definition. You said you'd think there were more, so I'm guessing you were thinking of a bigger number. AFAIK developers generally don't announce when a game is exclusive to Steam, so that's probably as close to a definitive list as there is. And I don't know how accurate it is, either, as I haven't inspected it. I assume one of the things that's missing from the list are games that used to be exclusive. E.g., Borderlands 2 was (on PC) exclusive to Steam for something like 7 or 8 years, but it's presumably not on the list since it eventually became a non-exclusive title.
    - detaro 1y ago
      Right. "Steam exclusivity" is not a thing where there's exclusivity contracts or anything like that, but rather developers "just" deciding other stores are not worth the effort right now. Both in just being additional effort to setup/promote and for smaller titles it can be important to have all initial sales happening in one place, because ranking on Steam (and other stores) is tied to getting enough sales/reviews/... happening quickly. And then some add GOG etc only later to catch the long-tail of sales there too. (and I guess Valve first-party titles are a special case of course)
    - nightski 1y ago
      Fair point. It's interesting though I have a large steam library (1000+ games) and the intersection with this is very low. How many of these games actually have sales? But regardless, the point was that steam features provided vendor lock in. I doubt that is the case for many of thees games. It's likely just that steam is the most popular marketplace.
csdreamer7 1y ago
Also Steam keys and Proton. I heard they often don't charge for them. Valve has made Linux gaming into a real alternative to Windows. Much better than MacOS.
- LucidLynx 1y ago
  So, genuine question here: do companies have to pay full price in order to finance a technology that is used by 5% of their daily users? Of course this is a "devil advocate" question, but I would not consider Valve as "safer" than any other game / tech companies to be honest...
  - foxyv 1y ago
    You are not investing in Steam, you are paying them for something. Whether that is marketing, content distribution, or additional features. When you buy a car and don't use the seatbelt or turn signals, you are not paying for everyone else to have a seatbelt and turn signals. It just comes with the car.
  - csdreamer7 1y ago
    > So, genuine question here: do companies have to pay full price in order to finance a technology that is used by 5% of their daily users? As far as I know; Valve has cut the rate for larger companies. > Of course this is a "devil advocate" question, but I would not consider Valve as "safer" than any other game / tech companies to be honest... I do not know what the point of this comment is. We were not discussing if a company is 'safer'. As one US judge said when an Indie game company sued Valve and lost; the 30% rate is common among digital platforms. The point myself and the above poster made was that Valve does a lot more then most platforms that do charge 30%. Myself as a Linux enthusiast is very thankful for Valve for their work on Proton and Mesa.
    - inetknght 1y ago
      > As far as I know; Valve has cut the rate for larger companies. Oh yeah, because that's totally fair business practices
mvdtnz 1y ago
30% of every sale is a ludicrous payment for this kind of functionality.
- foxyv 1y ago
  Yeah, it's actually kind of low. Kindle Direct Publishing takes 30% of digital book sales and those are like a couple megabytes. Steam is distributing 100GB+ titles on top of adding Steamworks SDK and a ton of other features.
  - turtlebro 1y ago
    Dude, why are you defending Steam so hard? Gaben is not really Jesus, he's a guy with a superyacht and a doomsday bunker in NZ. You can buy and play games on Epic store, it works just as well. It has achievements too. Devs get a larger cut.
    - foxyv 1y ago
      If I were looking for alternatives to Steam it would probably be Good Old Games, Humble, or self publishing. Epic Game Store is just kind of trashy. They keep engaging in anti-consumer practices.
  - gamblor956 1y ago
    30% was a great deal when KDP launched..several decades ago..Prior to KDP, self-published authors would have costs of about 90% to print and distribute their own books. Traditional publishers generally take 85% but in exchange handle the editing, marketing, and physical logistics of book printing and distribution. Similarly, when Steam launched, its biggest competitor was retail. Studios got paid a % of the wholesale price (after the publisher recovered its costs), which worked out to an average of approximately 10-15% of the retail price for successful games and 0% for unsuccessful games. (Note: this does not include the milestone payments to the studio during the development of the game.) But markets have changed. 30% may or may not be a great deal anymore. (For KDP, many authors say that the 30% is worth it because the volume of their Amazon sales dwarfs all other-channel sales combined. Some relatively famous sci-fi authors have said that about 90% of the sales of their self-published works were through Amazon.)
snkzxbs 1y ago
If we accept this argument, let’s not forget that Apple contributes the entire iOS API, which is much much wider in scope than what Steam offers. Someone will argue that until now the rest of OSes gave us the entire API for free, but I don’t see why charging for the OS API is an invalid way to make money.
- foxyv 1y ago
  There is literally no reason why you could not just publish your game anywhere else than Steam. Or publish on Steam as well as other platforms. Unlike Epic Game Store, Sony, or Microsoft, Steam doesn't engage in third party exclusive agreements.
- gamblor956 1y ago
  Apple doesn't get credit for this because they're just offering a solution to a problem they created. And the point of their competitors not charging for the OS API is that it demonstrates that the market value of the iOS API is $0.
  - snkzxbs 1y ago
    Your competitors giving away their product means your product is not worth anything? That seems like nonsense to me. Maybe your competitors are unable to compete on the worthiness of their product which is why they are forced to give it away.
    - syndeo 1y ago
      Bingo. I doubt the Open Handset Alliance would've gotten off the ground had they charged the kind of licensing fees common at the time by Symbian and Windows Mobile. What would convince manufacturers to pay into an (at the time) remarkably immature platform and gamble their devices' success on it? But make it free… and now you've suddenly got their attention.
ivewonyoung 1y ago
You cannot charge less on other stores than what the game costs on Steam or Steam will kick the game out. So consumers lose out. > The second class action accuses Valve, Inc. of using MFN clauses in its contracts with game developers—both big (Ubisoft) and small (Rust)—to maintain its monopoly in personal computer video game sales through its online marketplace Steam as well as stifle competition more generally. The complaint alleges that the MFN clauses cause game prices across online marketplaces to be the same even though stores like the Epic Games Store take a smaller commission than Valve. Rather than pass those savings on to the consumer, the developers must maintain higher prices to remain profitable on Steam. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/business-law-today/2021-march/most-favored-or-too-favored/#:~:text=The%20complaint%20alleges%20that%20the,to%20remain%20profitable%20on%20Steam https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/bu... This is not well known because Valve is somehow untouchable and worshipped so much in the online community like on Reddit and HN that any criticism invites personal attacks, downvotes and flags etc. and is buried, even if valid. Imagine the uproar if another company that was a monopoly did this. Look at all the comments on here right now and none of those mention it.
- foxyv 1y ago
  Valve only requires that when you are selling Steam Keys outside of Steam. If you are selling the game as a standalone separately there is no MFN clause.
  - slavik81 1y ago
    To expand on that, what's happening is that Valve allows developers to give a Steam copy of the game to anyone who bought the game on a different marketplace. Neither the user nor the developer pay Valve anything for that copy of the game. Valve will only provide that free Steam copy if the price the user paid is equal to or greater than the price on Steam. This ensures that you can't effectively just sell Steam copies of the game at a lower price than on Steam itself. That seems more than fair to me. Valve is providing a free promotional item and it has a straightforward limitation designed to prevent abuse.
- solardev 1y ago
YesBox 1y ago
A counterpoint to consider: Tim Sweeney says his Unreal (studio) customers that use Steam (which is nearly all of them) are worse off than the retail era: >Generally, the economics of these 30% platform fees are no longer justifiable. There was a good case for them in the early days, but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee. >If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made. These guys are our engine customers and we talk to them all the time. Valve takes 30% for distribution; they have to spend 30% on Facebook/Google/Twitter UA or traditional marketing, 10% on server, 5% on engine. So, the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution economics of the 1990's. >We know the economics of running this kind of service because we're doing it now with Fortnite and Paragon. The fully loaded cost of distributing a >$25 game in North America and Western Europe is under 7% of gross. Full email: [1] [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/19_NC1ZskeN47LHaYJziotbA0sqLdjlgf/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/19_NC1ZskeN47LHaYJziotbA0sqL...
- foxyv 1y ago
  I just don't get how what Steam does is parasitic or bad in any way. They are expensive, but they don't engage in the predatory practices of most of their competitors. They just kinda sell games.

by foxyv 1y ago

protimewaster 1y ago

Many of those features just encourage technical lock-in, though. Microsoft offers DirectX and a bunch of features for free. Why? You'll (mostly) be using them on Windows, so it helps build/maintain the moat and makes it harder for limited-resources developers to move elsewhere.

foxyv 1y ago
I have yet to hear about "Lock In" being a problem for any Steam game developers.
nightski 1y ago
If that were true, you'd think you see more steam exclusive games. The problem is I can't think of a single one I own that is steam exclusive. I am sure there's at least one out there.
- SkiFire13 1y ago
  The funny thing is that Epic was the one paying games for exclusively publishing on their platform.
- realslimjd 1y ago
  Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Portal, and their sequels are all Steam exclusive. The only mandated Steam exclusives are Valve games. Anything else is purely out of convenience for the developer.
  - bsammon 1y ago
    I realize you're probably referring to PC gaming specifically here, but it's interesting to note that Portal and Portal 2, at least, (haven't checked on the others) are available on the Nintendo Switch store.
  - nightski 1y ago
    Yeah I considered mentioning those but they are also on consoles.
- protimewaster 1y ago
  PCGamingWiki has a list of ~31,000 games that are "believed to be exclusive to Steam". https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to_Steam https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_exclusive_to... Whether 31,000+ constitutes a lot of games depends on your personal definition. You said you'd think there were more, so I'm guessing you were thinking of a bigger number. AFAIK developers generally don't announce when a game is exclusive to Steam, so that's probably as close to a definitive list as there is. And I don't know how accurate it is, either, as I haven't inspected it. I assume one of the things that's missing from the list are games that used to be exclusive. E.g., Borderlands 2 was (on PC) exclusive to Steam for something like 7 or 8 years, but it's presumably not on the list since it eventually became a non-exclusive title.
  - detaro 1y ago
    Right. "Steam exclusivity" is not a thing where there's exclusivity contracts or anything like that, but rather developers "just" deciding other stores are not worth the effort right now. Both in just being additional effort to setup/promote and for smaller titles it can be important to have all initial sales happening in one place, because ranking on Steam (and other stores) is tied to getting enough sales/reviews/... happening quickly. And then some add GOG etc only later to catch the long-tail of sales there too. (and I guess Valve first-party titles are a special case of course)
  - nightski 1y ago
    Fair point. It's interesting though I have a large steam library (1000+ games) and the intersection with this is very low. How many of these games actually have sales? But regardless, the point was that steam features provided vendor lock in. I doubt that is the case for many of thees games. It's likely just that steam is the most popular marketplace.

csdreamer7 1y ago

Also Steam keys and Proton. I heard they often don't charge for them. Valve has made Linux gaming into a real alternative to Windows. Much better than MacOS.

LucidLynx 1y ago
So, genuine question here: do companies have to pay full price in order to finance a technology that is used by 5% of their daily users? Of course this is a "devil advocate" question, but I would not consider Valve as "safer" than any other game / tech companies to be honest...
- foxyv 1y ago
  You are not investing in Steam, you are paying them for something. Whether that is marketing, content distribution, or additional features. When you buy a car and don't use the seatbelt or turn signals, you are not paying for everyone else to have a seatbelt and turn signals. It just comes with the car.
- csdreamer7 1y ago
  > So, genuine question here: do companies have to pay full price in order to finance a technology that is used by 5% of their daily users? As far as I know; Valve has cut the rate for larger companies. > Of course this is a "devil advocate" question, but I would not consider Valve as "safer" than any other game / tech companies to be honest... I do not know what the point of this comment is. We were not discussing if a company is 'safer'. As one US judge said when an Indie game company sued Valve and lost; the 30% rate is common among digital platforms. The point myself and the above poster made was that Valve does a lot more then most platforms that do charge 30%. Myself as a Linux enthusiast is very thankful for Valve for their work on Proton and Mesa.
  - inetknght 1y ago
    > As far as I know; Valve has cut the rate for larger companies. Oh yeah, because that's totally fair business practices

mvdtnz 1y ago

30% of every sale is a ludicrous payment for this kind of functionality.

foxyv 1y ago
Yeah, it's actually kind of low. Kindle Direct Publishing takes 30% of digital book sales and those are like a couple megabytes. Steam is distributing 100GB+ titles on top of adding Steamworks SDK and a ton of other features.
- turtlebro 1y ago
  Dude, why are you defending Steam so hard? Gaben is not really Jesus, he's a guy with a superyacht and a doomsday bunker in NZ. You can buy and play games on Epic store, it works just as well. It has achievements too. Devs get a larger cut.
  - foxyv 1y ago
    If I were looking for alternatives to Steam it would probably be Good Old Games, Humble, or self publishing. Epic Game Store is just kind of trashy. They keep engaging in anti-consumer practices.
- gamblor956 1y ago
  30% was a great deal when KDP launched..several decades ago..Prior to KDP, self-published authors would have costs of about 90% to print and distribute their own books. Traditional publishers generally take 85% but in exchange handle the editing, marketing, and physical logistics of book printing and distribution. Similarly, when Steam launched, its biggest competitor was retail. Studios got paid a % of the wholesale price (after the publisher recovered its costs), which worked out to an average of approximately 10-15% of the retail price for successful games and 0% for unsuccessful games. (Note: this does not include the milestone payments to the studio during the development of the game.) But markets have changed. 30% may or may not be a great deal anymore. (For KDP, many authors say that the 30% is worth it because the volume of their Amazon sales dwarfs all other-channel sales combined. Some relatively famous sci-fi authors have said that about 90% of the sales of their self-published works were through Amazon.)

snkzxbs 1y ago

If we accept this argument, let’s not forget that Apple contributes the entire iOS API, which is much much wider in scope than what Steam offers. Someone will argue that until now the rest of OSes gave us the entire API for free, but I don’t see why charging for the OS API is an invalid way to make money.

foxyv 1y ago
There is literally no reason why you could not just publish your game anywhere else than Steam. Or publish on Steam as well as other platforms. Unlike Epic Game Store, Sony, or Microsoft, Steam doesn't engage in third party exclusive agreements.
gamblor956 1y ago
Apple doesn't get credit for this because they're just offering a solution to a problem they created. And the point of their competitors not charging for the OS API is that it demonstrates that the market value of the iOS API is $0.
- snkzxbs 1y ago
  Your competitors giving away their product means your product is not worth anything? That seems like nonsense to me. Maybe your competitors are unable to compete on the worthiness of their product which is why they are forced to give it away.
  - syndeo 1y ago
    Bingo. I doubt the Open Handset Alliance would've gotten off the ground had they charged the kind of licensing fees common at the time by Symbian and Windows Mobile. What would convince manufacturers to pay into an (at the time) remarkably immature platform and gamble their devices' success on it? But make it free… and now you've suddenly got their attention.

ivewonyoung 1y ago

You cannot charge less on other stores than what the game costs on Steam or Steam will kick the game out. So consumers lose out. > The second class action accuses Valve, Inc. of using MFN clauses in its contracts with game developers—both big (Ubisoft) and small (Rust)—to maintain its monopoly in personal computer video game sales through its online marketplace Steam as well as stifle competition more generally. The complaint alleges that the MFN clauses cause game prices across online marketplaces to be the same even though stores like the Epic Games Store take a smaller commission than Valve. Rather than pass those savings on to the consumer, the developers must maintain higher prices to remain profitable on Steam. https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/business-law-today/2021-march/most-favored-or-too-favored/#:~:text=The%20complaint%20alleges%20that%20the,to%20remain%20profitable%20on%20Steam https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/bu... This is not well known because Valve is somehow untouchable and worshipped so much in the online community like on Reddit and HN that any criticism invites personal attacks, downvotes and flags etc. and is buried, even if valid. Imagine the uproar if another company that was a monopoly did this. Look at all the comments on here right now and none of those mention it.

foxyv 1y ago
Valve only requires that when you are selling Steam Keys outside of Steam. If you are selling the game as a standalone separately there is no MFN clause.
- slavik81 1y ago
  To expand on that, what's happening is that Valve allows developers to give a Steam copy of the game to anyone who bought the game on a different marketplace. Neither the user nor the developer pay Valve anything for that copy of the game. Valve will only provide that free Steam copy if the price the user paid is equal to or greater than the price on Steam. This ensures that you can't effectively just sell Steam copies of the game at a lower price than on Steam itself. That seems more than fair to me. Valve is providing a free promotional item and it has a straightforward limitation designed to prevent abuse.
solardev 1y ago

YesBox 1y ago

A counterpoint to consider: Tim Sweeney says his Unreal (studio) customers that use Steam (which is nearly all of them) are worse off than the retail era: >Generally, the economics of these 30% platform fees are no longer justifiable. There was a good case for them in the early days, but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee. >If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made. These guys are our engine customers and we talk to them all the time. Valve takes 30% for distribution; they have to spend 30% on Facebook/Google/Twitter UA or traditional marketing, 10% on server, 5% on engine. So, the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution economics of the 1990's. >We know the economics of running this kind of service because we're doing it now with Fortnite and Paragon. The fully loaded cost of distributing a >$25 game in North America and Western Europe is under 7% of gross. Full email: [1] [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/19_NC1ZskeN47LHaYJziotbA0sqLdjlgf/view https://drive.google.com/file/d/19_NC1ZskeN47LHaYJziotbA0sqL...

foxyv 1y ago
I just don't get how what Steam does is parasitic or bad in any way. They are expensive, but they don't engage in the predatory practices of most of their competitors. They just kinda sell games.