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You wouldn't like Valve so much if you explicitly saw the 30% Steam tax, I mean fee, declared every time you bought a PC game on Steam. Imagine if Microsoft did

You wouldn't like Valve so much if you explicitly saw the 30% Steam tax, I mean fee, declared every time you bought a PC game on Steam. Imagine if Microsoft did that. +30% for every Windows software. Like iOS. Then Steam games would be +60% rather than +30%.

input_sh 1y ago
You don't have to imagine anything, Microsoft also takes 30% of every purchase made via Microsoft Store.
- kokada 1y ago
  Yes, AFAIK this is an industry standard, both Sony and Nintendo also takes a similar approach.
- cubefox 1y ago
  Apparently they don't, this says 12% to 15%: https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-just-dropped-its-store-fees-for-windows-developers https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-just-dropped-its-sto... That's still higher than what seems reasonable for a simple store front, but they aren't as bad as Valve or Apple. Note that Valve is a relatively small company with only a few hundred employees, but with one of the most extreme revenue-per-employee ratios in the world, estimated at $19 million per employee: https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenue-revealed-in-lawsuit/ https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenu... That's orders of magnitude higher than companies like Apple, Elsevier or Nintendo. Steam is basically free money for Valve. Valve is extracting huge rents (around 6.5 billion yearly revenue) for negligible expenses (only 79 people working on Steam).
  - Yokolos 1y ago
    > That's still higher than what seems reasonable Based on what? Your arbitrary standards. I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer. It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest in Steam Input, Proton, SteamOS, and Steam Deck/Machine/Controller/Frame/etc. And it's still significantly better than the times when your only option was brick and mortar, where you maybe got 10-30% as the developer. Every other digital storefront does far less and still takes 15-30%. Why is Valve the big boogey man and everybody else is free to charge whatever they want on developers while doing fuck all for anybody but themselves?
    - cubefox 1y ago
      > Based on what? Your arbitrary standards. Based on a strongly and persistently imbalanced ratio of revenue to expenses, which indicates a form of market inefficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Monopoly_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Monopoly_rent (the mentioned network effects are basically what drives Steam rents) > I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer. Of course it makes them poorer if a big chunk of what you pay for their games goes to Valve. > It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest But they basically aren't doing that. If a company has an extreme revenue-to-expense ratio, it means they are hardly investing any of their revenue. They only have a few hundred employees while making around 6.5 billion per year. > Every other digital storefront does far less and still takes 15-30%. Why is Valve the big boogey man Well, Microsoft seems to do 12-15% in the Microsoft Store. And I fully agree Apple is significantly worse than Valve with iOS, because there is no way to circumvent the 30% fee in iOS; indeed, it wouldn't even be possible to offer a software like Steam on iOS. (But it should also be noted that Apple has a much lower revenue-per-employee ratio than Valve, indicating that they reinvest a lot more of their revenue.)
      - crowbahr 1y ago
        There's a reason everyone else who comes to take on this "market inefficiency" fails. Amazon threw billions at it. So did Google. So has Epic. And Microsoft. None of them dethroned steam, so 30% is still the cost to access the steam user base. If tens of billions can't overcome this "inefficiency" then it sure seems like there might be more to the story than economics 101. The fact is that Steam has an incredibly loyal _userbase_ and you won't convince them to leave unless steam betrays their trust, which they haven't. The trust in any competitor is nearly 0 compared with Steam which has been a platform people have loved and used for over a decade now with basically 0 issues. No corporate missteps. Arguably the biggest controversy is the latest way they made CS2 loot boxes less valuable, popping the insane bubble in the skins market. That's still ultimately good for the average gamer and I expect they'll come out smelling like roses.
ekianjo 1y ago
Nobody prevents game devs to sell on their own website with 0% tax. Curiously, they choose to go on the market with 30% tax.
- two_handfuls 1y ago
  I think the thing people are complaining about is that the game devs are prevented from selling on steam and also cheaper on another store.
- cubefox 1y ago
  This is because of network effects, which cause a monopoly-like situation. It's mentioned in the Wikipedia article on economic rent cited above.
Aeolun 1y ago
I don’t care about the Steam tax. Steam is one of the few storefronts that actually show me what I want. That give me the ability to download any game I downloaded 20 years ago when I first installed it. They went through a few dozen iterations of nonsense social stuff, but through that all the core functionality just kept working. I hate the iOS store because it’s full of ad-riddled slop. Steam isn’t remotely close to that. If I find a game on there, even if it’s bad, someone clearly spent time and love making it.
- pirates 1y ago
  Steam definitely has a ton of garbage, half-assed, slop games on it. They definitely were not made with time and love.
  - vablings 1y ago
    And these games are usually review bombed to hell so that consumers can inform other people to stay away. It is an open marketplace
dminik 1y ago
It's not really a tax though. Other platforms offer a lower percentage (Epic: 0% up to 1000000 copies sold and 12% above) and yet the prices on Epic aren't cheaper than on steam. If the final price doesn't change based on the storefront cut, then as a consumer, I don't care.
- AstroBen 1y ago
  Doesn't Steam have a price-parity clause in their contracts with developers? https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action/ https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-cla...
Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago
Said to a company that just released all their os as open source, contributing drastically to the community. Please, compare that with Amazon and AWS, spot the difference
vablings 1y ago
Microsoft takes 30%, Sony takes 30% so that argument is out of the window. Let's break down what you actually get for that 30% with Microsoft/Sony - $120/yr (xbox) or $80/yr (ps) subscription fee - Price subsidized console - Friends system, voice chat/messages - Online store/publishing regional pricing and associated locks - Store for MTX - Cloud based game saves - Trophies/achivements and other player related goal setting - CDN to distribute your game - Remote play e.g. using your console to stream to your PC/Phone - First class controller support Steam gives you all of the above with literally 0 cost to the consumer aside from purchasing your game. The fact that anyone even pretends like this is a valid argument is a joke.
- cubefox 1y ago
  There are only a few hundred people working at Valve, with 79 working on Steam, but they are making 6.5 billion USD yearly. That's extreme. One of the highest revenue per employee ratios in the world. They are spending almost nothing. The 30% are almost pure profit. Since PC is an open platform, the proper comparison would be other PC store fronts which are substantially cheaper than Steam. Unfortunately there is no incentive for users to switch, as Valve apparently contractually forbids games to be sold at a lower price outside Steam.
  - vablings 1y ago
    "Valve apparently contractually forbids games to be sold at a lower price outside Steam." This quote is based on one email from a valve employee circa 2017. Furthermore, is it not Valves right to say if you wish to offer the same product at a lower price, we reserve the right not to sell your product anymore. Keep in mind in most cases when a game is not freely purchased through steam anymore you can still download the game from the CDN, you can also still use all of the online features for the game. You just cannot purchase a new copy I really don't understand why price parity requirement is a bad thing. If you want to take a bigger slice of the pie you can eat up the infrastructure costs yourself or take your business elsewhere, EOS, Xbox, PlayStation store ect "There are only a few hundred people working at Valve, with 79 working on Steam, but they are making 6.5 billion USD yearly. That's extreme. One of the highest revenues per employee ratios in the world. They are spending almost nothing. The 30% are almost pure profit." You are absolutely right. that is far too much money and to which I simply ask the question why no other serious competition? Companies have poured millions into this and always miss the first stop gap of consumer rights first meaning any attempt they have to eat away at the market share fails so hard its actually embarrassing. Anyone arguing against the current system is just arguing against capitalism. Out of all the companies in the gamer space hardware/software Valve are the only one who actually care for their customers and have regularly extended rights that go well beyond the legal minimum requirement, this is just a fraction of a reason why they have been and will continue to be first class in the gaming space

input_sh 1y ago

You don't have to imagine anything, Microsoft also takes 30% of every purchase made via Microsoft Store.

kokada 1y ago
Yes, AFAIK this is an industry standard, both Sony and Nintendo also takes a similar approach.
cubefox 1y ago
Apparently they don't, this says 12% to 15%: https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-just-dropped-its-store-fees-for-windows-developers https://www.techradar.com/pro/microsoft-just-dropped-its-sto... That's still higher than what seems reasonable for a simple store front, but they aren't as bad as Valve or Apple. Note that Valve is a relatively small company with only a few hundred employees, but with one of the most extreme revenue-per-employee ratios in the world, estimated at $19 million per employee: https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenue-revealed-in-lawsuit/ https://upptic.com/valve-structure-employment-numbers-revenu... That's orders of magnitude higher than companies like Apple, Elsevier or Nintendo. Steam is basically free money for Valve. Valve is extracting huge rents (around 6.5 billion yearly revenue) for negligible expenses (only 79 people working on Steam).
- Yokolos 1y ago
  > That's still higher than what seems reasonable Based on what? Your arbitrary standards. I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer. It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest in Steam Input, Proton, SteamOS, and Steam Deck/Machine/Controller/Frame/etc. And it's still significantly better than the times when your only option was brick and mortar, where you maybe got 10-30% as the developer. Every other digital storefront does far less and still takes 15-30%. Why is Valve the big boogey man and everybody else is free to charge whatever they want on developers while doing fuck all for anybody but themselves?
  - cubefox 1y ago
    > Based on what? Your arbitrary standards. Based on a strongly and persistently imbalanced ratio of revenue to expenses, which indicates a form of market inefficiency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Monopoly_rent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_rent#Monopoly_rent (the mentioned network effects are basically what drives Steam rents) > I still don't understand what's wrong with 30% for everything Steam provides as a platform. It's perfectly acceptable. It's not making indie developers poorer. Of course it makes them poorer if a big chunk of what you pay for their games goes to Valve. > It helping to ensure Valve can focus on the things that matter to them and do things like invest But they basically aren't doing that. If a company has an extreme revenue-to-expense ratio, it means they are hardly investing any of their revenue. They only have a few hundred employees while making around 6.5 billion per year. > Every other digital storefront does far less and still takes 15-30%. Why is Valve the big boogey man Well, Microsoft seems to do 12-15% in the Microsoft Store. And I fully agree Apple is significantly worse than Valve with iOS, because there is no way to circumvent the 30% fee in iOS; indeed, it wouldn't even be possible to offer a software like Steam on iOS. (But it should also be noted that Apple has a much lower revenue-per-employee ratio than Valve, indicating that they reinvest a lot more of their revenue.)
    - crowbahr 1y ago
      There's a reason everyone else who comes to take on this "market inefficiency" fails. Amazon threw billions at it. So did Google. So has Epic. And Microsoft. None of them dethroned steam, so 30% is still the cost to access the steam user base. If tens of billions can't overcome this "inefficiency" then it sure seems like there might be more to the story than economics 101. The fact is that Steam has an incredibly loyal _userbase_ and you won't convince them to leave unless steam betrays their trust, which they haven't. The trust in any competitor is nearly 0 compared with Steam which has been a platform people have loved and used for over a decade now with basically 0 issues. No corporate missteps. Arguably the biggest controversy is the latest way they made CS2 loot boxes less valuable, popping the insane bubble in the skins market. That's still ultimately good for the average gamer and I expect they'll come out smelling like roses.

ekianjo 1y ago

Nobody prevents game devs to sell on their own website with 0% tax. Curiously, they choose to go on the market with 30% tax.

two_handfuls 1y ago
I think the thing people are complaining about is that the game devs are prevented from selling on steam and also cheaper on another store.
cubefox 1y ago
This is because of network effects, which cause a monopoly-like situation. It's mentioned in the Wikipedia article on economic rent cited above.

Aeolun 1y ago

I don’t care about the Steam tax. Steam is one of the few storefronts that actually show me what I want. That give me the ability to download any game I downloaded 20 years ago when I first installed it. They went through a few dozen iterations of nonsense social stuff, but through that all the core functionality just kept working. I hate the iOS store because it’s full of ad-riddled slop. Steam isn’t remotely close to that. If I find a game on there, even if it’s bad, someone clearly spent time and love making it.

pirates 1y ago
Steam definitely has a ton of garbage, half-assed, slop games on it. They definitely were not made with time and love.
- vablings 1y ago
  And these games are usually review bombed to hell so that consumers can inform other people to stay away. It is an open marketplace

dminik 1y ago

It's not really a tax though. Other platforms offer a lower percentage (Epic: 0% up to 1000000 copies sold and 12% above) and yet the prices on Epic aren't cheaper than on steam. If the final price doesn't change based on the storefront cut, then as a consumer, I don't care.

AstroBen 1y ago
Doesn't Steam have a price-parity clause in their contracts with developers? https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action/ https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-cla...

Fire-Dragon-DoL 1y ago

Said to a company that just released all their os as open source, contributing drastically to the community. Please, compare that with Amazon and AWS, spot the difference

vablings 1y ago

Microsoft takes 30%, Sony takes 30% so that argument is out of the window. Let's break down what you actually get for that 30% with Microsoft/Sony - $120/yr (xbox) or $80/yr (ps) subscription fee - Price subsidized console - Friends system, voice chat/messages - Online store/publishing regional pricing and associated locks - Store for MTX - Cloud based game saves - Trophies/achivements and other player related goal setting - CDN to distribute your game - Remote play e.g. using your console to stream to your PC/Phone - First class controller support Steam gives you all of the above with literally 0 cost to the consumer aside from purchasing your game. The fact that anyone even pretends like this is a valid argument is a joke.

cubefox 1y ago
There are only a few hundred people working at Valve, with 79 working on Steam, but they are making 6.5 billion USD yearly. That's extreme. One of the highest revenue per employee ratios in the world. They are spending almost nothing. The 30% are almost pure profit. Since PC is an open platform, the proper comparison would be other PC store fronts which are substantially cheaper than Steam. Unfortunately there is no incentive for users to switch, as Valve apparently contractually forbids games to be sold at a lower price outside Steam.
- vablings 1y ago
  "Valve apparently contractually forbids games to be sold at a lower price outside Steam." This quote is based on one email from a valve employee circa 2017. Furthermore, is it not Valves right to say if you wish to offer the same product at a lower price, we reserve the right not to sell your product anymore. Keep in mind in most cases when a game is not freely purchased through steam anymore you can still download the game from the CDN, you can also still use all of the online features for the game. You just cannot purchase a new copy I really don't understand why price parity requirement is a bad thing. If you want to take a bigger slice of the pie you can eat up the infrastructure costs yourself or take your business elsewhere, EOS, Xbox, PlayStation store ect "There are only a few hundred people working at Valve, with 79 working on Steam, but they are making 6.5 billion USD yearly. That's extreme. One of the highest revenues per employee ratios in the world. They are spending almost nothing. The 30% are almost pure profit." You are absolutely right. that is far too much money and to which I simply ask the question why no other serious competition? Companies have poured millions into this and always miss the first stop gap of consumer rights first meaning any attempt they have to eat away at the market share fails so hard its actually embarrassing. Anyone arguing against the current system is just arguing against capitalism. Out of all the companies in the gamer space hardware/software Valve are the only one who actually care for their customers and have regularly extended rights that go well beyond the legal minimum requirement, this is just a fraction of a reason why they have been and will continue to be first class in the gaming space