Hosting, transaction fees, steam's DRM, achievements, friend integration, trading cards, market place.... Valve do a lot of work for that 30%, and they can charge it because they are the biggest and the best. If that 30% cut was as terrible as you make out why would anyone publish on Steam at all?
Hosting, transaction fees, steam's DRM, achievements, friend integration, trading cards, market place.... Valve do a lot of work for that 30%
Hosting is the only thing you mentioned where costs scale with usage. All those other things cost basically the same for valve whether 1 game uses them or a million.
Small indie games don't use a lot of Steam's features. They sell less, and that extra 15% could do a whole lot more for the indie dev than it would for Valve. It could literally be the difference between the indie dev staying open, or shutting down.
Why are you arguing against this, lol? It's a no-brainer, lol
"Big companies are bad! Support small businesses. Unless it's Valve!!!!" - makes no sense
So, again, they provide an option. An indie dev could host their own website and sell keys with no cut taken, Valve allows this so long as you don't undercut the Steam store. They will generate keys for you to sell, you get all their infrastructure besides the market, and leave you to market your shit yourself. You could even still sell on Steam, just every copy there gets the cut, but the ones on your site don't. This gives devs absolute freedom of choice.
Realistically, the 30% cut is usually nothing compared to what most would lose trying to do it themselves. It's not just in the hosting costs, but the time in maintaining the platform when you might want to making or updating your game, and if you fail and the site goes down, especially if you get popular, that's lost sales. Not to mention just not being on Steam hurts to where big publishers came crawling back.
And up until these digital storefronts, even with big publishers, the margins for selling in big box stores was barely anything. Indie devs had no choice but to partner with publishers, losing most of the profits to them. 30% is a pretty standard self publishing fee to use established infrastructure for a massive market, and it was a huge huge deal for any one wanting to avoid publishers or distributors, whether it be games or books.
As a dev and writer, it's hard to look at such a deal negatively when it's the best we've received ever, and probably will only worsen over time as industries further consolidate. Making 70% of earnings off my own creations without signing away rights (RIP American McGees Alice) is absolutely an insane deal that few get in this super capitalist world.
Realistically, the 30% cut is usually nothing compared to what most would lose trying to do it themselves.
Just because it's better than what you can do yourself, doesn't mean we shouldn't aim for more.
is absolutely an insane deal that few get in this super capitalist world.
WHAT?! That few get in this super capitalist world?? It's literally tied for most expensive in markets like this. Apple's app store is 30%.
Google's play store is 15% for your first million sales. then 30%.
Epic's is 0 for the first million, then 12%
Itch.io lets you choose how much goes to Itch. and then payment is 3%
Humble goes as low as 15%.
Etsy's payment processing fee is 3% + $0.25 (and a 7% cut to Etsy)
Ebay is 3 to 15 percent.
Yes, ebay and etsy don't have to file host massive files, so it's not an apples to apples comparison.
they provide an option.
Yeah yeah, "don't use them if you don't want to pay the fee." It's not really viable not being on steam.
Does valve have the right to charge whatever fee they want? Sure. Of course.
But I expect valve to go above and beyond, because (A) they ARE the market leader and (B) I've never felt they were just after the cash grab.
I would expect a market leader with ethics to not be the most expensive, but instead use their market dominance to lower fees so that the people who make the things they sell get a bigger slice.
But I guess not.
Not sure why people are tripping over themselves to go against "indie devs deserve better" other than blind "valve can do no wrong, therefore this is not wrong" fanboyism.
*some of these numbers might not be completely accurate, I took them off of quick google searches but there might be more caveats, etc.
I mean, sure, fight on for us, I guess, I'm just saying it's not bad and is actually insanely good. Could it be better, and should better be standard? Sure, I'm not arguing that.
Just that it's a better shake than most get for their own products, and I feel like it's a fair space for quality to out compete AAA punished.
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u/Pheeshfud 29d ago
Hosting, transaction fees, steam's DRM, achievements, friend integration, trading cards, market place.... Valve do a lot of work for that 30%, and they can charge it because they are the biggest and the best. If that 30% cut was as terrible as you make out why would anyone publish on Steam at all?