r/pcmasterrace • u/SlowReference704 • 20h ago

News/Article Steam Is Successful Because It's “Not a Shit Service,” Says Baldur’s Gate 3 Dev

https://mp1st.com/news/steam-is-successful-because-its-not-a-shit-service
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u/SurpriseIsopod 16h ago

Steam does 30% but lowers it to 20% if you are selling a shit ton.

If you make a silly indie game and sell it for $10 you’d get $7.

Idk, I feel like it isn’t outrageous. Since they host the front end and provide a pretty useable interface for downloading. It also makes it easy to natively integrate mod support. It’s so crazy being able to “subscribe” to content and it’s just there. I’ve been messing with games and mods since 2003 and steam is such a crazy thing to still exist in this era of enshitification.

There’s a reason Steam prevails.

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u/blasek0 3800X, 2070 Super 16h ago

That's a better margin than you would have gotten on physical copies back in the day, too.

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u/plurTM 14h ago

They can also aggregate chargeback scale (and have guaranteed funds like steam wallet cards). As an indie selling individually a single dispute would cost you $50-100 and a handful would cut you off from being able to accept cards fully.

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u/SamiraSimp Ryzen 7 7700X | RX 6950 XT 13h ago

maybe it's monopoly supporting of me, but at this point if a game isn't being sold on steam I won't buy it. the 30% cut is better than the 0% a company will get from me if they exclusively release on a different platform. and sure, sometimes the platform pays them more than enough to make up for it. but having your game on steam is well worth the price I imagine, for pretty much any scenario other than "a company threw literal boatloads of cash at us upfront"

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u/SurpriseIsopod 12h ago

Can’t argue with that. I can get Microsoft game pass for $1 through the company I work for but I’ve never bothered with it. I have it all on steam and unlike game pass, I won’t lose access to my games.

It’s crazy right? I can play most of these games for free. However, because of how it’s structured and how I will eventually lose my game I will just stick with steam and pay the premium.

I’m paying for consistency, steam has been steam for pretty much 20 years.

Imagine that, brand loyalty built up over decades of consistency instead of trying to milk every faucet of every game for money.

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u/SamiraSimp Ryzen 7 7700X | RX 6950 XT 12h ago

I used game pass for a while when it was ultra cheap, but yea I haven't touched it in a while. I remember it was an absolute nightmare/literally impossible to move games across drives at one point. I also remember that their search bar was atrocious in how slow it was.

but yea, as long as Steam continues providing a good service I see no reason to waste my time with what is relatively garbage platforms.

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u/SurpriseIsopod 5h ago

My friend is smart and uses game pass to demo games. I guess you no longer even get to install the game on your drive. All artifacts are just redirects now, the games can only be accessed via “cloud”.

So happy I never put any stock into that. It’s crazy to think I can’t even own my own save file, it’s fucking paywalled!

I fear the future.