You know what also justifies Valve’s 30% cut? Their outstanding efforts in getting games to run on Linux, and the overall impact that this had on the Linux community.
I don’t think I’d be running Linux as my only daily driver if not for this. I was slightly dreading switching because I feared spending hours trying to fix broken games, but it’s been astonishingly straightforward (which facilitated me learning to live in Linux in a way I hadn’t been able to when was dual booting with Windows)
For most developers, that’s not much of a value. The Linux share of the gaming market only exists because of Steam. 99% of those gamers would just play on Windows if Valve hadn’t pu in the effort.
It is good for Linux though.
Since the headline blew it, the game mentioned is called Cosmoteer.
Currently 20% off!
I know this whole thing is probably just an ad, but it’s working on me lol
I played so much of it thru steamlink while at work
Anyone who is old enough to remember trying to buy digital copies of games pre-Steam knows how much value Stream brings to the table.
If it’s not on Steam, I don’t even consider it.
What about GOG and its DRM-free games? What about Itch.io and its exceptionally low cut and pretty much completely open-door policy? There are other services that are good. Origin, UPlay, Epic, and other stuff sucking does not mean they’re all bad.
GOG can suck my dick. They spammed my email with newsletters after I would repeatedly turn them off. We do need a DRM free alternative but for that I’ll stick with piracy
As soon as you add a free game, the newsletters are sent again. There is no “subscribe to get the game for free” which AFAIK is mandatory in the EU, they just resubscribe you silently.
If it’s not on Steam, I don’t even consider it.
I’m the same, but I’m dreading the day if steam stops being the savior of gaming.
Then we’ll switch to the next best thing.
Nobody can get a foot in the door. Epic tried by buying up exclusives but that just pissed everyone off. Me included.
Then steam will still be worth it. If valve ever goes public we jump ship collectively
That’s a sad take. You are just closing doors on yourself.
I use all the stores available.
As much as I like steam, I’m not putting all my digital eggs in one basket.
The day steam decides to shutdown or remove my account, I lose all those games. No thanks.
Blind faith ain’t for me.
I get your point, but a behemoth like Valve is so unlikely to be closing their doors in our lifetimes it’s hardly worth discussing.
The real point here is that after spending thousands or tens of thousands on Steam, our next of kin or beneficiary will not get them once our lifetime ends because Steam doesn’t sell games. They provide a license to access content.
Steam still suffers from the ‘illusion of ownership’ issue, and places that offer DRM free copies of titles are superior in this way. However it’s plain for all to see that not many people care about this point. All the masses want is to play their games.
In that regard, Steam is king.
Your lifetime is nearly 80 years. Companies lasting 80 years is ultra rare in history, large behemoths included. I bet you can already name several behemoth IT companies that’s already come and gone.
I wouldn’t trust even larger behemoths like google and MSFT to last another 80 yrs. It’s just too statistically unlikely.
I do agree with you on corporate longevity in general, however I disagree when it comes specifically to Valve.
Unlike most companies that bring in billions in revenue, Valve is part of a comparatively small group of privately held companies. They don’t have shareholders to appease, and they don’t have a stock price to juice forever upward. I feel this factor alone puts them ahead of the herd, so to speak.
More than just being a non combatant in the stock market though, with so few employees compared to anyone else is a surefire way to weather even the longest storm in my opinion.
Microsoft themselves estimated a few years ago Valve’s revenue to be 6.5 billion, which works out to 20 million per employee. Microsoft’s gaming division brought in 16 billion in the same year, which is less than 1 million per employee. Even assuming Microsoft’s profit per employee is a higher fraction of the revenue per employee compared to Valve, there’s no chance its 20x higher.
Microsoft, Google, Apple, Exxon Mobil, whichever, I can absolutely see a future (that maybe I’ll live to) where any of the humongous corporations die from providing worse products or service over time, or being knocked aside from the competition. In my view, primarily for the reasons I’ve written, I don’t believe that will be Valve.
The main counterpoint I’ve been able to think up as I wrote this is whatever might happen when Gabe Newell dies. There’s no doubt contingencies for this, and he’s probably hand picked a few names he believes would carry on with his ideals. Though unless they’ve enacted quite iron clad bylaws or policies to prevent certain operational changes, the next leader of Valve could conceivably destroy the company as we know it. Barring anything serious I will outlive Newell, and so in this way, I can see Valve ceasing to exist in my lifetime.
We have piracy for if Steam fails, GoG and Itch’d probably jump at the chance to take some of Steams happy customer base as well if Steam falls from grace post GabeN
As great a take as that is who will host the online service? Piracy can get you far but not always all the way. We need an open source game hosting option. But even that is not all. We need one that has the visibility of steam and the UI to boot. There a a couple of problems that legitimately need solving before we can just say piracy is the answer.
I’ve personally stopped buying games that can’t survive offline. If I need to pirate my collection back in a doomsday scenario, all of those games will still work.
If that happens I’ll just start pirating the games I want again unless there’s a decent competitor. Until then the convenience steam offers is worth the money.
Is this controversial? You’re paying for the storefront.
You aren’t even paying anything, you literally just give them a cut of your turnover when you don’t sell anything they carry the costs of it.
You give them a cut of the turnover on their site(steam). Important distinction. A developer can generate steam keys for free and sell them elswhere, as long as the price is the same as on steam.
the only ones that conplain the 30% cut are bilionaries companies
A few indie devs who hated the idea of storefronts because of the bad taste of Apple self published only on their website. When they finally (after years) switched to steam, every single one of them shared how they got like a multiplier of sales.
One indie dev shared how he made more in revenue in a month on Steam than he did in a decade of self publishing.
That’s life-changing.
Apple is the same deal, though. There’s a reason there’s a lot more solo devs/small teams making money on iOS than Android. Their ecosystem doesn’t do all the work for you, but it absolutely provides a lot of help. You might not like, for example, the Human Interface guidelines, but the enforced consistency in behavior makes a lot more people a lot more willing to buy things.
It’s also just the standard for selling your game on a big storefront.
I have mixed feelings on it.
When I was putting out games, publishing on Steam would mean a guaranteed 1 million impressions on the “New releases” list. That’s incredible exposure for an indie title, which often succeed or fail on exposure alone.
But 30% can be a lot for those same indie teams, especially combined with taxes. You can put years of work into a title and lose half the money it earns to groups that didn’t directly contribute at all. It can easily be enough money that long-term support or follow up games just aren’t viable. It can be your entire outsourcing budget or a whole employee for a year.
And after that initial exposure, you’re not getting much for your perputual 30%. The value of Steamworks can vary greatly game by game so you could end up paying $30k for $100 of bandwidth and minor marketing through things like sales and rich presence.
I would much prefer to see something like “30% after the first $X in sales”. Their cut would kick in only after they’ve demonstrated their value as a platform and small teams wouldn’t have to watch a company with billions of dollars take a very large bite out of their very small pie.
Then generate the steamkey(for free) and sell them elsewhere! Steam is toatally Ok with that, as long as the price is the same.
It’s worth it if you’re in the 1% of titles that succeed because of Steam. The next question is should any company have that kind of power. Steam’s monopoly is a real problem. Microsoft had less of a monopoly on computers when they got investigated.
That’s not true at all. Steam does a lot more than just list a title…and there is a ton of shit games that are put out there, they don’t make it because they’re shit, not because they’re not part of some magical 1%. Tons and tons of indie games have made it because of steam. They akso don’t have a monopoly, its just what most people use. There is still the epic market, itch.io, gog, humble, etc all of which you can choose to sell on or not.
It’s a de facto monopoly, just like windows was a de facto monopoly despite macos and Linux existing. There are plenty of good games that don’t make it on Steam, and Valve does very little for the money.
I don’t think you understand the level of requirement and cost to host and keep stable a system like steam does for no cost to the user.
It absolutely is.
In this thread:
Steam is bad because they are a company that makes money. They would be better if they made no money and all games were advertised at their expense. Oh and I must post my game on Steam because it’s their fault no one else has bothered to even try and make a truly viable alternative.
I have not much against steam.
But gog is a more than viable alternative to steam.
Let’s not act as if there’s no alternative when itch.io or gog exists.
Has steam more features? Yes. Is better for some things? Yes. Is the only viable alternative as a game store? No.
I like GoG. I like that they push companies to remove DRM. I like that I can make offline backups of my games.
I prefer GoG over Steam when possible, but Steam is still infinitely more user friendly, and if the game in question is heavily multiplayer-focused, I’ll probably pick Steam over GoG just to use Steam’s multiplayer infrastructure.
GOG has had games that fail to maintain parity with Steam releases.
GOG requires workarounds on Linux moreso than Steam.
The first is not totally GOG’s fault but they should take action. If GOG is truly about preservation, they should make Linux a priority.
My second biggest gaming library is GOG. I love them in theory but Steam wipes the floor with them in terms of who gets my business in part because of those.
30% seems rather high
but… when they handle payments, refunds, advertising (within their application) and game download costs (server infrastructure?), etc etc etc. it doesnt seem that crazy.
at least, for a lot of indie developers, not having to worry about those things, might easily be worth those 30%
Not to mention the reviews, community hubs, workshop, video streaming and recording, controller support, cloud saves, family sharing.
30% may be a lot, but it’s not like they’re just sitting on it.
EA and Ubisoft don’t offer (most of) those features with their launchers where they do get the full proceeds.
Not to mention Steam/Valve uses a significant portion of their resources to develop Proton.
Putting pressure on Microsoft is PRICELESS.
A couple of times, Steam Achievements have been a deciding factor in me not pirating a game. I know it’s dumb but ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
I remember PirateSoftware talking about the remote play online co-op on steam, I think I found it here:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Iu4kpM692vI
Definitely doesn’t seem to be sitting on it. Hell man, I have re-bought some games on other platforms just to re-play it on my Steam Deck.
I can’t defend/accost the 30% simply due to my lack of knowledge in the industry.
For it to “even out” they’d only have to increase your reach ~50%.
They do way more than that. And they give you an inherent legitimacy that putting it on your own site doesn’t. It’s not just handling refunds; it’s the certainty as an end user that you’ll get one hassle free.
Without Steam (or another retailer with similar traits), selling an indie game would be closer to a pipe dream than really hard. In almost all cases (and this seems to apply even to AAA publishers as most of them come back), the 30% they’re taking is money you wouldn’t have without them.
I think there are a lot of people who weren’t around for, or don’t remember, how buying digital titles was before Steam got quite so popular.
It was pretty rare, and the overwhelming majority of indie games were released for free. There just wasn’t many good ways to get the word out, and most ways of taking payment were costly enough to set up that it was rarely worth trying to get some meager amount of pay if you were just a one man show with no external financial backing.
All of this is true but the ugly truth people don’t want to unpack is this is largely because over 90% of PC game purchases occur on Steam, meaning it’s not that they give you an advantage much as you’re nearly dead in the water if you aren’t on Steam unless you’re a AAA game made by a major dev. I’m sure they help as well but that market dominance means they’re essential more than anything.
Valve didn’t do something nefarious to get there, let me be clear. They run overall what most consider a good operation. But saying “they’re so helpful and expand your reach” is like saying “google search helped expand my business’s reach so much” when the reality is if you can’t be found on google you practically don’t exist due to their dominance in search.
TL;DR: Choosing not to be on steam unless you’re on console or a major AAA game is choosing not to exist. And sometimes I worry what kind of company we’ll see in the future if they don’t maintain their company culture/philosophy down the line.
Edit: see the defensive responses for my point 🤷♂️
And exactly none of that matters because Valve has never attempted to maliciously take market share. If someone else wants to step in all they have to do is stop being shit. Steam has tons of issues. From the limited UI adaptability for devs to the rather archaic games list and somewhat silly discussions forums from the 90s, all the way to the convoluted larger menu system.
Yet rather than put any real effort into things we get shitty launchers from 9 different companies ONLY selling their limited scope of bullshit.
But they do give you an advantage. If steam didn’t exist at all, without a comparable replacement, it would not be possible for you to move a real quantity of units at all. The market they provide has massive value, and their market share is a product of genuinely being far and away better than any alternative.
People don’t refuse to buy games on Epic or Origin or Uplay just because they need everything in one place. It’s because all of those platforms are so much worse that they degrade the experience of games purchased through them.
That’s highly speculative. But again, I like valve and think steam is beyond a net good. We need to be asking these questions though. Market dominance is a risk in any hands.
You can’t discount the fact that if you are not on Steam then your game basically didn’t release on computer. You can’t just hand wave away that factor. It’s baked in.
This is an anecdote, but it is also absolutely not speculation. I won’t install Epic, I avoid most AAA launchers/required accounts, prefer GOG, and get most of my games on Steam. Epic and many other studio launcher apps are hostile to the consumers or just a royal pain to use. I have a couple Sony games. Why should I have to be online to play a 20-year-old single-player game that I bought through Steam? So now I check if they have that garbage before I buy them through Steam.
I think Steam could afford to charge less, but I don’t think most smaller companies could get a basic store up for less than they charge (and the big companies have the tools to determine if thos is saving them money), and that still doesn’t get you everything Steam brings to the table, consumer confidence being the most important.
I’d say it’s very reasonable. Steam is EXPENSIVE. If you know anything about bandwidth, it’s the insane cost. They don’t do many exclusivity deals, and they even let you sell steam keys elsewhere with 0 cut for steam without giving users a degraded experience.
Ah, Cosmoteer. Extremely fun for like 10 hours, then you realize there is nothing left to do. I guess that dev has made a fortune off of it though, so hats off to that guy.
Honestly that sounds fine. It’s okay if a small game is only entertaining for 10 hours provided the price is reasonable. We shouldn’t expect every game to be an infinitely replayability mill
It confuses the hell out of me that we don’t say that about any other media.
“This movie that I spent $18 per person on only lasts 97 minutes what a rip off.”
I mean, most of us who recognize that that’s shitty value just don’t go to theatres.
It’s why they’re dying.
Yeah I enjoyed it for longer than that but it just becomes so tedious once you have a few ships.
I prefer Starsector and Avorion.
Just a few days ago, I wrote a comment about how you would theoretically try and become a significant competitor to Steam, and one of the points I raised was that Steam’s storefront and recommendations are very generous (compared to others). It makes a huge difference that even indie games can appear on the front page regularly, both improving user and dev experiences. Players find games that they enjoy, while devs pay a very small amount to get effective, targetted advertisements.
I found weird ass games like Age of Decadence because of steam. I dount I wouldve found that lovingly crafted load of slavic jank without steam, or atleast it wouldve been until Warlocracy made a video on it.
My library and tastes are pretty eclectic so I think Steam’s recommendation engine struggles with me lol. That said, I love how it sends me shit no one seems to know about at the time, like Kenshi, Volcanoids, PULSAR, etc.
Yeah, though my tastes seem to be a rather close to a venn diagram circle with Mandaloregaming which is disconcerting at times. Maybe a bit more post apocalyptia on my part.
Yeah it’s becoming a bit uncanny when I pickup a game and see Mandalore, SplatterCat, or AlphaBetaGamer covering it a few days later.
Where does it say you can only choose one store?
Upload to all and get all the benefits. Lower prise on those with lower cut, more exposure on those that don’t.
I don’t know if steam does this since I have no experience selling on steam, but generally when you sell anything anywhere the sales channels will often demand that you give them the lowest retail price. Most commonly done by ones that give the most exposure since they have that much more power. Failure to do so will result in some penalty (Amazon prevents your offer from being in buy box) or just outright refusal to take your product (such as Walmart).
Additionally, customers complain too when you sell at two different pricing elsewhere. If you’re a company that gives virtually no support (like you sell pickles or whatever), you prob don’t care. But for things like games, you’ll get bombarded with demands that they got ripped off by buying from one place and ask for difference in pricing or submit a refund request. Refunds are more expensive to sellers than not selling at all since you still have to pay transaction/refund fees by payment processors. Or if physical product, cost of shipping as well.
Different sales channels having different pricing isn’t really an option. It’s not really worth it. You’ll get problems left and right.
