Steam - New Revenue Splits

I also think the Steam cut is just a bit too much.
If I was an indie dev, I'd go and advertise and use itch.io (where the dev can pay any cut % he wants to) as much as possible - and use it for things like alpha/beta/early access. When the game is in a good state, also release on Steam, of course, but still try and steer as many people to itch as possible.

What Steam needs is competition, both in pricing and client quality.
Once that competition is there, I am quite sure the cut will drop for indies as well.

TheSHEEEP said:

What Steam needs is competition, both in pricing and client quality.
Once that competition is there, I am quite sure the cut will drop for indies as well.

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There's plenty of competition: Origin, Uplay, Gog, Bethesda Creation Club, and others. The 'problem' is Steam still not only has the biggest library of titles, but they were first to market; ie., practically every consumer for digital goods in the past 15 years wants to keep their library of titles centralized and, therefore, stays loyal to Steam.

But yes, 30%, 20% - it's ridiculous. I get that there's a lot of marketing that comes with a Steam release, but 10-15% is where it belongs. The 20% 'discount' rate for $50+ million in sales is laughable. It's just Valve trying to limit the ongoing splintering of digital services [competition], but only with studios that can afford the infrastructure to host their own titles in the first place. How generous of them.

30% is still a good deal compared to the cost of selling physical games at retail stores.

Also, I'd say GOG is only the real competition, and it's light years behind Steam in features. Origin, uPlay, Bethesda, Battle.net etc are just for games made by those companies.

ChienAboyeur said:

The first slice is $10M. Nothing unreachable by a small developper.
That is 250 000 units at $40.

That is just economy of scales in action: big customers get big discounts. Big sellers are big customers to Steam.

Steam, the best thing to ever happened to gaming (after the crowdfunded scene) according to self proclaimed proponents of SP products, has attached tons of services and features to what is in the case of a SP product, a single case of delivering a product.

SP gameplay does not call for profiles, friend lists, achievements, groups, farmed data to feed devs etc

At the end of the day, all those unnecessary services come with a cost.

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What do you know, I agree with Chiens entire post. And no frozen hell or pigs flying as far as I'm aware of.

Zloth said:

A slap in the face my tailpipe. Valve is still charging 30% of the first 10 million. It's only charging less for games that earn more than that.

It probably would be 2% if all they did was enable payments and refunds - but credit card companies already do that. Steam does a lot more:

• It provides a store front for people who want to buy games and/or DLC.
• It provides forums for users to discuss the game.
• It provides an area for screenshots, artwork and video links.
• It provides a setup structure to get games installed, updated, and verified.
• It provides a central place for achievements.
• It does that whole market place thing
• It provides a streaming service that can show up right on your storefront.
• It provides the friends, review, and curator systems that let folks know about games.
• It's also THE biggest software store by far. You can put your game up on Steam and leave it there for decades!

And probably more that don't jump to mind. They're earning some serious pay all right.

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All the services provided to the other Steam customers known as developpers. Huge data collection on players to allow to design products based on trends etc

Probably the biggest part of Steam services.

If Steam didn't have a near total monopoly on this type of platform, they definitely would have needed to reduce their cut by now. To people saying 30% is fair, I think due to economies of scale Steam could charge 10% at this point and still basically be printing money. Capitalism has nothing to do with "fair."

My favorite thing about this article is the couple of indie devs who piped up on Twitter to say they don't mind multi-million dollar games getting a better deal than the small fish at the bottom. Talk about abused spouse syndrome.

The problem with Steam is that only big countries have regional pricing and currencies. For most of the smaller countries they have to pay the same price as the US (even if they are developing countries) and in USD which means they also have to pay for banking fees and/or exchange rate costs, which means they end up paying more than someone from the US. GOG is way better at pricing, and they also have the policy that 1 USD is not the same as 1 EUR.

Anyone complaining that Steam's new prices for big companies are unfair should go back to Communist Russia. You can play game they give you in breadline.

Its not like their charging more for their lower tier. They are lowering their prices for their biggest customers to attract/keep them. Bulk discounts is business 101.

Lucky Day said:

Anyone complaining that Steam's new prices for big companies are unfair should go back to Communist Russia. You can play game they give you in breadline.

Its not like their charging more for their lower tier. They are lowering their prices for their biggest customers to attract/keep them. Bulk discounts is business 101.

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Well here is a new video about Business 101, Capitalism ,and below expectations.

Lucky Day said:

Anyone complaining that Steam's new prices for big companies are unfair should go back to Communist Russia. You can play game they give you in breadline.

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They give games. Waooo. Would be an upgrade on today's scheme when people must pay to buy products that are not even games, as a consequence of the crowdfunded scene.

Way better products that are meant to be games and are games than products that are marketed as games and are not.

Acts over words all the time.

I just don't get what the fuss is all about. If I buy or sell big, I too will ask of a discount!

If I buy 1 mars bar at my corner shop, I pay 50p but if I buy 5 mars bars at my local super market I tend to pay, 20p per mars bar….

I will argue that under the current fix fee system, indies were getting far more value from steam that big publisher hence big publishers were leaving the market place. Under the current system marginal cost of an indie is higher than big publisher to steam. So in effect, what the indies are asking is "better" treatment than big publishers.

After all games are a luxury items…

Hehe, looking at those numbers - this probably isn't relevant for my game

And EPIC games is going to try a new store with 88/12 split:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/04/epic-games-store-steam-origin-battle-net/

you said:

And EPIC games is going to try a new store with 88/12 split:
https://www.engadget.com/2018/12/04/epic-games-store-steam-origin-battle-net/

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Yet another storefront and digital service to use.

Seems the various threads on the internet was correct.

Just like like @Ripper; predicted.

ChienAboyeur said:

They give games. Waooo. Would be an upgrade on today's scheme when people must pay to buy products that are not even games, as a consequence of the crowdfunded scene.

Way better products that are meant to be games and are games than products that are marketed as games and are not.

Acts over words all the time.

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Yes they give games. You have your choice between Chess and Tetris in glorious amber monochrome ansi..

You get a ton of advertising when your game is on Steam as well, because your new game will plastered on the front page when it's first released. That's a huge deal for the smaller indie developers. Many of them report massive increases in sales while Steam is advertising their game. There is no way they would be able to afford that level of exposure otherwise.

I am on the steam side on this one. It just is simple and normal business practices, sounds like it to me anyway. Steam obviously is trying to hold on to the AAA gaming companies business since they see some are and have been attempting to make their own platforms so they get to keep the bulk of the profits, so Steam is lowering their profit to entice those companies to stay with them. Makes sense!

Steam is a very good service for gamers, and I don't think all gamers will sign up to 10 different game platforms just to play AAA games by these huge game companies. That is too much to ask of most gamers. There will be a percentage who will do it, of course, but they (these gaming companies who may try to break away from steam) will also lose a lot of potential sales by trying to be so greedy and forcing their game fans to sign up to their own particular game platform/service.

I have the vast majority of my games on steam and am happy with it, and though I don't participate in many of the steam community aspects, I think steam is awesome in some areas, like the game forums, game guides and tweaks, and active gaming forums for just about every game out there. And - for me best of all - steam has fantastic sales and discounts that let you buy games for dirt cheap prices - you can't beat that!

Bold printing by me.

Lucky Day said:

Its not like their charging more for their lower tier. They are lowering their prices for their biggest customers to attract/keep them. Bulk discounts is business 101.

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Exactly this is what destroys small firms. Exactly this.

So, 101 business rules are made to destroy small competors in the first place, eh ? And leave only big ones behind ? This of course creates Oligopolies in which more and more people are bound by fewer and fewer companies ... Even if Walmart would go bancrupt, there would merely be another almost-monopolist in their place ... And not lots of small groceries, as you might expect ...

For the bound customer, nothing changes at all. The quasi-monopolies continue to exist, only the names of the companies might change.

Do you even have any idea in how much we'll become more and more dependent from these superhuge companies ? Sci-Fi settings like Shadowrun are actually coming true ! Even now, the goivernments are going to have less and less influence i to what these superhuge companies actually do ! If one of them would break laws - do you reyally thing / believe the government would really be able to stop them ? Do you really thing the government would make them pay for fraud against small customers ?
Rather the contrary. Here in Germany, the ministry of traffic is rather HELPING the companies instead of "making them pay" !

Fixing prices in Germany after World War 2 to stem the monetary crisis was a complete disaster. It was only after embracing free markets did goods start showing up in shop windows instead of being horded or sold on the black market, and it was there we see the start of what would eventually become Germany's economic boom.

Steam does not have a monopoly; they have the leading market share. The feds not interfering is helping competition. If it wasn't for competition, Valve wouldn't be lowering their prices at all and we'd be likely only get to play Tetris in glorious ascii.