Valve created an OS.
They created hardware.
They built their own userbase from scratch with all the risks it entails, since they started it all and they grew it out.
There is being clueless, and then there is being this obtuse.
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IGN: Steam's 30% Cut Is Actually the Industry Standard
- Thread starter AHA-Lambda
- Start date
They created hardware.
They built their own userbase from scratch with all the risks it entails, since they started it all and they grew it out.
There is being clueless, and then there is being this obtuse.
Sony release VR hardware => you can use the entire R&D budget from their annual report.
Valve made VR things => How does VR R&D have anything to do with this?
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*not that I'm denying that valve could likely "stomach a take rate reduction", just like Sony could just looking at their annual report for the past 10 years. That consummer would benefit from it is another question obviously.
They do all of that tho and their software development in gaming related circles is already on par with MS. Additionaly, they offer a bigger userbase than any of the console manufaturers.
You pulled those numbers out of your butt mate. You have no idea how much Valve invests in R&D and neither do any of us here. Pretending that you can deduct actual numbers out of the vague information available doesn't give you any bonus points.
As someone who was around in 2004 and can remember the messy PC gaming landscape back then very well this is baffling to read, too many here are talking without any knowledge of how things were and then slowly changed. Building and running a store back then was a huge risk. They got backlash. But they kept working on it, brought other publishers on board one by one, implemented features. Those millions of users on Steam every day you see right now didn't just come out of nowhere, Steam didn't become big over night, it took a long time to, well, build their userbase with all the risks.
Ya, everyone selling software for Windows is just a lazy leech and not contributing to the attractiveness and health of the PC as a whole. Also don't forget that Valve is using the internet without having invented it.
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I haven't read the 12 pages of comment so i don't know if someone has mentioned this before. it anyone has and it has been discussed feel free to ignore my comment.
The IGN article completely ignores the fact that valve takes a 0% cut from steam keys. This effectively means that valve's cut is always less than 30% unless the dev chooses to sell on steam only. I think the article should ahve gone deeper and ask devs how much of their sales are in form of cd keys. Paradox and rebelion have their stores where buying from them grants them 100% of revenue of their games.
Obviously steam keys might be a small part of the sales but with how many key sites there are maybe these cd-keys can reach a high ammount of sales which would efectively mean that valve's cut is lower then 30% for sure.
The IGN article completely ignores the fact that valve takes a 0% cut from steam keys. This effectively means that valve's cut is always less than 30% unless the dev chooses to sell on steam only. I think the article should ahve gone deeper and ask devs how much of their sales are in form of cd keys. Paradox and rebelion have their stores where buying from them grants them 100% of revenue of their games.
Obviously steam keys might be a small part of the sales but with how many key sites there are maybe these cd-keys can reach a high ammount of sales which would efectively mean that valve's cut is lower then 30% for sure.
It's wild. Valve made an entire genre blow up with SteamVR, the Index, and basically giving HTC the Vive brand. They built a OS and hardware to go with it. They built the Steam Link and Steam Controller. They built proton to bring more people to linux, they created the massive Steam store infrastructure. They attracted consumers with their community tools, and customization of your profile, and they attract developers with their vast free resources they hand out to all steam developers. They consistently pour resources into new R&D for gaming and some how 30% isn't right?
VR hardware R&D is a justification for a larger cut on VR games. I know if I was a developer I'd feel pretty shitty paying a VR tax every time I put out a non-VR game because Valve wants to make speculative plays in the market. I'd definitely look for alternatives where I don't have to fund whatever venture the store owner is dreaming up in addition to feeding myself. Especially when the hardware my money pays for is insanely expensive and niche, so it's not even unlocking a large install base for me to sell to.
You need to at least read the summary in the OP. Epic is using that 30% cut as evil while only aiming at Steam, and IGN is trying to explain that people shouldn't point their fingers only at Steam. Steam alone can't change it, there needs to be a mutual agreement between most stores across platforms.
If valve (or anyone else) would charge more money for VR games than for other games, they would activele dissuade developers from creating VR games at all, stifling the entire industry and medium in the process.
And you believe they should charge more from small developers that don't make VR games and don't profit from it to fund Valve's VR plans?
Can ask why you only answer post which confirm your bias when you are ignoring the fantastics answers from Lain and thirtypercent?
Because unless Vale only charges 30% for games that use their own hardware/OS infrastructure, they missed the point.
I think the key thing missing here is how Valve's hardware and OS benefit most developers and publishers on their platform, and whether that's worth the cut to them. For larger publishers like Ubi, EA, and Activision, it clearly doesn't at all, which is why they're moving their games off Steam and onto their own platforms.
Sweeney's messaging is on point because he's appealing to the fact that it doesn't to a lot of devs. There absolutely are beneficiaries to what Valve is doing (particularly the PC gaming market and community), but that's not the concern or domain of most of Valve's business patrons. In that respect, Valve's cut is indeed metaphorically a tax.
So every game that uses Steamworks features should have the cut? That's... 98% of them. So nothing really changes.
Then thank god you have no say in this in any way that matters.
As much as I like VR, I prefer to let small developers that work on the edge of sustainability in their business to keep this difference for them, and let the big companies with huge profits invest on hardware novelty.
It was about this opinion of yours:
But whatever, you are not here for learn about nothing.
:O
And what about the Sony tax? And the Gog tax? And but Windows store tax? And the Nintendo tax? And the Apple tax?
Why the outsized negative framing of one company? That's the subtext of this article. This is exactly what it's talking about.
At least we know Tim somehow doesn't mind the Gog tax when it allow him to prop his own store policy :
Everyone knew this... The argument is that it's always been too big a cut.
That's not necessarily something I personally agree with (there's a lot of nuance to this that gets lost in the black and white sensibilities of the internet), but, like, this isn't... news.
That's not necessarily something I personally agree with (there's a lot of nuance to this that gets lost in the black and white sensibilities of the internet), but, like, this isn't... news.
Gog is using that extremely high cut to develop Gog Galaxy which doesn't benefit developers directly. And the rest are using to keep their head above water, which also doesn't benefit developers. Gog's cut is indeed metaphorically a tax.
That's why we need EGS to help little developers like Ubisoft and 2K push taxing oppressors like Gog out of the market.
Conditional on sales targets that will only be hit by games that sell extremely well and not the vast majority of titles.
I see the bullshit argument has cropped up again, that console manufacturers "deserve" a higher cut because of actions they take that are almost entirely for their own benefit, so I guess I can just reuse my post the same way EGS' defenders do in every thread:
You couldn't come up with a dumber premise than these companies somehow deserving an increased cut over other platforms because of the expenses they have incurred doing everything possible to lock down and wall off their respective platforms, which is explicitly so they can apply the aforementioned increased cuts and sell proprietary peripherals and subscriptions.
It is completely backwards logic that a closed platform holder "deserves" more for making the "effort" of deliberately avoiding open standards to enforce proprietary ones they can monetise and control.
You couldn't come up with a dumber premise than these companies somehow deserving an increased cut over other platforms because of the expenses they have incurred doing everything possible to lock down and wall off their respective platforms, which is explicitly so they can apply the aforementioned increased cuts and sell proprietary peripherals and subscriptions.
It is completely backwards logic that a closed platform holder "deserves" more for making the "effort" of deliberately avoiding open standards to enforce proprietary ones they can monetise and control.
To get to 25% from 30% you have to sell $10 million. To get to the 20% you have to sell $50 million (iirc). This is non-applicable to almost any indie developer
I don't get why Tim Sweeney thinks he should be the police of who gets to set their store take at what. If the EGS 12% cut is so attractive then publishers / developers can put their games on there exclusively without needing a big incentive. That's what EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft etc. have already been doing and no one was complaining about it.
Steam can change their cut alone, companies don't collude like that when pricing their cuts as in many countries its very illegal. Why these industry standards come about is more of unwritten mutually beneficial agreement where a company could go below that cut to outmaneuver a competitor in the market but the loses a result of doing (and fundamental profitability changes) don't overcome the benefits of potential increased market share.
What your seeing in Epic moves is a company who feels the benefits out ways the issues of challenging that status quo.
Super duper illegal. There's about a century of laws and regulations concerning monopolies and oligopolies, and they're sure not going to get chucked out the window over digital games distribution.
Monopolies are bad. Collusion and price fixing between major players is bad.
I can't tell if you're being intentionally obtuse over the difference between an open and closed platform. For consoles and Apple devices, which are closed platforms by virtue of controlling both the hardware and software, there is no competition for delivery mechanisms, and hence no room for discussion.
On Android—guess what, there is room. That's why Fortnite isn't offered on the Play store—you have to download the APK directly. It's why large entities like Amazon have tried run their own software ecosystems on Android, yet can't afford to do so on iOS. In China, there's a litany of competing app stores because Google is banned and doesn't have hegemony over the ecosystem.
If you want to talk about GOG and other PC storefronts, their cut is based on the industry precedent—in this case, a precedent mostly reinforced by Steam. But then again, these smaller storefronts aren't particularly good at courting patrons, and at their scale, it's questionable whether they're even sustainable businesses, which is why they're mostly either dead, about to die, or perpetually unable to grow.
"Why the negative framing of Steam" is an obvious answer. Epic isn't in a position to negotiate the cut on closed platforms. They strike where they're able to. And despite Android being a semi-open platform, it's still a risky endeavor to run your own store (again, see Amazon). Epic wanted to diversify in the face of decreasing Fortnite revenue YoY, saw PCDD as a market rife for disruption, and swung for gold.
Also just going to add that you shouldn't be forced to question the state of the industry standard if you just want a better cut on PC. It's not Epic's responsibility, or any other single dev or publisher.
Yes you do. You tried to make a claim that what Steam is offering to reduce the cut is essentially unattainable for the vast majority of indies, which is no different to EGS picking and choosing its "winners", also unattainable for the majority of indies, seeing as a) you need to be hand-picked by EGS to even get onto the platform, b) an even smaller fraction will actually avail of EGS' up-front cash, which is the only reason any indies are on it, and c) you're competing for this pot of up-front cash with other such "little guys" as Borderlands, Metro and Shenmue.
The argument is that Valve's position as the market leader puts them in a dangerous position in this context. There are other stores such as GOG that are barely making money at 30% as it is. If the market leader were to aggressively lower its cut, everyone else would be pressured to do the same, and be driven out of business. It could have legal consequences for Valve.
Hehe, we had people earlier arguing that not wanting to pay steam its god given right to 30% was similar to not wanting to pay workers a decent wage. The conversation has at times gotten strange when it involves steam
It seems like the answer to that is fairly obvious. Steam's feature set attracts users to the platform. More users = a bigger potential audience for developers and publishers to sell their game to.
It's really great, Krejlooc is the unsung hero of these threads.
Their point is that for the vast majority of indie titles the greener pastures of Epic's better cut are entirely blocked off from them. It's the exact same situation that indie developers complained about for years before Valve opened the floodgates on Steam except, for obvious reasons, much worse. Games like Ooblets and Untitled Goose Game are the Super Meat Boys and Braids of today; they're nowhere near the small indie darlings that you believe Steam is hurting so badly and it's honestly incredibly disingenuous to try and make Epic out to be indie gaming's savour when that couldn't be any farther from the truth.
And honestly I think that points to the crux of the situation, which is that Epic has not got to where it is today through its better cut alone; it did it, and will very likely continue to do it, through monopolistic practices that, if successful, will consolidate the entire PC Gaming space to a level much greater than today. There's no reason to believe that if Steam were to somehow lower their cut to 12% that this would all stop; in fact I'd argue that it would give even more incentive for Epic to moneyhat games and force exclusivity as if that were to happen then it would have literally no USP to call its own.
My point is that EGS's cut is also not applicable to almost any indie dev, so I'm not sure how it counts as a counterargument against Steam's practices.
I never said EGS was the savior of gaming. I never even mentioned them..? I just think 30% is too high.
Ok I guess it's time to pretend you aren't all over these threads complaining about steam and extolling EGS.