I especially appreciate those that share their opinion on this topic and tried to answer my question compared to the replies in the first page in which I believe most only read the title and posted
Surprise: posting an inflammatory title gets you shitty responses!
I want to be charitable to Epic here: increasing revshare for publishers is great for them, and I think the underlying question is worth posing: do storefronts do enough to warrant a 30% cut. That's not actually what you asked, and your original title heavily implied you felt Steam was acting in bad faith, but let's set that aside since that's no longer the title of the thread.
Valve wasn't alone in deciding on a 30% cut; as mentioned countless times before, that's an industry standard across multiple storefronts, both on consoles and on PC. And it's worth remembering that back when digital was relatively new, that 70% cut to publishers was seen as a good thing.
OnLive published a graph back in 2010 showing the standard retail cut for publishers; it's under 50%. The store, meanwhile, took in 25% after costs. That 70-30 revshare, then, is pretty close to what the retail share would look like once you cut out costs that didn't really apply to digital: distribution, returning unsold inventory (note that "returns", shrinkage, etc.
Fast forward 8 years, and some publishers have decided they want more. Some of them have started their own stores to cut Valve out entirely, and Epic is on record saying they think the service digital storefronts provide to publishers isn't worth 30%. That's fair of them to say, and there's a real debate to be had about whether Steam's additional benefits are worth the higher cut, or whether publishers will prefer Epic's approach, and what consumers will do when faced with that choice (as well as when that choice is taken away due to exclusives). But Valve didn't come up with that 30% figure out of nowhere and they're not automatically bullies for sticking to a figure that's been in use for a long time.
It's also worth noting that revshare is one part of a larger equation. Ultimately what matters for everyone is revenue; higher revshare with a smaller audience may still be unpalatable. If it wasn't, everyone would be on Itch.io. (Everyone should be on Itch.io, probably! They seem like a nice store.) Epic's big challenge is in increasing its market share rapidly so that Steam's biggest competitive advantage is blunted. But even beyond that, other aspects of a storefront can impact the bottom line. As mentioned elsewhere on the forum, regional pricing is still in flux. And while it's too early to say whether the higher regional prices on Epic's storefront are just part of the chaos of launch or representative of Epic store policy, it's pretty obvious that pricing differences will lead to countries deciding to avoid one store over another if they're allowed to remain for too long.
Another aspect I think is worth highlighting: if publishers are suddenly making 88% off each sale versus 70%, publishers have more freedom to set prices, especially during sales. This is the exact same phenomenon third-party stores like Green Man Gaming and Fanatical have been exploiting for years, except with the store cut: take less than the usual 30% cut, and pass the savings on to the customer. Given that even EA, who famously said a few years back that Origin was no place for massive discounts, have since placed their games on massive discounts on multiple occasions, it's not hard to imagine publishers taking advantage of the same phenomenon to offer lower prices on the Epic storefront versus Steam as a loss-leading measure to get people used to buying on Epic and raking in the rewards if people start buying games at full price on the service. Ubisoft has done this in the past, discounting their games more on UPlay versus Steam.
Basically, all of this is to say that it's a complicated business and we don't know how anything will play out yet. I think a lot of the vitriol is way over the top and unwarranted and I wish everyone would just chill out and stop accusing each other of being part of some defense force or another. There are a lot of ways this could go and not all of them are terrible for Jane Game-Player.
Well if you read the first post on this thread, I wrote that the most recent thing that valve did was help certain games that sold a lot get more money and the problem with that was that indie devs felt that steam could instead be doing more for them instead of certain games who already sell a lot.
Like guys I wrote the information in the first post in which maybe I wasn't as clear but Steam could probably have the same split as epic if they wanted to, if they want to help certain games that sell a lot earn more money, then why not just do it for everybody
I mean, it's pretty obvious, isn't it? The biggest threat to Steam right now is big publishers taking their ball and going home to their own storefronts. Realistically, indie games can't avoid Steam if they want to reach a wide audience, so Steam doesn't give a shit about increasing their revshare because they're a captive audience. Epic, meanwhile, has a vested interest in indies for two reasons: first, publishers like Annapurna provide prestige to the store while being more attainable than the Ubisofts and Take-Twos of the world. But also second, because Epic also owns Unreal Engine, and boy if you don't think there's going to be some kind of vertical integration play there at some point, I have a bridge to sell you. They've been trying to court indies for a long time in a bid to take away business from Unity, so it makes sense that their pitch would be focused more on indies versus Steam's attempt to address the top end of the market.
