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PC Gaming ERA | April 2021 - A Hunter is a Hunter, even on PC

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Ionic

Ionic

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Oct 31, 2017
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Big brain take is that MS is helping to normalize 12% because they want to put Gamepass on Steam but want a bigger cut than Steam is currently offering so are hoping to influence them a bit.

Steam could probably do with just dropping down to a flat 20 at least.
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

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Mar 14, 2019
18,593
Sheepinator said:
That MS news is great news for devs. A couple of years ago devs were stuck everywhere with the crappy 30/70 deal which was incredibly lucrative for the stores who see large profit with every single unit sold, while the devs need to recoup years of expenses first. Since Epic came on the scene, we now have 12% on two PC stores, and Steam and Apple have also made small cuts.

What's good for devs is good for gamers in the long run. If this trend of more reasonable distribution costs continues, that drives down their breakeven point, resulting in more flexibility to support games for longer, and ultimately lower prices.

I think MS might still bring their games to Steam later, but I also expect they'll demand a much better cut of the sales, so ultimately it'll be down to Steam with how greedy they want to be.
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Valve already reduces the cut for games that do well. Multiple publishers (Microsoft, Bethesda, EA) have started doing the "buy cheaper (keys, subs) to use our crappier launcher OR buy full price/wait for sales to play on Steam" approach. And it's making them money, because Microsoft's games on Steam have been top sellers, and so was DOOM Eternal, Fallen Order, Mass Effect remaster, etc. So they'd be silly to turn down the (extra) money a bunch of Steam users are willing to pay just to have the games available with Steam features.

OTOH, we've literally got a thread where people are saying "Valve needs to give indie games a better cut". How do you define "indie"? The argument here is, if a game sells less copies because it's not visible, it should have a better cut. But what if it sells extremely well, while still being "indie?" what if a game doesn't sell, because it's.... not good? And how do you determine that? Metacritic? or user reviews? There's a lot of questions here.

Marketing an indie game is hard. But I feel a big portion of that comes down to how the games media positioned itself. 95% of coverage goes to titles from the same 20-30 devs/publishers. If you wanna be noticed, you need to reach out to the niche audiences. Steam is huge, and the amount of games there is huge; it's an ongoing challenge to improve discoverability, but they are still doing more than most, imho.
 
sredgrin

sredgrin

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12,276
Mentalist said:
OTOH, we've literally got a thread where people are saying "Valve needs to give indie games a better cut". How do you define "indie"? The argument here is, if a game sells less copies because it's not visible, it should have a better cut. But what if it sells extremely well, while still being "indie?" what if a game doesn't sell, because it's.... not good? And how do you determine that? Metacritic? or user reviews? There's a lot of questions here.
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Just cut out the guesswork and do what Apple does, they lower their cut for the first million dollars in revenue or something.
 
VerySerious

VerySerious

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Oct 25, 2017
617
Sheepinator said:
What's good for devs is good for gamers in the long run. If this trend of more reasonable distribution costs continues, that drives down their breakeven point, resulting in more flexibility to support games for longer, and ultimately lower prices.
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That line conflicts with one of the other supposed benefits of the 12% cut - isn't it supposed to let developers/publishers keep more of a game's earnings than the traditional 30%?

It's often been touted as the difference between success and failure for struggling devs, but if they needed all the money they could get, why would they give up that lifeline and pass the savings onto the customer? Wouldn't it be in their best interest to keep the cash instead and cover their expenses? What would stop large AAA publishers from just doing the same?

Either it lets developers keep more of their hard-earned money or it lowers game prices, but it can't be both without placing strain on either the devs, publishers, store or customers.
 
Igniz12

Igniz12

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,548
Arsene no Kiseki said:
Microsoft isn't gonna stop releasing on Steam lol. They did this because nobody uses the store outside of gamepass so this doesn't do anything aside from give them good pr and bring more games to the store.
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Lmao. I was thinking this just gives MS good PR myself but I was worried it was too cynical of a take.

MS is not sticking their neck out here, they can do the 12% cut cause they dont have to worry about a store bringing in any money cause historically I doubt it made any, or not much anyway for MS, so slashing the store cut looks great on paper but kinda feels limp when no one is going out of their way to put stuff on there.

But at the same time they have all the other stuff going on that does bring them money like GP, Steam and the console stuff and the reduced 12% cut will most likely not make much of a difference to MS's bottomline.

Until they commit to making the store actually viable the cut itself is meaningless. If you dont create an environment that is gonna bring customers in, no amount of reduced cut is gonna make up for the difference in the lost of customers for devs because you dont have a store that players are flocking to.

Of course the super duper cynical take is:
MS is trying to force Valve into a difficult position and get the store cut conversation reignited which in turn helps them in the long run cause they sell games there now. Probably hurts Sony too in the not too distant future if they succeed at it.
 
Sheepinator

Sheepinator

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Jul 25, 2018
28,299
Mentalist said:
OTOH, we've literally got a thread where people are saying "Valve needs to give indie games a better cut". How do you define "indie"? The argument here is, if a game sells less copies because it's not visible, it should have a better cut. But what if it sells extremely well, while still being "indie?" what if a game doesn't sell, because it's.... not good? And how do you determine that? Metacritic? or user reviews? There's a lot of questions here.

Marketing an indie game is hard. But I feel a big portion of that comes down to how the games media positioned itself. 95% of coverage goes to titles from the same 20-30 devs/publishers. If you wanna be noticed, you need to reach out to the niche audiences. Steam is huge, and the amount of games there is huge; it's an ongoing challenge to improve discoverability, but they are still doing more than most, imho.
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It's very hard to define "indie". Even the IGF can't. Their rules are that games must be made in the "indie spirt" which isn't defined and they reserve the right to refuse entry.

I understand peoples skepticism over "trickle down". No, I don't expect 100% of increased money to devs seeing its way to 1:1 spending on more support for games or price cuts for consumers. But you know what, even if not a single developer supported their game better or lowered prices, those lower store rates are still a net win. I'd rather that money get shared among hundreds of devs than being horded by a handful of incredibly lucrative companies who own the stores and rake it in with zero risk.
 
eonden

eonden

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Oct 25, 2017
17,196
sredgrin said:
Just cut out the guesswork and do what Apple does, they lower their cut for the first million dollars in revenue or something.
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Yup, I did the math and the difference doesnt seem that large, although i guess it depends where the main "breadwinners" for Steam come from. Apple can afford it because 95%+ of their revenue was coming from 1M+ a year revenue apps. I assume that is not the case for Valve (given that PC gaming seems more middle of the road when compared to general apps) and Valve will do something like 10-15% for the first 100k or so.

Sheepinator said:
It's very hard to define "indie". Even the IGF can't. Their rules are that games must be made in the "indie spirt" which isn't defined and they reserve the right to refuse entry.

I understand peoples skepticism over "trickle down". No, I don't expect 100% of increased money to devs seeing its way to 1:1 spending on more support for games or price cuts for consumers. But you know what, even if not a single developer supported their game better or lowered prices, those lower store rates are still a net win. I'd rather that money get shared among hundreds of devs than being horded by a handful of incredibly lucrative companies who own the stores and rake it in with zero risk.
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In my view, the first need for devs is not that much a lower cut, but a lower barrier of entry. Having a lower cut is nice, but not when it only benefits those games that were already "chosen ones". That just gives the games with an already natural advantage even more.
Hopefully Epic and MS open their platform and do not keep it as closed.
 
Shelbyville Milhouse

Shelbyville Milhouse

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Oct 25, 2017
22,450
I guess it technically is "good PR", I however would consider a press release containing the phrase "improved install reliability" as anything but good PR.


As for MS games on Steam, as for now my guess is they will continue to release them there. In the long run? Depending on how things work out with the MS store I can see them getting away from Steam. Yes the games sell very well there but from the perspective of MS it's all about the long term.
If Halo Infinite sells 2 million copies less because it's not on Steam - and that's a big assumption - but slowly builds a user base on whatever the MS store is called, Microsoft will be able to swallow that loss, easily. Just look at Epic and how much money they are losing with the EGS for now.
(I just randomly picked Halo, I know it's coming to Steam)
 
Mentalist

Mentalist

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Mar 14, 2019
18,593
I think the big question in the foreseeable future is, "What is Microsoft gonna do with the Bethesda Launcher"
 
Sheepinator

Sheepinator

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Jul 25, 2018
28,299
VerySerious said:
That line conflicts with one of the other supposed benefits of the 12% cut - isn't it supposed to let developers/publishers keep more of a game's earnings than the traditional 30%?

It's often been touted as the difference between success and failure for struggling devs, but if they needed all the money they could get, why would they give up that lifeline and pass the savings onto the customer? Wouldn't it be in their best interest to keep the cash instead and cover their expenses? What would stop large AAA publishers from just doing the same?

Either it lets developers keep more of their hard-earned money or it lowers game prices, but it can't be both without placing strain on either the devs, publishers, store or customers.
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It's not an either/or though. Say a dev was thinking of launching at $24.99. They've looked at their costs, and their competition, and say it's a 70% split everywhere. That gives them $17.50 per sale. If the split was instead 88% everywhere, they could lower the price by 20% to compete better and drive more sales, and still make more profit per sale. Or they might support the game for longer for free, because they're profitable sooner. Or they might hire more staff and be in a better position to self-fund their next even larger game, and so on. Or a bit of all those things. It's either that or the hugely profitable storefront rakes in even more profit with no risk taken on their end. What does that do for us?
 
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XR.

XR.

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Nov 22, 2018
6,697
Sheepinator said:
Is that a serious question? Everyone has been trying to do their own store in recent years. How many different stores exist on PC now?
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Their own store, certainly, but has anyone else tried to offer a service with a focus on features and community engagement? Tried to offer a service that users want to use rather than just being a requirement in order to play games from Bethesda, Microsoft, Ubisoft or what have you.

I don't regard a mere downloader as competition to Steam.
 
Madjoki

Madjoki

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Oct 25, 2017
7,261
XR. said:
If it's a zero risk operation for Steam... why isn't anyone else doing what Steam is doing?
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Speaking of that came across this in Apple vs Epic... I wonder if there are regrets in those companies (Microsoft, Yahoo, Real, at least)

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VerySerious

VerySerious

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Oct 25, 2017
617
Mentalist said:
I think the big question in the foreseeable future is, "What is Microsoft gonna do with the Bethesda Launcher"
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I can't see them maintaining two launchers at the same time; they'd probably fold the Bethesda one into the Xbox store. Why waste money maintaining two separate game stores when you can do just fine with one? Even Microsoft's budget has limits! 😂

Sheepinator said:
It's not an either/or though. Say a dev was thinking of launching at $24.99. They've looked at their costs, and their competition, and say it's a 70% split everywhere. That gives them $17.50 per sale. If the split was instead 88% everywhere, they could lower the price by 20% to compete better and drive more sales, and still make more profit per sale. Or they might support the game for longer for free, because they're profitable sooner. Or they might hire more staff and be in a better position to self-fund their next even larger game, and so on. Or a bit of all those things. It's either that or the hugely profitable storefront rakes in even more profit with no risk taken on their end. What does that do for us?
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Yeah, I can see your reasoning in that, but as you've said that assumes that everyone moves onto the 12%/88% standard. I can't see Valve moving away from their 30/25/20% royalty structure as long as they have plenty of customers, and they have plenty of customers because their higher cut allows them to develop interesting features such as the discovery features, Steam Input, etc. Steam's features are commonly cited in many threads about this particular topic as being the biggest factor in customers sticking with it.

I'm not convinced a 12% cut would allow development of features beyond the basics and customer service, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
 
Sheepinator

Sheepinator

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Jul 25, 2018
28,299
VerySerious said:
Yeah, I can see your reasoning in that, but as you've said that assumes that everyone moves onto the 12%/88% standard. I can't see Valve moving away from their 30/25/20% royalty structure as long as they have plenty of customers, and they have plenty of customers because their higher cut allows them to develop interesting features such as the discovery features, Steam Input, etc. Steam's features are commonly cited in many threads about this particular topic as being the biggest factor in customers sticking with it.

I'm not convinced a 12% cut would allow development of features beyond the basics and customer service, but I'm happy to be proven wrong.
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12% does seem a bit slim I agree. OTOH 30% is greed. It's not just about store features though. I've asked before here if another store showed up tomorrow with the same features as Steam, would people with 10+ years loyalty, payment info already stored, library of hundreds of games, social network, would they switch stores? No, they wouldn't. That's a huge moat.

Wrt how big a cut you think they need to develop features, I would argue that's not significant relative to the revenue. Way back in 2011 Valve were more profitable per employee than the big tech companies. Last year MAU grew by 26%. Sales revenue via Steam is probably, what, $10BN per year? Of which they keep up to 30%. I doubt they spent much on Steam Input last year. Whatever features they finished in 2018 and 2019 those people likely worked on new features for a similar cost, meanwhile MAU keeps growing as the market grows. I bet most of the staff could have taken the year off and MAU and revenue would still soar.
 
eonden

eonden

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Oct 25, 2017
17,196
Sheepinator said:
12% does seem a bit slim I agree. OTOH 30% is greed. It's not just about store features though. I've asked before here if another store showed up tomorrow with the same features as Steam, would people with 10+ years loyalty, payment info already stored, library of hundreds of games, social network, would they switch stores? No, they wouldn't. That's a huge moat.

Wrt how big a cut you think they need to develop features, I would argue that's not significant relative to the revenue. Way back in 2011 Valve were more profitable per employee than the big tech companies. Last year MAU grew by 26%. Sales revenue via Steam is probably, what, $10BN per year? Of which they keep up to 30%. I doubt they spent much on Steam Input last year. Whatever features they finished in 2018 and 2019 those people likely worked on new features for a similar cost, meanwhile MAU keeps growing as the market grows. I bet most of the staff could have taken the year off and MAU and revenue would still soar.
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You need to provide a better service when you enter a new market against someone with a natural adavantage due to market tendencies. Nobody has really tried to do that, instead relying on providing a worse service and expecting to be rewarded for it.
The only real challenger that has actually tried to enter the market in what is normally a "natural" fashion, by providing something new has been MS with Gamepass. GOG tried, but their main selling point (no DRM) has a natural flaw due to not being that interesting for bigger devs (who end up driving a ton of the MAU).
MAU comparison on 2020 are funny when you consider that their main "big competitor" on the scene (EGS) saw their revenue stagnate in comparison (with MAU increase tho, but also very much on a spotty up and down MAU compared to Steam more constant increase). That is probably related to constant tweaks of the formula and avoiding stagnation (such as the big reworks of how sales are presented in 2020 and the new Steam Points shop to encourage more people to buy shit).
I would also say that yes, the main cost of new tech is very frontloaded but it still creates parasitic losses that makes it so that "the lowest you can go to" is higher.

Regarding the "profit per employee" statistic, it is really a bit meaningless on this kind of talk about "what cut is enough". Valve owns and operaties 2 of the bigger GAAS games righht now (CSGO and Dota 2) that could easily make them already extremely profitable. They also have a really small amount of employees (mostly relaying on subcontractors and consultants which arent counted on that statistic). That means that even if their profit margin is small (due to investments, natural expenses, cost of subcontractors, etc.) they only really need to have enough volume to have a ludicruous "per employee" statistic. They could have a real profit margin (profit/revenue) of 5-10% and still outprofit per employee Facebook and Epic whose profit margins are much bigger.
(Mind you, I dont think their profit margin is that small, but I dont think anything below 20% Steam cut would probably be viable with the current Steam regional payment structure).
 
Sheepinator

Sheepinator

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Jul 25, 2018
28,299
R-Type Dimensions on sale again on Steam. Very tempted to double dip after having it on 360.

My latest backlog completion is Snake Pass. It's listed as a platformer/puzzle game, but there's no puzzle in there. Still, it was surprisingly enjoyable, even if it was very one-note. They did a good job with the snake controls, especially the way it wraps around platforms. I'd have preferred it get up to speed from a standing start a bit faster though.

SnakePass_02.jpg
 
ZKenir

ZKenir

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Mar 31, 2018
4,475
if I buy anything it'll be something cheap, probably this



I'm waiting for ME remaster and Nocturne next month
 
eonden

eonden

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,196
Sheepinator said:
R-Type Dimensions on sale again on Steam. Very tempted to double dip after having it on 360.

My latest backlog completion is Snake Pass. It's listed as a platformer/puzzle game, but there's no puzzle in there. Still, it was surprisingly enjoyable, even if it was very one-note. They did a good job with the snake controls, especially the way it wraps around platforms. I'd have preferred it get up to speed from a standing start a bit faster though.

SnakePass_02.jpg
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I would say that the puzzle elements of Snake Pass is more related about how platforming is more or less "black boxes" that you need to figure out hte correct movement through it including balancing and speed.
At least I loved the game that way despite me normally not enjoying Platformers and loving puzzles lol.
 
Eternia

Eternia

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Oct 25, 2017
503
People already see better pricing from developers/publishers that engage with third party Steam key sellers. I have my doubts that many developers will voluntarily give up money that they're screaming for right now. So the current setup is far more positive for customers than hoping for developers to "opt-in" to cheaper pricing. That's not even considering that nearly half of them believe <= 10% is a fair cut which eliminates, what, every store except Itch?

I'm still waiting on digital pricing not being held back due to retail. With record high digital splits, nothing is actually improving. Remember all the claims of it pushing pricing lower? Base price increased, odd conversions (of course, higher) for even notable currencies like the Euro, and shrinking regional pricing.
 
Cels

Cels

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Oct 26, 2017
6,828
i don't quite understand the people saying that a 30% cut from steam is too much. epic and now microsoft take a 12% cut, which is good for anyone who sells on those platforms. but compare the features on each of those two platforms to everything that steam offers, both to players and to publishers. what other storefront continually iterates and works to improve its platform in a very meaningful way, year after year?

it's the most robust, feature-rich platform and valve continues to innovate. epic and microsoft can't say the same about their own PC storefronts.
 
Sheepinator

Sheepinator

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Jul 25, 2018
28,299
Cels said:
i don't quite understand the people saying that a 30% cut from steam is too much. epic and now microsoft take a 12% cut, which is good for anyone who sells on those platforms. but compare the features on each of those two platforms to everything that steam offers, both to players and to publishers. what other storefront continually iterates and works to improve its platform in a very meaningful way, year after year?
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That needs 30%? I don't understand why some prefer that a handful of massively profitable companies take so much, rather than seeing that spread around to more developers. I'm confident Valve could push out a new feature or three on just 20% of $10BN or so, or whatever huge number it is they're pulling in.
 
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Azai

Azai

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Jun 10, 2020
4,085
Sheepinator said:
That needs 30%? I don't understand why some prefer that a handful of massively profitable companies take so much, rather than seeing that spread around to more developers. I'm confident Valve could push out a new feature or three on just 20% of $10BN or so, or whatever huge number it is they're pulling in.
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Thats not how you run a buisness. No buisness owner will every say "Ill lower my cuts/win margin because Im so generous"
Unless you are in a position where you have to make your plattform more attractive. If epic ever reaches a userbase similar to steam they will increase their cut. Im pretty sure about that.
But they most likely will never come in this position anyway.

If you want to sell your games on epic store where you have less of a cut you can do that but numbers clearly show that you will sell alot less on there.
MS and Sony also want their cut so idk why steam gets shit on.

Imo without steam PC gaming would be alot less popular than it is today.
Most other plattforms fail to deliver the same features as steam does. They arent even close tbh.
 
Gabbo

Gabbo

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Oct 25, 2017
7,593
Sheepinator said:
That needs 30%? I don't understand why some prefer that a handful of massively profitable companies take so much, rather than seeing that spread around to more developers. I'm confident Valve could push out a new feature or three on just 20% of $10BN or so, or whatever huge number it is they're pulling in.
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That 30% also covers things like physical steam gift cards and regional pricing (such as it is) and free, unlimited key generation for use on 3rd party sellers sites, on top of the other things steam offers to both customer and dev/pub, so it's not like that 30% is solely covering steam dev costs. If Valve can still profit from a lower cut they will, but some of those customer conveniences may go away
 
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Ampersands

Ampersands

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Oct 25, 2017
504
TinTuba47 said:
Always been curious about GTFO but I dunno....
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In the same position. Based on the store page, they should've already left Early Access but they're still there. I also side-eye any game that advertises how "challenging" they are since challenging can easily translate to frustrating and unfair.

The atmosphere and graphics look nice tho
 
Kiru

Kiru

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Oct 25, 2017
846
Nice, got my beta invite for XCloud Browser Test. Syncing my Forza Horizon 4 save data is taking ages...
 
LycanXIII

LycanXIII

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Oct 26, 2017
10,131
Ampersands said:
In the same position. Based on the store page, they should've already left Early Access but they're still there. I also side-eye any game that advertises how "challenging" they are since challenging can easily translate to frustrating and unfair.

The atmosphere and graphics look nice tho
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It can be very unfair if you don't have a squad with good communication or are "sloppy" with your shots/tools/actions, but not once have I been frustrated with the game. My friend group has never blamed the game, and has realized what we can do different the next time. I will say however, that even though they have added matchmaking, I wouldn't want to play it by myself or with randoms. Go in with a group that you know, or try and get a team before hand.
 
Double

Double

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Nov 1, 2017
797
Mr.Deadshot said:
Fuck humblebundle automatically charged my Choice for this months before I could pause. I will try their support to cancel the order. Hope this works.
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I unfortunately did not have a good time with their support when I was subscribed a few months back. No Goodwill from their side at all, really disappointing.
 
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