The original royalty change came before Epic announced EGS though.
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PC Gaming ERA | January 2020 - Ready for the new year, shaka brah.
- Thread starter Uzzy
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The original royalty change came before Epic announced EGS though.
4 days before. I am sure that as well connected as Valve are to the development community, and the amount of developers that had been speaking to Epic for months, and Tim complaining since 2017 about high royalty rates, they knew what the plan was. It's very hard to believe they made their first ever royalty change in 14 years within days of a competitor offering a much lower rate, and it being sheer coincidence.
Valve operates their own network as far as i know and they are not using AWS servers or Azure or something else. They also don't charge customers or developers for any transaction fees (except in one case where they charge customers in South America for one payment method), they support a lot of payment methods with various fees, they support in store wallet cards, they get 0 money from any sales outside of Steam (for example DMC5 has like 40% reviews from non-steam purchases), they provide tons of backend support (API, data...), and they are working a lot to attract customers to the store with various features. If we take Sweeneys words that 8% could cover hosting and standard fees then 4% is not enough to support rest. Something would have to go.
Back when Steam started selling games in 2003 and 2004, 30% was reasonable because that was a better cut than what publishers were getting selling games in physical shops.
15 years later, things are a lot different. There are no longer distribution and other wholesaler costs involved. Should they revisit the split? I think so, especially for indie games.
Honestly, I think it should be more in line with the fees when you sell items on Etsy, which are around 10%. Most of the arguments that can be made to justify Steam's cut are things that Etsy does as well, in terms of community engagement and marketing on their platform.
There's no question that Steam provides value. I personally believe that comparing it to other gaming storefronts is somewhat futile. I find it much better to compare it to large shopping platforms in non-gaming spaces, and when you do that, you can see that Steam is taking way more than they really should be.
15 years later, things are a lot different. There are no longer distribution and other wholesaler costs involved. Should they revisit the split? I think so, especially for indie games.
Honestly, I think it should be more in line with the fees when you sell items on Etsy, which are around 10%. Most of the arguments that can be made to justify Steam's cut are things that Etsy does as well, in terms of community engagement and marketing on their platform.
There's no question that Steam provides value. I personally believe that comparing it to other gaming storefronts is somewhat futile. I find it much better to compare it to large shopping platforms in non-gaming spaces, and when you do that, you can see that Steam is taking way more than they really should be.
IMO 12% is on the low side, if factoring in higher costs from transactions in Asia, and 30% is on the high side. 20% on all sales is probably a good middle ground. Maybe they should also adjust the royalty rate based on the average transaction fee in that region, so that a dev makes more selling to me with a 2% credit card fee in the US than someone spending the same amount in China, while currently Valve gets all the benefits of my lower fees.
I would wager Steam doing cut drops to be more about bigger publishers leaving etc. and so on, instead of trying to paint it that Sweeney did something.
And I would assume majority of those indie devs are those who do yet another 8/16bit platformer, or rpg, or metroidvania clone in a sea of clones.
Suda has also done some (great) visual novel type games, like The Silver Case, 25th Ward etc.
The quality of the game should have no bearing on the amount of fees they have to pay per copy sold.
It shouldn't matter if they sell two copies or two million copies.
I'ma just leave this here
Plague Inc Evolved outselling RDR2 lool.
You know I just hate going through the anime , rpg , etc list and seeing all the rpg maker clones 😠
Worth noting is that gift cards cost about 10-15% to run (since the physical store selling you the card also has to get a cut), which mean Valve can't cut their cut much below 20%-ish without removing gift cards (which would severely damage the PC gaming as a whole in a fairly large range of countries).
I'ma just leave this here
I'm so proud of JFO.
Also does anyone know how NMS VR performs on a mid-range system?
That is true, but it's more about devs like that perhaps don't have the full picture what goes around with that 30% cut etc. But still, pity that we don't have full info what kind of devs did answer that poll.
I'ma just leave this here
yeah that was me. i finally bought sekiro
Bear in mind these Top Selling lists are not universal, here's mine for example:
As much as I'd love to see Disco Elysium at #4 top seller on Steam, the Global Top Sellers puts it at #21.
As much as I'd love to see Disco Elysium at #4 top seller on Steam, the Global Top Sellers puts it at #21.
Breh, even here Plague Inc. is outselling RDR2, unless this list is affected by Steam Labs?Bear in mind these Top Selling lists are not universal, here's mine for example:
As much as I'd love to see Disco Elysium at #4 top seller on Steam, the Global Top Sellers puts it at #21.
...but yeah Globally, RDR2 is above Plague Inc., but the fact that plague inc. is being in the top sellers recently is still rather funny.
That all depends how much of their revenue is from that source. They could also adjust the revenue split per region. Give the dev more of the split in regions where transaction costs are small, and less of the split in regions where transaction costs are high.
No idea, all I know is that RDR2 is ahead in the Global Top Sellers list. Unless that's different for everyone as well for some reason?
I mean RDR2 isn't even in the Top Sellers I see, so if I'm trying to leap to its defence I've done a pretty bad job of it.
And Plague Inc. is a great game, at least it was when it was called Pandemic 2 and was a free flash game. I haven't actually played Plague Inc. itself.
I checked the blobal recently and RDR2 is above Plague inc., but it is possible that in some regions one is outselling the other and vice versa.
Oh, I forgot they take a loss on every piece of hardware too, outta the goodness of their <3's
Do those other companies have an escalator clause like Valve added a while back or do they take 30% on sales no matter how many it sells?
Could it be argued that Valve set that 30% standard?
I legit don't know, but I suspect they were one if, if not the, first major digital storefront of the early 2000s.
afaik, it's just the biggest publishers who can make those sort of deals
Maybe it is? Btw 30% isn't the console cut when you factor in that half of game sales on console are still physical, which carry much lower royalty rates for the console platform, around 16% or so I think. And yes, they do have R&D and production costs for the consoles also.
Pretty sure it was industry standard before Valve, but I'm not 100% confident on that
Stardock preceded Steam by a few years, what was their cut?
Edit: Oh wait no I've got some stuff mixed up.
Edit: Oh wait no I've got some stuff mixed up.
It's still hypocrisy when folks are fine with those seeking 30% but not Valve.
Not that I care all too much, I don't see a penny of it 😭
Isnt that the other way around? 30% + creation of physical discs?
I honestly dont know. Just found that:
Report: Steam's 30% Cut Is Actually the Industry Standard - IGN
A breakdown of how much every major retailer takes from the sale of a game.
For discs I think they get about $10, and the retailer gets about 25% so $15, then the publisher also has small cost of goods and distribution fees.
I'd wager the tweaks to the cut had nothing to do with Epic and everything with enticing larger publishers to continue releasing games on Steam instead of doubling down on their own platforms. 75/25 doesn't kick in until your game has generated $10m in revenue; that's a number literally 99% of indies are never going to hit.
I agree 70/30 as a base is too high, however, and fully expect Valve to eventually acquiesce, especially considering all of the dev roundtables it held last year. There's a sweet spot between that and 88/12 that gives indie devs a higher cut without compromising the operational integrity of the platform, and it's probably whatever CDPR settled on for GOG.
GOG is still using 30% as of their last revenue report as I have been telling you :P
Ah, sorry, you must've posted that when I wasn't getting notifications. The figures you reference are actually for 2018, but the latest data (Q3 2019) paints the same picture. CDPR explicitly said the cut was changing, though:
I assumed the new cut came into play on April 1st as the FPP ended on March 31st, but maybe it was earmarked for the new financial year. I doubt CDPR lied about it just to justify killing off the FPP; surely we would've heard something to that effect by now.
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No worries, I was just making a bit of fun.
Oh yeah, I think I used the 2019 numbers the first time but couldnt find them the second. On hearing about it, we havent heard about GOG decreasing its cut, which would be a great PR victory from them.
Edit: the numbers of the last quarter show ca. 28.2% cut while on the last 3 quarters is 28.9%, it might have decreased to 27% or so?
The cut from 2018 is still 30.8%, so it could still be something weird in their roundings, as I dont think they had a higher cut to begin with.
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Yeah, it was desperation because all the major publishers were threatening to walk away, not a response to any competition from Epic or whatever.
And you can't compare physical and digital. There are just too many differences to make it meaningful.
Third-party sales are "goods and materials", so (21,189/30,580) x 100 = 69.29%. You're right that the cut hasn't changed, or at least not recently enough to be reflected in the report.
I suspect the issue of Steam's cut will be hashed out by the big publishers and will trickle down to indies.
Who didn't know in their hearts, that when the likes of EA struck out on their own, it was only a matter of time before they'd come back to Steam? Turns out running your own storefront/launcher combo is a much bigger hassle than they personally wanted to take on and maintain. It's not that they can't do it, it's that the nature of these big corps is not compatible with the effort required to gain the small profit they get from maintaining their own storefront. Everyone knew this, but anyone that's worked for a megacorp knows how these things go. Some department gets an idea that the company could "save so much money" and whips together a powerpoint and away it goes.
The only ones that survive in Steam's shadow are ones that have a particular niche, like GOG. DRM has always been a sore point for PC gamers and there will always be a significant minority that want DRM free games. So that was a good move and I think GOG will live on.
I just don't see the value add for the other ones. The biggest issue is that PC gamers have been down this road before, and it hasn't been a positive experience for them. People are rightly skeptical of yet another storefront, yet another launcher, yet another piece of superfluous software that is just going to make your experience so much better! How many times has Microsoft relaunched/rebranded Games for Windows Live and it's still a turgid piece of crap?
Who didn't know in their hearts, that when the likes of EA struck out on their own, it was only a matter of time before they'd come back to Steam? Turns out running your own storefront/launcher combo is a much bigger hassle than they personally wanted to take on and maintain. It's not that they can't do it, it's that the nature of these big corps is not compatible with the effort required to gain the small profit they get from maintaining their own storefront. Everyone knew this, but anyone that's worked for a megacorp knows how these things go. Some department gets an idea that the company could "save so much money" and whips together a powerpoint and away it goes.
The only ones that survive in Steam's shadow are ones that have a particular niche, like GOG. DRM has always been a sore point for PC gamers and there will always be a significant minority that want DRM free games. So that was a good move and I think GOG will live on.
I just don't see the value add for the other ones. The biggest issue is that PC gamers have been down this road before, and it hasn't been a positive experience for them. People are rightly skeptical of yet another storefront, yet another launcher, yet another piece of superfluous software that is just going to make your experience so much better! How many times has Microsoft relaunched/rebranded Games for Windows Live and it's still a turgid piece of crap?
Oh, I was using the entire revenue. Any idea what the products and services are then?
If so using the "goods and materials": Q3 2019: 30.7%
Q1-Q3 2019: 30.18%
Q1-Q3 2018: 29.35%
So all are within a margin of error.
Edit: Sales of products and services is GOGs cut on Gwent and Thronebreaker.
AFAIK it was Apple's iTunes that introduced the concept of a 30% cut, back when it was just a music store.
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