-
Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
-
We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.
Valve changes revenue sharing for Steam to allow successful developers to earn bigger percentage cut
- Thread starter Dusk Golem
- Start date
All of those things still happen to a degree.
But again, that happens because unfortunately stuff like this always ends up being more notable and available to people. It's an unfortunate inevitability of all this.
But again, that happens because unfortunately stuff like this always ends up being more notable and available to people. It's an unfortunate inevitability of all this.
I've seen this a couple of times in this thread. What's the story here?
That's really fine. I don't mean to get aggressive to people. It really is just because this same rhetoric is repeatedly posted here despite being debunked. It gets very tiring.
A lot of it is done by driveby posters just interested in platform warring, and I really wish moderators would stamp down on that. But as people have pointed out, mods already showed they didn't care when they punished SteamEra because "lol it's not a platform".
People who actually do post honestly and are okay with learning are 100% okay with me.
Last edited:
Before the PCera thread was called that and was instead called the steam thread, we were told shitposting and trolling Valve was fine, as steam isn't a platform unlike MS, Sony and Nintendo.
You know that every online game from Bethesda was released on their launcher before hitting Steam less than a year later? And Activision only release their biggest titles on their client. Crash Collection was released on Steam, and they have AAA releases for 2019 on Steam already.
Ah yes, how could people forget about how the increased revenue from using smart regional pricing like Valve suggests hurts developers.
Though if they're really hurt by making more money they could always set every price to the equivalent in USD.
It caused a ruckus and the thread was renamed to change things. It was a weird time.
And of course this thread turned into a complete shit show.
This is getting tiresome. Guess I'll just stick to the PC-Era thread for discussion from now on.
This is getting tiresome. Guess I'll just stick to the PC-Era thread for discussion from now on.
it won't be long before Krejlooc is the only one left on this side who's willing to spend thirty minutes in each new Valve thread recontextualizing corrections from the last Valve thread in perpetuity
Isn't he banned? His name had a line through it earlier.
It caused an outcry so large, like half of the SteamEra regulars got temp banned and the community was forced to change names else it wouldn't be allowed here any more.
The only good thing to come from it, were the first few pages of the new PCEra which were filled with PC-98 and X68000 stuff. Fun times.
EDIT: Oh, and the mods did add Jawmuncher to the team shortly after, because they realised they had barely any PC representation on the mod team. That actually did help a little.
Last edited:
3 days for being an internet detective, apparently.
which, yeah, there should be zero tolerance there after some of the fuckery that went on during the latter days of old NeoGAF
This is encouraged. Don't forget that the admins allowed the PC thread to be targeted by trolls, more than once. This is normal for this forum. This is the desired level of discourse when it comes to PC gaming. Don't expect things to get better, because they won't.
To be fair, this has been happening all over the site, not just in PC/Valve threads. Trolling has become extremely common. Even the "safe haven" threads for Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft still get consistently trolled. Go look at he Sony and Microsoft First Party threads and you'll see a few trolling attempts a couple of times a week.
And then of course any individual thread about either might as well just be a disaster. "Arrogant Sony is back" and "Microsoft haz no games" are always being thrown around in their various flavors. Honestly, Nintendo threads are the least-trolled around the forum from what I've seen.
Oh boy do I wish Valve/PC nonsense was just a couple of times a week.
Wow. This is major, major news. The industry standard is 70% cut for publishers, not just consoles but google and Apple too.
Publishers are going to beg for this from console makers. I wonder if this could counter the need to raise games next gen from $59 to $69. Probably not but idk
Publishers are going to beg for this from console makers. I wonder if this could counter the need to raise games next gen from $59 to $69. Probably not but idk
Yes. Steam is going directly after the big publishers "steam replacements".
I think it's clearly this. Like, by a mile, it's this. A lot of publishers with popular titles have been thinking about pulling stuff from Steam, and some have even done it. Valve knows they needed to do this because there actually are a lot of games that will sell no matter where they launch from, and those games tend to be huge revenue games.
This is basically tax cuts for the rich. The ones who are truly having issues with Steam as a business model are the companies that are selling $20 games, not $60 games. It's videogame trickle down economics, basically. (To the point you already have think pieces vaguely trying to explain how these changes will help smaller developers.) This is Valve getting nervous because the AAA scene is looking at Activision's runaway success with Battle.net and saying, "Gee, that could us, right?"
Wait, so people are basically allowed to troll Valve/PC threads with no punishment?
Edit: Wow at some of the posts in the previous pages. I don't normally come on these threads, is this shit actually what normally occurs with this type of thread? It's pretty fucking shameful.
Last edited:
SMH. Probably a good thing I don't normally browse these threads. Mods either need to step the fuck up or add more mods who give a shit about the PC side of things.
They did, it changed nothing lol
The PC OT is fantastic though and filled with friendly posters
It is, in the sense that it is a fact that the big successful games are the big driver of Steam's growth and engagement, which in turn drives discovery and sales of everything else on Steam.
But this is not a "AAA" issue alone, in fact, that isn't so much the case as shown by what the big success are on Steam. It scales to AAA, AA and Indie a like, obviously with a larger lean to AAA. The move aims to retain what is on the service, and I doubt anything will change for those that "left" - which is only EA almost a decade back. GaaS is more of a target for what is going on.
Activision still sell on Steam (see Sekiro recently popping up), same for Bethesda outside of GaaS, which then come to Steam months later. Other companies such as Blizzard, never sold on Steam and likely never will. There certainly has been a larger discussion of transitioning away from Steam for all the massive pubs / devs purely for the sake of a larger profit margin with GaaS, which is obviously something Valve will want to avoid, but this is specifically about Steam not being ignored entirely. Valve don't care about additional stores they can compete with and actively encourage selling elsewhere, but always in addition to Steam - naturally.
Philosophically, it's a fascinating discussion. Valve know their success is coming from the success of the highest revenue titles - 0.5% of those top revenue titles generating 50% of Steam revenue. It is right that those successes driving Steam are recognised, but they have to balance that vs the entire ecosystem, particularly with 3rd party stores / retail with their own cuts based on that 30% thanks to Valve taking 0% and of course the needs of the tiny Indie devs starting up and struggling to get established.
Last edited:
It's interesting to think about. While Blizzard titles have traditionally occupied their own place in the PC DD space, if these adjustments are enough to convince Acti to release Destiny 2, BLOPS 4 and future online-oriented titles on Steam with Uplayesque client integration, then Blizzard titles one day appearing on Steam in the same manner becomes a distinct possibility.
No major publish is going to give Valve even a 5% cut. It does not cost a lot of money to build a web site which accept credit card payments and lets people download games. Launchers are also very cheap to build. The rates in this article are unbelievable and they show why almost all major publishers left Steam and they also show why they are not coming back.
The rates are unbelievable because the cost of selling a game on Steam is very low and the cost Valve is charging is extremely high. For example, for a $60 game, Valve is charging between $18 and $12 a copy to sell the game. It doesn't cost anywhere near $18 to $12 to sell the game. The most expensive thing is the credit card charge which is at most $1.80 (3%). Storage and bandwidth are both very cheap (see Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure). With the advent of cloud services, so is the hardware because you don't need any fixed investment (you can scale up and down your servers as needed). At most, it costs Valve some where between $2 and $3 to make a sale and they are charging $18 (30% cut) to $12 (20% cut) for the sale. Guess what? No publisher or big independent developer is going to let Valve rip them off.
This is also why all of the major Android publishers are going to abandon the Google Play store. Why give Google 30% when you can host your own game for FAR less.
Your entire unnecessarily aggressive post is not only a redundant argument made and debunked several times in this thread you didn't read, but is immediately made nonsense by the fact that Sony, Microsoft, and most other stores that aren't Humble or Itch that sell third-party games take the exact same "extremely high," "rip off" cut.
Those other stores are in locked ecosystems so they can charge high rates and if publishers wish to sell their games on the stores they have to deal with it.
Windows enables anyone to create their own store and bypass Valve.
Likewise, Android does and large Publishers like Epic with Fortnite are starting to replicate what has been happening on Windows for years, make their own stores so they get the profit.
They seem pretty fine with Amazon or GMG taking a 30% cut on Origin or BNET keys sold there'
I would like to comment on a couple of arguments made about Valve's cut in this thread.
"Valve doesn't deserve the same cut as console makers because they don't risk as much"
It's true that Valve doesn't make dedicated gaming boxes yet, but it is false to say that the company didn't have much to risk. Back in the 00s Valve shopped the concept of Steam around to many big companies, including Microsoft and EA. Nobody was interested, not only because creating such a service would be huge investment, but also because this was at a time that the rest of the gaming industry considered or wanted to consider PC gaming a dying platform. I'm sure most of you remember the pre-Steam times. Valve took on the risk that no one else wanted to take, it invested a lot of time, effort and money on a service for a 'dying' platform and it succeeded because that risk paid off. Strictly in terms of risk then, Valve absolutely deserves the same cut as everyone else since it took a massive risk when it turned Steam into a digital download service.
"Valve doesn't deserve the same cut as other similar services because others offer more to the developers"
Some people have argued that Valve doesn't deserve the same cut as, say, Microsoft or Humble or Itch.io or PSN etc. because those services help developers bring in more revenue, maybe through better support or help with marketing or better discoverability. I am not a developer so I have no opinion on the quality of Steam's provided services over the competition. But there is one objective metric of success and that is total sales, total revenue. Do indie games make more money on other platforms? I know about the Switch indie goldrush but that will be a short-lived phenomenon as Nintendo's store fills out. If games are making less or the same amount of money on other platforms, I don't see an argument for Steam reducing its cut since it seems to be offering developers the most important thing, a large and engaged audience that is willing to spend money on games. This is on top of the fact that for many developers Steam is their only way of reaching a large audience, since the store is much more open to small developers compared to console services which are much more strictly curated.
"Valve taking a smaller cut from big games is unfair, the rich get richer"
From the point of view of a struggling indie developer, I very much agree. That extra money would be much more useful to a small developer than a big company or the developer of a breakout indie hit. I have nothing more to say on that, I agree. The other point of view is that of Valve. The company claimed that big games bring more users to the platform and that benefits everyone. The company also provides its full set of services to all of the developers on Steam, which means that a game that sells 100 copies has access to the same tools and services as a game that sells 1 million copies. So if these big games are the ones that mainly support the platform and facilitate its growth, therefore creating a better platform for all developers, then giving some concessions to these developers in order to keep them on the plattorm seems reasonable, if not necessary. However, I have no way of knowing if Valve is being honest about the importance of big games for smaller developers. It could just be an excuse because big publishers can leave Steam but smaller developers can't. As such I will side neither with Valve nor with smaller developers on this issue.
"Valve doesn't deserve the same cut as console makers because they don't risk as much"
It's true that Valve doesn't make dedicated gaming boxes yet, but it is false to say that the company didn't have much to risk. Back in the 00s Valve shopped the concept of Steam around to many big companies, including Microsoft and EA. Nobody was interested, not only because creating such a service would be huge investment, but also because this was at a time that the rest of the gaming industry considered or wanted to consider PC gaming a dying platform. I'm sure most of you remember the pre-Steam times. Valve took on the risk that no one else wanted to take, it invested a lot of time, effort and money on a service for a 'dying' platform and it succeeded because that risk paid off. Strictly in terms of risk then, Valve absolutely deserves the same cut as everyone else since it took a massive risk when it turned Steam into a digital download service.
"Valve doesn't deserve the same cut as other similar services because others offer more to the developers"
Some people have argued that Valve doesn't deserve the same cut as, say, Microsoft or Humble or Itch.io or PSN etc. because those services help developers bring in more revenue, maybe through better support or help with marketing or better discoverability. I am not a developer so I have no opinion on the quality of Steam's provided services over the competition. But there is one objective metric of success and that is total sales, total revenue. Do indie games make more money on other platforms? I know about the Switch indie goldrush but that will be a short-lived phenomenon as Nintendo's store fills out. If games are making less or the same amount of money on other platforms, I don't see an argument for Steam reducing its cut since it seems to be offering developers the most important thing, a large and engaged audience that is willing to spend money on games. This is on top of the fact that for many developers Steam is their only way of reaching a large audience, since the store is much more open to small developers compared to console services which are much more strictly curated.
"Valve taking a smaller cut from big games is unfair, the rich get richer"
From the point of view of a struggling indie developer, I very much agree. That extra money would be much more useful to a small developer than a big company or the developer of a breakout indie hit. I have nothing more to say on that, I agree. The other point of view is that of Valve. The company claimed that big games bring more users to the platform and that benefits everyone. The company also provides its full set of services to all of the developers on Steam, which means that a game that sells 100 copies has access to the same tools and services as a game that sells 1 million copies. So if these big games are the ones that mainly support the platform and facilitate its growth, therefore creating a better platform for all developers, then giving some concessions to these developers in order to keep them on the plattorm seems reasonable, if not necessary. However, I have no way of knowing if Valve is being honest about the importance of big games for smaller developers. It could just be an excuse because big publishers can leave Steam but smaller developers can't. As such I will side neither with Valve nor with smaller developers on this issue.
I know all of this already.
The point of bringing up Sony and Microsoft is to illustrate how the 30% cut is common practice, and if something is accepted by the majority of the industry it's hard to call it "extremely high" and a "rip off." GOG takes 30%, Microsoft's Windows game store very unlikely takes a different percentage than Xbox Live sales, and surprise, Origin and Uplay don't even disclose how much they give to third-party games.
30% is standard. Doing better than 30% is good! But doing the standard is an indifferent result.
And yet again, nobody has a decent argument as to why the former method of Steam competition wasn't good enough, or why the current solution of splitting gamers across numerous different social services - none of which is even attempting to offer a similar feature set to Steam - is a good answer to the "problem" of Steam's "monopoly."
Even Humble's 5% cut has a big asterisk as it applies only to sales completed through the widget or gamepage (not to be confused with store page). It jumps to 25% if the sale was completed through the Humble Store:
https://www.humblebundle.com/developer said:
"We fixed the percentage cut!"
"Yay!"
"We only take less of a cut for developers that already have their own massive infrastructure"
"....."
"Yay!"
"We only take less of a cut for developers that already have their own massive infrastructure"
"....."
Don't you think you should have at least skimmed through this thread before making a drive-by post?
I'm sure Hollow Knight devs have a massive infrastructure...
It's 10 millions USD of revenue.
I read the whole thread (and Valve's actual post on their actual site), but thanks.
Valve should reduce the take across the board.
Ok then. Would you mind elaborating on that? Why should Valve reduce the take?
I actually agree partially with that. But I dont see it happening considering 30% is basically the norm.
Service level doesn't match the take. For both the developers and their customers.
30% basically sticks around because it's not like developers have much of a choice. Even first party on console provides less overall services for that cut and yet, it doesn't move. So every new player to the space will happily start at 30% too.
Reminds me of the bullshit where music labels charge the artists 20% for breakage on song and album sales sold digitally, where there's nothing to break.
Last edited:
From a customer perspective, I honestly don't know who does more to earn their 30%. Especially considering they often don't even get their 30%, as many of my games are bought from key sellers or retailers, but still are served by Steam.
I think it's more that for indies Steam are providing them a more significant service than higher-selling games that are able to self-promote.
OK - You didn't answer any of my arguments. Let me put things very simply. Why would anyone give Valve millions of dollars in fees when they can build their own web site for less? EA, Activision, Ubisoft, Epic and Bethesda all created their own stores instead of using Valve. Basically, most of the major publishers are avoiding Steam because it's a LOT cheaper to sell directly to consumers (*).
So, why do these same publishers sell on the Apple App Store, the Nintendo Switch Store, the Play Station Store and the Xbox Store? The answer is easy. These stores are monopolies and you can only reach iOS, Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox customers by selling on those stores and pay the exorbitant commissions.
Valve's problem is it does not have a captive audience like Apple, Sony, Nintendo and Xbox (Microsoft) do. So, it's screwed because publishers can and will go around Steam and sell directly to their customers. Steam is basically a very expensive middle man which offers very little value to justify its high prices.
(*) For example, if a publisher sells 100,000 copies of a $60 game on Steam, a publisher will get about $4.2 million dollars and Valve gets $1.8 million dollars. If a publisher pays $100,000 to create a web site and 4% per transaction, the publisher will get $5.66 million dollars. This is Valve's basic problem. Even if a game sells a modest number of copies, Valve's fees are so high that a publisher is better off creating its own web site and selling the game itself.
Last edited:
So your argument is that 30% is too much for every such service?
Do you have proof key resellers are getting a 30% cut? If I had to guess, they are getting a very very very small cut (think 0.01 - 2%). Why would they be given more?
How do you think they're able to provide 15 to 25% discounts on games ?
Where do you think the bigger discounts and coupons from stores such as GMG, Fanatical, Voidu, ... come from?
Those discounts come from the stores own cuts (and since coupons tend to be around the 10~25% range, it's very likely that the cut for those stores is 30% as well).
What about GoG, GMG ? Heck even Humble Store which is the best store around takes 25% ?
You're right, they can sell stuff on their own website. For 100% of revenue. But they'll have to handle every purchases, customers, servers, bandwith. And they'll have to do so for the entire life of the game.
That's their choice and guess what: Valve encourages it by allowing free key generation, which can be sold elsewhere for 100% of revenue.