Comment by Hammershaft
1 day ago
Steam uses outsized market power to take an enormous %30 cut so it also does major damage to the games industry.
1 day ago
Steam uses outsized market power to take an enormous %30 cut so it also does major damage to the games industry.
This. As game developer this is a huge problem since outside of top 1% industry is shit poor and platforms squeeze it badly.
Unfortunely needs of game developers and customers are not exactly align. Valve is good steward of their outsized market share when it's comes to gamers interests.
Epic Games tried to shake market with "gamers dont matter" policy (no reviews, no community, worse services) and low fees and failed miserably.
As game developer I'd love to see platform fee of 10%, but as gamer I dont want to buy my games and give power to Tencent, Microsoft or Google.
I could only dream that customer-first platform not owned by VC / PE money like GOG could compete with Steam. Unfortunately unlikely to happen.
The 30% cut is standard, and was so at retail even before Steam existed IIRC.
Of course compared to retail its a great deal but that's because of the huge number of middlemen involved in shipping a game/software back then. It's not like retailer margins were that great.
The 30% is mostly arbitrary though, IMHO had apple decided to charge 20% or 25% when the appstore came out that would have become the industry standard.
Besides being standard, it's also reasonable solely for game developers not having to worry about chargebacks and financial fraud at all. Let alone all the other stuff your game gets, and stuff your game has the option of making use of (like network infrastructure for multiplayer games).
And the cut can't be lower?
The rush to defend Valve's monopoly is so weird since HN usually hates fat cat billionaires. Valve is raking in so much money as a middleman that Gabe Newell has ~$1 billion worth of yachts alone, in addition to the rest of his wealth, yet gamers want Valve to keep on bleeding them and game studios?
The cut lowers to 25% after $10mio and 20% after $50mio iirc.
I can defend steam and its (key) features I need/use (Controllers, Linux gaming, Linux improvements)
I cannot defend valves gambling casino. I also cannot say it's a monopoly.
> And the cut can't be lower?
why should it be lower (or higher)?
steam's cut should be whatever they set, and the market responds. The natural equilibrium would get reached. The value steam provides, imho, certainly justifies their cut imho. There's plenty of other platforms to release games on - including free ones (such as itch.io, or your own website).
8 replies →
Ah yes the Tim Sweeney argument. Get a better service with a lower cut, sure. Why does nobody do that? They must be stupid.
1 reply →
> The rush to defend Valve's monopoly is so weird since HN usually hates fat cat billionaires.
Yes, almost like there's an actual difference between Valve and typical other corporations? Ha ha just kidding, it must be random internet nonsense, definitely not worth applying any brain cells to!
The simple reality is that Valve is just a lot nicer to their customers in terms of behavior and utility than the overwhelming majority of companies, and that means many people cut them more slack for other things. People are willing to forgive a large cut if it feels like you're actually trying to provide an ever-more-useful service, rather than coasting on the bare minimum.
Steam isn't just a little bit better than competing stores/platforms, it's MONUMENTALLY better, and the gap is probably increasing rather than shrinking over time, because other stores don't look like they're even trying in comparison.
On top of their very frequent predatory pricing sales. -90% who the hell can or wants to compete with that? But hey the gamers love it.
That's called market segmentation. The people who either ignore the game or pirate it when it's full price - well they're trying to at least get some money out of those people. That's how sales work in general.