182
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
182 points (100.0% liked)
games
20936 readers
94 users here now
Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
-
3rd International Volunteer Brigade (Hexbear gaming discord)
Rules
- No racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, or transphobia. Don't care if it's ironic don't post comments or content like that here.
- Mark spoilers
- No bad mouthing sonic games here :no-copyright:
- No gamers allowed :soviet-huff:
- No squabbling or petty arguments here. Remember to disengage and respect others choice to do so when an argument gets too much
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
This is not really true. The steam price is what sets the market price and the developer just pockets a bit more money if you buy it elsewhere. They do not drop the price on other stores due to agreements with steam similar to the Amazon "most favored nation" clause.
Steam's high cut is inflating the price of games right now but is at least delivering a good service in return. Once Gabe kicks the bucket though you'll be longing for GFWL over what steam will have become.
I'm only speaking with an element of vagueness as I can't know the exact details of the private agreements and because Valve users subtler methods than the example of Amazon.
We can see some of the contours from the active lawsuits regarding the situation
If distribution costs drop in a competitive market there will be eventually be a corresponding drop in price. Games are not a commodity so you would likely see price drops on some games inside saturated niches while more unique games could retain a higher price.
Not really speaking about the consumers but it has a big impact on Indie developers, and I care about those too.
A partly counter, many devs wouldn't have had a chance at reaching "this is my career now" without steam either. Games like Terraria, stardew, gmod, all would not have sold nearly as well without steam.
As a kid/teen, my dad was much more willing to buy from the same service (steam, amazon, fuckin' runescape, whatever) then let me put his cc into minecraft(.)net. My friend grabbed nubby's number factory because he knows he can throw 2 hours into it and get a refund easily (and is definitely keeping it). Even now, I'm much more willing to buy from steam/itch then go to the devs directly, because then its all in one place that I can see. (Vintagestory is a decent example, having to go grab the updates manually, because they had to recreate a distribution system, was annoying.)
Definitely not saying 30% is fair, but 70% of $1,000,000 is better then 90% of $1,000, or $10,000, or $100,000. Taking the hit is worth it for most devs, especially if they can kick start their development credibility. Ultimately, as someone who wants to make some games, the biggest hurdle isn't taking the 30% hit on future sales, its justifying "investing" my current savings on a project that might not make it to steam, or itch, or my friends at all.
The system sucks, it especially sucks when the "solution" is downloading yet another piece of software and supporting the fortnite factory.
Honestly, every indie dev I see speak on the matter said that the 30% is easily worth it for how much benefits the steam ecosystem offers. Beyond just the storefront (which is better than average on discoverability), you also have systems to easily set regional pricing, APIs for multiplayer integration, friends, invites, achievements, etc.
Of course it would be better if it was lower, but 30% is not unreasonable for how much steams facilitates your work.