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EU fines Apple $568m for deterring third-party payment methods on App Store
(www.gamesindustry.biz)
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this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2025
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Hating on Apple for their 30% cut is popular.
Hating on Google for their 30% cut is popular.
Hating on Microfot, Sony, and Nintendo for their cuts is popular.
But somehow hating on Steam for their 30% cut is going too far.
Steam's 30% is the last of their problems, I would like them to finally start actually moderating Steam forums. Because devs of the particular game usually don't care. Visit some forums of newly released popular game and it's full of bigots, misogyny, trolls and hate. It's unbelievable.
Go check oblivion remastered
Bigots, Misogyny, Trolls & Hate is translation for I want people censored because I am on a power-trip. These are vague & nebulous & why don't you & your buddies go counter them
& Good one mate, because I have been there.
Oh shit, one of those losers is here.
I get why people like steam. But as a steam hater, if GabeN ever dies and the kids or whoever is heirs are decide to sell to VCs or private equity. That 30% will be just as oppressive as anyone else’s.
Perhaps that's because Steam doesn't seem to be trying very hard to "lock in" developers to their platform. Devs are free to sell their PC games on Gog or Epic or whatever. Steam is popular because it's a good platform. This freedom for developers or customers mostly does not exist on mobile or on consoles, except for the EUs efforts here.
Even their "console" the Steam Deck can, relatively easily, run games from other stores. I'm not saying a 30% cut should be considered fair but they do seem to take a different approach to digital sales than the other large players.
Yeah it’s arguable that Steam is a monopoly but somehow billion dollar publishers can’t create a store to sell their own products without fucking it up with annoying bullshit. Pay the 30% to protect you from yourselves.
Yeah, Steam is pretty much a monopoly. But I haven't seen what I'd call monopolistic practices from them. It's just that everyone else appears to fall flat on their faces when trying to make a competing product.
It's weird because steam isn't even that amazing at what it does and even some of the features I like can be tempremental or downright buggy at times.
Once I saw the power of Steam on Linux, I knew no other company could touch them.
You could say the same about Google.
The same Google that's been constantly trying to add features that deter 3rd party app stores?
Such as?
Google SafetyNet. You have rooted your device and/or are using a custom ROM? Then your device definitely isn't secure and a lot of apps straight up prevent you from using them.
Google Play protect
Steam is equally shitty, they just have the advantage of not being publicly traded which means they can create long term strategies and execute them successfully.
Doesn't mean they're pro consumer.
Would not say equally shitty, otherwise they won't have popular support they do.
You are correct however that they are not pro consumer.
They are just a smarter, wiser business with a sustainable business model that understands the importance of consumer trust.
Steam reduced their cut to 20% for the biggest publishers, let's see any of the others do that. They also allow other stores on the steam deck. They also allow steam keys and shouldn't demand MFN pricing.
Their cut is worth it to users for the same reasons as an iOS and Android user might say, except when it comes to switching platforms, your steam games can come with you to rival platforms and not just friendly ones.
Epic charges 12%, but they're somehow the villain.
Not really, they're the villain for doing exclusives. Steam never did exclusives, at least not with 3rd party devs.
That's exactly what Steam Greenlight was before they stopped all curation of games.
I'd like to see a game developer chiming in but as a user, 30% cut by Steam feels justified.
They have helped me discover and buy many games that I wouldn't have even heard of otherwise. Compare that to Google Play Store which is full of dogshit shovelware and Pay2Win games.
And sometimes I've even bought Steam keys via Fanatical bundles, where I chose which games to buy by looking at their Steam store pages. Steam got nothing from these transactions as far as I know.
This is without getting into other useful stuff like guides and forums hosted by Steam which I can look at whenever I get stuck. Or Steam workshop which allows users to easily mod the games.
Call me a fanboy but I'm tired of this 'what about Steam' comments.
Ask Sony, Microsoft, Google, and Nintendo to improve their stores instead.
Fair, but there is an argument to be made about how hosting things are now cheaper than ever, by a huge margin. When 1GB used to cost 1 dollar, they had 30% cut. Now when that's 0.01 not 1, 100x the difference (while games have gotten like what, 10x bigger?), it's still 30%.
But you know what is the most damning argument against their cut? Steam earns more money per employee than next 3 companies combined and Gabe is buying fleet of yachts and multiple submarines, not even getting into real estate, while indie devs are going broke one after another. That cut might make a major difference for devs, but at this point Gabe has already too much money and won't suffer from having less of it, which is really not consumer or developer friendly thing to do, basically hoarding riches like other billionaires
Steam gets a pass because they actually offer buyer protection, refunds if it doesn’t work, refunds under certain requirements which can be waved under certain circumstances, removal of day one season passes, refunds for dlc that gets delayed too long for example.
If an actual competitor gave a shit about things that matter to actual players than they have a shot. Epic Game Store is a joke because no one wants a store that only focuses on what corporations want. GOG is good but just doesn’t market itself well, seriously outside of launching CDPR games I don’t see it at all.
Getting companies to offer their games on platforms that offer a higher margin is easy. Getting players over to a platform that offers less protections and features is not going to happen.
I was denied a refund for a broken game on Steam Deck just last winter. I had never played or even installed it, but I had purchased it and let it sit in my backlog too long before trying.
By comparison, I can’t recall a single time I’ve been denied a refund request from the iPhone App Store. They’ve also never sold me software that couldn’t run on the hardware they also sold me.
I understand how it’s my fault according to steam’s ToS, but it still doesn’t seem right to me.
You get value from Steam for paying that.
What value do you get from Apple for paying the Apple tax? A higher price for a phone that could cost 500€ less?
What exactly is the value that steam provides with its 30% cut that Apple doesn’t provide? Not defending Apple by the way.
Openness of the hardware is a valid point but that isn’t exactly a feature of steam (nor a distinction between the other platforms in OPs comment)
Apple forces me to stay there.
Valve offers me to stay there. The whole market and review system is incredibly important as I can see if it's even worth it to buy. Where else can you see reviews besides comparing numerous comments under video reviews?