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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2025
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He exploited gambling addictions and taking 30% from devs by doing nothing. Earned is a pretty strong word.
If this was true steam would have failed from the start. Instead, the service actually does offer a ton of benefits to both users and developers/publishers including distribution of sales, updates, additional features like forums, friends, and other things that have varying levels of positive or negative benefits to different people. That isn't even mentioning Proton or the steam deck, just what it between the makers of the games and the people who play them.
Lootboxes are bullshit, sure. He should have spread out the benefits more to the employees as well. But the 30% cut for 'nothing' is incorrect.
Valve only cares about Linux so far as their cut is concerned it’s not a humanitarian mission. The entire steam platform is incredibly dated, I mean it’s still 32 bit only for fucks sale, they developed a reasonable feature set two decades ago and have been coasting on their laurels ever since. Devs can’t complain because there’s no better alternative, it’s a captive market.
Steam has been coasting on the fact that everyone shoots themselves in the foot, sure, but you should look into the unparalleled level of "free" (30% cut) marketing support Steam gives to developers. On no other platform could developers end up with the visibility they achieve on Steam with nothing more than very strategic timing and good social media presence. It's still insanely hard, but the fact that it's even possible to compete with zero marketing budget against AAA companies speaks volumes.
You only get that "marketing" if your game is already popular. So the 99% of games not getting that visibility are paying the same as those free that are.
Blatantly untrue, as update visibility rounds are one of several marketing tools Steam gives you that can put your game on the front page for free, regardless of popularity.
Kitfox Games has published a guide (one among many you can find on the internet) on how to successfully market a game with no advertising budget. While their existing audience definitely helped, and as they mention, it takes a significant amount of time and effort, they do not spend actual money on sponsorships or advertising. This would not be a viable strategy on any other storefront, save maybe Epic, though Epic still gives fewer tools than Steam.
It's not untrue. Most games never get that exposure. You have to be popular within a certain time frame to get any chance at showing up. You can try to game it, sure, but most will fail to achieve that
I'm not saying it isn't insanely hard (actually I mentioned that fact twice), I'm just trying to point out that Steam gives developers more tools for visibility than any storefront that exists, with most storefronts giving no tools whatsoever. Any game with no marketing budget selling enough to support a multiple-person development team, when they have to compete directly with AAA games, is impressive for both the developer and the platform.
If you want to advocate for improvements and change, you can't just ignore the positive things that already exist.
~Also you clearly didn't read the page about the update visibility rounds, because those have nothing to do with popularity and are completely randomized regarding who among the recently-updated games gets a spot on the front page. In fact, your game gets rotated off that spot once you've gotten 1 million impressions.~