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this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Yes, it's all massive profiting, driving the cost of everything up, or putting less money into the hands of the people who make the thing you like.
When I really love a game, it bothers me that valve, or apple, or Google, or Sony, take 1/3rd of the money. They don't deserve it.
What if you could buy direct from the publisher or developer, but you could only download the game once? Let's say you could still install it any number of times on any device so long as you had the source file in this scenario. Would you still be willing to pay $60 for a major title?
Would your willingness to buy a game change if you couldn't get a refund in the above scenario, regardless of time played?
.... like a disk or cart? Yes that's fine. I do that.
Sure, that's fine for a release that has a physical edition, but many do not.
Also, when buying physical copies I'm guessing that the dev gets an even smaller cut, but it probably depends on the retail location to a large degree.
What percentage of the sales price do you suppose goes towards the outside companies that print the disks and make the packaging?
Fortunately thanks to steam allowing free key generation you can buy directly from the publisher and still get all the features of steam except refunds maybe.
That's the same as buying from Steam. The publisher pays Steam and then gives the key to the customer. They get the same cut either way.
Steam doesn't take a cut on keys.
That's great if true. I'm seeing a lot of different information when searching for that though. Older sources say valve doesn't get a cut, but newer sources are saying that deva can only issue 5000 free keys. Do you have a more recent source with a definitive answer?
Relevant sections from the official documentation: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
There is no fee but you can be denied keys if you have already requested over 5000. I don't know how often that happens but IIRC the 5000 limit was added to stop abuse by mainly shovelware developers.