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I make games and this literally happened to me this morning (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 months ago by Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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Inspired by true events from this morning

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[-] Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world 180 points 3 months ago

For context: I make indie games and have released two so far and I'm currently working on the third one which is weird as fuck. So the way that Steam works is, they don't send you money anytime you make a sale, but they send all of it at the end of every month. Now September is almost over and I got an e-mail titled "Steam Payment Notification" and I get all hyped up. I open it and read it that the Payment Notification is actually that there is no Payment since I didn't make $100 in sales. Way to hype me up and bring me down, Steam.

[-] SirDerpy@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Does Steam take a cut for distribution?

If not, while this emotionally sucks, they've a solid operational policy.

[-] Road_Warrior_10@lemmy.world 39 points 3 months ago

Yes, their cut is 30% which is a lot, but they are pretty much the only big platform out there. Epic games has been trying to get in the game but so far they are not close. Their cut is 15%.

[-] SirDerpy@lemmy.world 33 points 3 months ago

I want to note that you'd need about $143 in gross sales to meet the threshold of $100 in net profit.

On the surface that sounds like a lot. But, they're providing a service without any guarantee of any income. Epic can only compete because they've few users and are willing to operate at a near loss in attempt to garner market share.

This will be a difficult one for others to understand as a "good deal". Gamers are usually correct when they pull out their pitchforks. This should not be one of those times.

[-] Zedstrian@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 3 months ago

While I'm no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve's market dominance in PC game sales isn't a good thing for developers or consumers.

[-] SirDerpy@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

Competition in capitalism is always better than a lack thereof. But, we've not busted monopolies in a significant way since Ma Bell. And, even if we were, at 75% of the global market share they'd not warrant any action yet.

There's going to be a dominant organization because late stage capitalism sucks. And, I'd rather it be Valve than some alternative trying to fuck me over at every opportunity.

[-] AlotOfReading@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

The thing is, steam's market dominance is one of user choice rather than anticompetitive strategies or lack of alternatives. Steam doesn't do exclusives, they don't charge you for external sales, they don't even prevent you from selling steam keys outside the platform, or users from launching non steam games in the client. The only real restriction is that access to steam services requires a license in the active steam account. Even valve-produced devices like the steam deck can install from other stores.

Sure, dominance is bad in an abstract theoretical way and it'd be nice if Gog, itch.io, etc were more competitive, but Steam is dominant because consumers actively choose it.