Hmmmmm... You may be onto something here.
Especially considering none of this would actually result in lower prices for the consumer, just a larger margin for the publisher.
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Tim Sweeney: Not sure why Steam is still taking 30%
- Thread starter Renekton
- Start date
Hmmmmm... You may be onto something here.
Especially considering none of this would actually result in lower prices for the consumer, just a larger margin for the publisher.
I mean, this is from last year, but it really has been known for donkey's years.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Most of the anti-Steam crowd are just bitter that Valve isn't making first-person shooter games.
kharvey nailed it a few pages back; you start off with the position you don't like Steam, then you backfill reasons to justify it.
That's why you get people twisting themselves into knots to decry Steam's monopoly while arguing with a straight face they should undercut the rest of the market Amazon style which would only worsen the state of affairs they claim to despise.
Dreamwriter
Member
Tim Sweeney apparently doesnt realize that retailers charge about the same amount (although in that case they negotiate terms with each publisher, and part of that cost comes in the form of paying for shelf space). Comparing a large game store to a credit card is a bit strange. Also, saying its because Steam is a monopoly is just as strange, because the iOS App Store charges the same, as does Google Play. And Im pretty sure Steam charged the same 30% before they had a large chunk of the market.
Stone Ocean
Member
That is never going to happen, specially with big name titles.
not only is the comparison moronic, but the numbers provided are wrong. $0.002 /gb is the absolute lowest pricing offered, but only for the biggest clients. and steam doesn't even crack the top 10 WW. and that's ignoring asia, latin america and australia, where bandwith is a lot more expensive. not to mention that at $0.002 akamai, for example, is estimated to lose money.
same for CC, which conveniently ignores transaction fees, chargebacks, forex fees or currency risk. not to mention refunds, support. or capex or development costs.
what a dumb argument to make.
same for CC, which conveniently ignores transaction fees, chargebacks, forex fees or currency risk. not to mention refunds, support. or capex or development costs.
what a dumb argument to make.
LordRaptor
Member
And yet COD went onto Steam specifically to make use of its multiplayer services suite including matchmaking and anti-cheat features
There's some that dislike third party clients in general.
There's certainly arguments for that, but generally it's clear that consumers like stores that bundle different products, instead of having to hunt for each product individually. That's true physically and digitally.
I'm also not sure that especially for indies, a world without steam and co. would be better for them.
LordRaptor
Member
Like I said upthread, they can literally do that right now if they want by selling steam keys on the epicgames homepage.
If that was the actual point of concern here.
FrozenCell
Member
Tim is a known clown - just generate your Steam keys and sell them elsewhere without the 30%
Dreams-Visions
Member
Damn that backfire.
There's a caveat for service games though.
If you put your service games on steam, Valve charges you the 30% on MT's as well ( otherwise everyone would host their F2P game on steam without Valve ever seeing a cent).
This is why many service games only go on steam when their userbase is declining significantly/has plateau'd.
It's also the reason most successful PC games aren't on steam and any claims of monopoly are ridiculous.
Sweeny seems to wants his cake and eat it too. "direct customer relations" but with the exposure a platform like steam provides for free.
What are you even trying to argue? I shouldn't support the billion dollar company because the devs get a bigger cut of my money, but instead I should support the other billion dollar company because people on the Internet like them more.
AHA-Lambda
Member
Completely agreed, that's why I specified international corporations
Fixed.
Nope.
I'm arguing that as a consumer you should never be doing anything for any corporation, just yourself.
Supporting indie developers? Sure I can get that?
But choosing a specific purchase decision to support billion dollar companies (EA, Ubi, Steam, whoever) is just daft
Vulcano's assistant
Banned
Non going steam as in, selling your game on your own with your own website as the storefront.
UE4 Marketplace's costs are higher than Valves.
So what Tim is saying is that he expects users (in this case developers) of the marketplace to pay more for less.
If Steam were to lower their cost, Tim would presumably then argue that Steam is undercutting competitors by offering a rate that they cannot match and claim they are abusing their position of power (ie monopoly)
Either 30% is a fairish number for this kind of service or it isnt. So far its what everyone has settles on. If Apple, Valve, or Google move lower, everyone else will likely follow.
DeathoftheEndless
Crashing this plane... with no survivors!
Yeah, there's plenty of those "curation" whiners too.
actually, the argument is even dumber than I realized since processing charges are obviously for the gross amount.
$50 game
$15 commission
- $1.85 CC (3.5-4%, not sure what they pay for the in store gift cards)
- $0.1 -.15 transaction fee
- $0.5 + $0.75 for refunds (1.25% refunds + transaction fee)
- $0.12 for chargebacks (0.2% cb rate and $15 transaction fee)
=>$11.68
- $1.5 bandwidth (5x 50GB at $0.006)
So right off the bat ignoring any other direct or indirect cost, they are down to $10 or %20. and a %20 gross margin isn't really that outrageous.
edit: oh and say they charged only 20%, which apparently also is too much for Sweeney.
Since they have to pay the same as before, Valve would end up with $5 or 10% gross. and with 10% they'd lose money.
$50 game
$15 commission
- $1.85 CC (3.5-4%, not sure what they pay for the in store gift cards)
- $0.1 -.15 transaction fee
- $0.5 + $0.75 for refunds (1.25% refunds + transaction fee)
- $0.12 for chargebacks (0.2% cb rate and $15 transaction fee)
=>$11.68
- $1.5 bandwidth (5x 50GB at $0.006)
So right off the bat ignoring any other direct or indirect cost, they are down to $10 or %20. and a %20 gross margin isn't really that outrageous.
edit: oh and say they charged only 20%, which apparently also is too much for Sweeney.
Since they have to pay the same as before, Valve would end up with $5 or 10% gross. and with 10% they'd lose money.
TheRedSnifit
Member
I chalk it up to console wars. To many, Steam is the face of PC gaming, so people attack them to defend the honor of their own plastic boxes.
It's basically the same reason you see so much whining about PUBG's popularity here.
Psst - there is a reason i wrote "normal case".
If you are the next big thing you can find success outside steam.
For the average indie dev who is on it's own the situation is a "little" different.
Doesn't change or contradict what i said.
Or others could follow.
Completely agreed, that's why I specified international corporations
Fixed.
Nope.
I'm arguing that as a consumer you should never be doing anything for any corporation, just yourself.
Supporting indie developers? Sure I can get that?
But choosing a specific purchase decision to support billion dollar companies (EA, Ubi, Steam, whoever) is just daft
Buying from directly from the dev is obviously best for them. Steam even lets the dev keep 100% of the sale price if the dev sell it on his own website.
Then some devs sell their games without client attached at all.
The existence of the 30% cut on the storefront itself doesn't stop that at all. CDPR, most prominently, sold the Witcher 3 significantly cheaper on GOG than on steam, in part because they could offer it for cheaper due to no cut. They achieved a 50% market share in the launch window.
Clearly it's no issue for the competition to compete on price, if they actually want to.
Demanding Valve undercuts everyone else would make that impossible though, which is why this is a really strange demand from sweeny.
Head.spawn
Junior Member
They would still need a Steam storefront page though, right?
So you think other stores could take a smaller cut of the sale and survive? What if Steam drastically cuts it to the point that devs only want to sell on Steam? What do you think would die first in a race to the bottom? Steam or other smaller stores?
Predatory Pricing ring a bell?
Stone Ocean
Member
Yeah, because its as simple as that, just lower the prices of every storefront even if they can't afford to.
If you want Steam to be an actual monopoly just say so.
oldergamer
Member
I find it a little funny that there is armchair outrage at this now, when it's been in practice since nearly the start of Steam. When I found out about it years ago, I thought to myself why would I want to put something on PC with that sort of split. It can actually be bigger than that too.
I agree with Tim Sweeny in that valve takes too big a cut.
I agree with Tim Sweeny in that valve takes too big a cut.
zombieshavebrains
I have not used cocaine
Dude is an idiot. Trying to start a useless dialogue with Apple and oranges haha.
What if they can't afford to? What then? What if, say, Humble's costs mean they can't go lower than 20% and Valve charges 10%? They lose sales to Valve, or just run a loss. You're asking for competitors to be run out of the game.
I hope then you dont ever sell anything on a console. Especially physical.
Stone Ocean
Member
So you wouldn't make digital versions of your games then considering every storefront takes the same cut.
balladofwindfishes
Member
There are entire regions of the world with bustling PC gaming communities that do not have Steam, or where Steam never took off (Asia).
So Steam is a monopoly on "western made indie games that don't make it big." Since we can't count indie games that made it big (Minecraft) and we can't count major game companies (EA, Blizzard), we've created such a narrow view of the market Valve dominates that it's entirely pointless.
You don't see how stupid such a narrow view is? Plenty of games of all shapes and sizes have done well without Steam.
Or others can't afford to follow. If GOG can't afford to match Steam's cut without going out of business, then RIP GOG.
On one hand you're saying devs are forced to go on Steam to survive and then suggesting that Steam should make a change that makes it even harder for a dev to survive outside of Steam. What are you even asking for?
Always-honest
Banned
I don't see anything wrong with that percentage when it brings you a huse audience and potentially a huge income.
I understand that the more established devs don't want to pay that anymore. But hey, that's how it works.
Try without steam then.
I understand that the more established devs don't want to pay that anymore. But hey, that's how it works.
Try without steam then.
If it isn't an assumption tell me where the border lies.
You can't.
The theory isn't an assumption, you artificially setting the border at xy% is.
TheRedSnifit
Member
Steam is a monopoly! Also, they should undercut the competition, which definitely won't risk driving them out of business and further cementing Steam's dominance!!
I'm thinking this through guys, really!!!
Economics isn't real guys!!!!
If everyone is charging the same at 30%, yet Valve has market dominance and there is no alternative, how is that dynamic going to change if everyone is charging 10%?
On which platform would you sell instead? out of curiosity.
What about Sweeny taking that same cut on his store?
Phrozenflame500
Member
I'm not sure "Steam is a monopoly if you ignore every single major AAA publisher, a few indie titles, the entire console market and GOG" will hold up in an anti-trust suit but you do you.
And phones.