Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
This thread is a riot
So many people have no idea how business works
So many people have no idea how business works
You also need to factor in that some indie publishers will take an additional 30% for their marketing help. That doesn't leave a lot for the developer/
The idea that the features of the platform are irrelevant to Steam's market position is some disengenous shit.
After the earlier discussion in the thread, I thought an interesting thought experiment would be to find out what Valve's effective cut would be for a variety of AAA games. By "effective cut", what I mean is assuming they take 30% for on-Steam sales and 0% for off-Steam sales. This, note, does not include the fact that they lose money on off-Steam sales because of e.g. costs of running Steam and people being able to download the game, just the assumption that they get 0% on the copies sold elsewhere.
Here's how I proxy this; Steam reviews indicate if a game was sold on Steam or not sold on Steam. Although it may be the case that off-Steam purchasers are more or less likely to leave a review than on-Steam purchasers, for the purposes of this thought experiment, let's assume they are equally likely. As a result, I can extract the percentage of sales that are on-Steam versus off-Steam and use that to calculate Valve's effective take. There are a few methodological reasons why this isn't quite accurate, but the errors seem like they are conservative in some cases and permissive in others so I'd say this is ballpark true.
All games aren non-F2P, released for at least 1 year, by different publishers, at different pricepoints, different genres, and sold on at least one external store:
Final Fantasy VII: 25.7%
Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga: 25.6%
Grand Theft Auto V: 25.5%
Five Nights at Freddy's: 24.9%
Dead Space 2: 24.1%
Max Payne 3: 23.9%
The Witness: 23.3%
RimWorld: 22.1%
The Walking Dead Season 1: 22.0%
Enslaved: 22.0%
Fallout: New Vegas: 21.3%
Football Manager 2017: 21.3%
Resident Evil 5: 20.9%
Cook, Serve, Delicious: 19.5%
Hitman: Absolution: 19.3%
Just Cause 3: 18.9%
Dead Rising 3: 18.9%
Dark Souls II: 18.5%
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor: 18.4%
Burnout Paradise: 18.2%
The Evil Within: 17.1%
Napoleon: Total War: 14.8%
The median of that list is around 21%. So perhaps the people arguing "Why doesn't Valve take 20%" might observe that Valve does, in fact, take 20% under real world conditions.
You know how I know this is a Steam thread?
Look at all of the people who don't use Steam and don't know anything at all about Steam, chiming in about what Steam is.
this this this this this
anyone who disputes this, again, doesn't use Steam, and doesn't know a fucking thing about Steam
Every Steam thread is.This thread is embarrassing.
this this this this this
anyone who disputes this, again, doesn't use Steam, and doesn't know a fucking thing about Steam
I thought 30% was common knowledge. Pretty much the same as the consoles.
Yeah I don't see any controversy adhering to industry standards. Obviously, if you are like Blizzard or an Asian MMO company and have transaction histories with customers about as long as Valve's, you will keep rolling with that infrastructure. But I don't see the point of showing up a decade late to the party and then complaining that Valve acted first and spent the money to build a huge, very active customer base.Same as the consoles, same as the Epic Launcher, same as iOS, same as Android.
I'll parrot for the millionth time, the 30% is the same across all platforms. The App store, Amazon store, Google Play, PSN, XBL, and every other store take the same cut.
Steam is not a monopoly. I'll prove it. Let's play a game. This is the list of the top grossing PC games of 2015. Which ones were sold on Steam?
But GAF tried to convince me that Steam doesn't have an effective monopoly on the Western market for the vast majority of devs.
Isn't Spotify #1 in that platform?
Honestly I think it's just jealousy at this point. It's the only reasonable explanation aside from absolute ignorance for why console players still think Steam is some kind of robber baron boogeyman when in actuality PC has the most diverse marketplace in the industry. (i.e. Steam, Origin, UPlay, GOG, Battle.net, Humble Bundle, LoL, etc.)How this thread makes me feel:
me
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what is wrong with you people
After the earlier discussion in the thread, I thought an interesting thought experiment would be to find out what Valve's effective cut would be for a variety of AAA games. By "effective cut", what I mean is assuming they take 30% for on-Steam sales and 0% for off-Steam sales. This, note, does not include the fact that they lose money on off-Steam sales because of e.g. costs of running Steam and people being able to download the game, just the assumption that they get 0% on the copies sold elsewhere.
Here's how I proxy this; Steam reviews indicate if a game was sold on Steam or not sold on Steam. Although it may be the case that off-Steam purchasers are more or less likely to leave a review than on-Steam purchasers, for the purposes of this thought experiment, let's assume they are equally likely. As a result, I can extract the percentage of sales that are on-Steam versus off-Steam and use that to calculate Valve's effective take. There are a few methodological reasons why this isn't quite accurate, but the errors seem like they are conservative in some cases and permissive in others so I'd say this is ballpark true.
All games aren non-F2P, released for at least 1 year, by different publishers, at different pricepoints, different genres, and sold on at least one external store:
Final Fantasy VII: 25.7%
Lego Star Wars The Complete Saga: 25.6%
Grand Theft Auto V: 25.5%
Five Nights at Freddy's: 24.9%
Dead Space 2: 24.1%
Max Payne 3: 23.9%
The Witness: 23.3%
RimWorld: 22.1%
The Walking Dead Season 1: 22.0%
Enslaved: 22.0%
Fallout: New Vegas: 21.3%
Football Manager 2017: 21.3%
Resident Evil 5: 20.9%
Cook, Serve, Delicious: 19.5%
Hitman: Absolution: 19.3%
Just Cause 3: 18.9%
Dead Rising 3: 18.9%
Dark Souls II: 18.5%
Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor: 18.4%
Burnout Paradise: 18.2%
The Evil Within: 17.1%
Napoleon: Total War: 14.8%
The median of that list is around 21%. So perhaps the people arguing "Why doesn't Valve take 20%" might observe that Valve does, in fact, take 20% under real world conditions.
Sweeney's point has been missed. Like visa and MasterCard, Valve adds very little into the chain: all three are parasitic rent seekers, and valve is worse because they take 30%. It is a slam highlighting how little valve does for gaming in general given how much they take from it.
I'll just quote this, since there's not really any way I can do better:Sweeney's point has been missed. Like visa and MasterCard, Valve adds very little into the chain: all three are parasitic rent seekers, and valve is worse because they take 30%. It is a slam highlighting how little valve does for gaming in general given how much they take from it.
(Except to note that the "Several engine tech stacks, including the major tech stack for VR, completely free" really is very significant, even outside the obvious stuff which most enthusiasts know about like VR)They handle:
- Credit card processing, including payment processing for every payment processor in every country
- Historically, giving you literally hundreds of thousands of front page impressions -- not sure if they still guarantee this but historically they did; I know they currently guarantee tons of patch update impressions on the front page
- Unlimited keys for external sales which they take 0% on
- All handling of refunds and chargebacks
- A marketplace for item content, which they only take 10% on
- A marketplace for trading cards, which are free for developers, where each sale they take 10% on
- Custom art and promotion in major sale events
- Hosting every download and redownload, all patches and patch downloads, all costs associated with patch certification
- Hosting preloads
- Closed beta tests and interactive branching for deployment
- Cloud saves and storage for all your users in perpetuity
- Coupons and targeted user contacts
- A pretty effective anti-cheat system, yours for free
- A community discussion forum and an unlimited supply of free labour to moderate it if you need it
- Purchase support in every major language
- Steam Days
- Matchmaking
- Leaderboards
- Several engine tech stacks, including the major tech stack for VR, completely free
- An audience of 100 million users
Of course you might say you can do without some of these and roll your own for some of these (also, when you discontinue your roll-your-own service 3 years from now because you can't afford it, I hope you enjoy an unending torrent of complaints for your customers because you demanded not to have to pay 30%). But the idea that "lol if u add up mastercard and my cdn costs steam ain't worth 30%" is stupid as hell.
The monopoly / monopsony arguments seem totally incoherent; maybe 6 or 7 of the the 10 biggest games on PC aren't on Steam at all.
You are completely and utterly wrong. Steam does more than any of them for its users, without asking them for a monthly fee. And, as outlined above, it does at least as much for developers too.Could the same charges be levelled at Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft? IDK to be honest. Steam just seems to be a kinda crappy digital storefront, could be wrong tho.
And the discussion here has been knowledgeable folks who know what they're talking about explaining why that's completely incorrect.
I'm shocked at all the people who didn't realize Valve takes a 30% cut of all Steam sales. I assumed it was common knowledge. It's been mentioned here on GAF multiple times in the past.
The short answer to Tim's question is that Valve takes a 30% cut because they can. Valve has created tons of loyal customers who have addict-level dependency habits. They refuse to buy anything unless it's 90% off. They refuse to purchase on any store that isn't Steam. As long as Valve hold a this mindshare over PC Gamers, they can charge whatever the hell they want and people will let them.
They don't extract a fuck ton of money from the system while giving the gaming world nothing but a kinda crappy storefront? Do they have scholarship programs? Third world game dev outreach? Etc? If so, my apologies.
So you're just going to ignore this post? http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=246822768&postcount=621
They refuse to buy anything unless it's 90% off.
They refuse to purchase on any store that isn't Steam.
They don't extract a fuck ton of money from the system while giving the gaming world nothing but a kinda crappy storefront? Do they have scholarship programs? Third world game dev outreach? Etc? If so, my apologies.
I'll just quote this, since there's not really any way I can do better:
(Except to note that the "Several engine tech stacks, including the major tech stack for VR, completely free" really is very significant, even outside the obvious stuff which most enthusiasts know about like VR)
You are completely and utterly wrong. Steam does more than any of them for its users, without asking them for a monthly fee. And, as outlined above, it does at least as much for developers too.
Sweeney's point has been missed. Like visa and MasterCard, Valve adds very little into the chain: all three are parasitic rent seekers, and valve is worse because they take 30%. It is a slam highlighting how little valve does for gaming in general given how much they take from it.
Have you actually read the post I quoted above?They don't extract a fuck ton of money from the system while giving the gaming world nothing but a kinda crappy storefront?
Yeah, but they're not trying to cure world hunger, so it's just a "kinda crappy storefront" we're getting for that 30%.
Just saw the list of stuff, maybe it is worth 30%. :shrug:
It is a unique monopoly that doesn't overcharge/rent seek. I doubt valve is such a unicorn.
By crappy you mean the best and most feature rich on PC, right?
Sweeney's point has been missed. Like visa and MasterCard, Valve adds very little into the chain: all three are parasitic rent seekers, and valve is worse because they take 30%. It is a slam highlighting how little valve does for gaming in general given how much they take from it.
Could the same charges be levelled at Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft? IDK to be honest. Steam just seems to be a kinda crappy digital storefront, could be wrong tho.
My dude, I think you should stop posting now.
By crappy you mean the best and most feature rich on PC, right?
Lol, yeah, I'm done...too many know-it-all angry fans for this know-little tired non-fan.
Lol, yeah, I'm done...too many know-it-all angry fans for this know-little tired non-fan.
You clearly know very little about the platform then. Why wouldn't you attempt to research your opinions before posting? Just wanted to throw that hot sports opinion out there? It's been stated multiple times by multiple people what exactly steam is and does. Needless to say this is another ridiculous Sweeney quote.
It is a phenomenon, but how similar are console and pc audiences? For example, GTA online is huge, but is anyone on pc playing that?
Lol, yeah, I'm done...too many know-it-all angry fans for this know-little tired non-fan.
Lol, yeah, I'm done...too many know-it-all angry fans for this know-little tired non-fan.
I sincerely have no idea why do people that don't know what they're talking about feel the need to give stupid-ass statements about these things. I don't own a PS4, but I don't go into a PS4 thread to shitpost about it, how the download speeds are terrible, how the security is bad, how there's no refunds or anything else.
30% is some goddamn highway robbery.
Gabe, make Half-Life 3 and we let it slide.
Lol, yeah, I'm done...too many know-it-all angry fans for this know-little tired non-fan.
It would be perfectly fine for you to go into a PS4 thread.
However, one should read the thread before posting their hot takes. Most often if a person knows nothing other people will have done the legwork to help a know-nothing become a know-something.