Higher revenue cut for publishers. That’s it. This is just a big anti-consumer pissing contest about who gets a bigger slice of the pie when a sale is made. Everything else is just distracting noise. If Valve charged 5% then none of this other stuff would matter. Valve charges 30% base with some sweetheart deals for devs who sell millions of copies. Same as Sony, Nintendo, Apple, and most other online software marketplaces.
This is a high percentage to pay vs retail margins for a brick & mortar storefront, but a reasonable percentage when you think of it as a customer acquisition cost. So the question is, did I go to Steam to buy the game or did I go to Steam and buy the game? Everyone will have a different opinion on this, but in my opinion Valve revived PC gaming when it was on the brink, and a large percentage of sales that happen on the platform are because of the eyeballs it brings and the value it delivers.
Borderlands 4 coming back to Steam is strong evidence of this, even with Epic essentially paying developers the difference in potential lost sales out of pocket. You can’t pay for the lost conversations, word-of-mouth, and other “free” advertising that those lost sales would have generated. So Borderlands 3 looks great on a balance sheet, but nobody really liked it or cared about it, and Epic won’t pay you to make games nobody plays forever.
It might seem better for the storefront to take less of a cut from a consumer perspective, but in reality it barely matters. This doesn’t go towards reducing game costs for consumers or improving bonuses & wages for developers. The market has already been set. Any behind the scenes change in revenue sharing just goes to the next group in line, which is of course the already wealthy and massive publishers.
So do whatever works for you. Just don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes and act like this fight is about anything other than which already very rich people get slightly richer.
What developers seem to forget is how much stuff they get in return from Valve:
Valve invests heavily into Linux gaming, because they know it’s how you keep all those games working in the long run. (Proton)
Valve takes care of download bandwidth forever.
Built-in streaming and remote play together
The Steam Deck and upcoming SteamOS for the console-like experience
Forums
The workshop and mods
Chat and social networking features
Steam Input, and my beloved Steam Controller
Achievements
The Epic store is just, here’s the game files loaded with DRM, try to enjoy. Why even sell through a store and not provide a direct download at this point and get 100% of the sales?
I only buy on Steam because I want Valve to have their 30% cut, because they invest it in the community for everyone’s benefit, including Epic’s games and customers who want to play on Linux or the Steam Deck. Epic would be perfectly happy with the subbar Windows handheld experience because “it’s how PC gaming works”. Proton is amazing, it even eliminates variance that would exist on real Windows machines which results in more games just working right out of the box compared to Windows, esepcially very old ones.
Between Epic and Valve, I’ll pick the one that makes gaming better for everyone.
Don’t forget cloud saves. Saving millions of peoples thousands of games I’m sure takes up some disk space and cost even if users don’t launch the game again.
basically how i see it is it only makes better sense from a consumer standpoint if the decreased developer cost is ALSO decreasing the upfront user cost to buying the game, as the worst policy that Valve has on steam is that the games base price has to be the same on all storefronts.
however in reality, most developers do not pass some of that savings to consumers and just take the cut for themselves. So devs are basically playing againt future benefits on growing a larger consumer base on a different platform for more upfront profit.
basically most of the investment money that epic throws is thrown at development and developers, and basically outside of free games, none of it is thrown back into making the platform better for consumers. Developers can complain however much they want that steam has a “consumer monopoly” (while ignoring the fact that other companies like Riot, and mobile game companies with PC clients like Mihoyo does fine without steam). this will continue to happen until epic reinvests some of that money into their client, or devs actually use the benefits of taking a lower cut and biting the bullet and regularly passing some of it off to consumers.
regardless of the situation, developers are stopping developers ultimately if they want to break the “consumer monopoly”
Higher revenue cut for publishers. That’s it. This is just a big anti-consumer pissing contest about who gets a bigger slice of the pie when a sale is made. Everything else is just distracting noise. If Valve charged 5% then none of this other stuff would matter. Valve charges 30% base with some sweetheart deals for devs who sell millions of copies. Same as Sony, Nintendo, Apple, and most other online software marketplaces.
This is a high percentage to pay vs retail margins for a brick & mortar storefront, but a reasonable percentage when you think of it as a customer acquisition cost. So the question is, did I go to Steam to buy the game or did I go to Steam and buy the game? Everyone will have a different opinion on this, but in my opinion Valve revived PC gaming when it was on the brink, and a large percentage of sales that happen on the platform are because of the eyeballs it brings and the value it delivers.
Borderlands 4 coming back to Steam is strong evidence of this, even with Epic essentially paying developers the difference in potential lost sales out of pocket. You can’t pay for the lost conversations, word-of-mouth, and other “free” advertising that those lost sales would have generated. So Borderlands 3 looks great on a balance sheet, but nobody really liked it or cared about it, and Epic won’t pay you to make games nobody plays forever.
It might seem better for the storefront to take less of a cut from a consumer perspective, but in reality it barely matters. This doesn’t go towards reducing game costs for consumers or improving bonuses & wages for developers. The market has already been set. Any behind the scenes change in revenue sharing just goes to the next group in line, which is of course the already wealthy and massive publishers.
So do whatever works for you. Just don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes and act like this fight is about anything other than which already very rich people get slightly richer.
What developers seem to forget is how much stuff they get in return from Valve:
The Epic store is just, here’s the game files loaded with DRM, try to enjoy. Why even sell through a store and not provide a direct download at this point and get 100% of the sales?
I only buy on Steam because I want Valve to have their 30% cut, because they invest it in the community for everyone’s benefit, including Epic’s games and customers who want to play on Linux or the Steam Deck. Epic would be perfectly happy with the subbar Windows handheld experience because “it’s how PC gaming works”. Proton is amazing, it even eliminates variance that would exist on real Windows machines which results in more games just working right out of the box compared to Windows, esepcially very old ones.
Between Epic and Valve, I’ll pick the one that makes gaming better for everyone.
Don’t forget cloud saves. Saving millions of peoples thousands of games I’m sure takes up some disk space and cost even if users don’t launch the game again.
basically how i see it is it only makes better sense from a consumer standpoint if the decreased developer cost is ALSO decreasing the upfront user cost to buying the game, as the worst policy that Valve has on steam is that the games base price has to be the same on all storefronts.
however in reality, most developers do not pass some of that savings to consumers and just take the cut for themselves. So devs are basically playing againt future benefits on growing a larger consumer base on a different platform for more upfront profit.
basically most of the investment money that epic throws is thrown at development and developers, and basically outside of free games, none of it is thrown back into making the platform better for consumers. Developers can complain however much they want that steam has a “consumer monopoly” (while ignoring the fact that other companies like Riot, and mobile game companies with PC clients like Mihoyo does fine without steam). this will continue to happen until epic reinvests some of that money into their client, or devs actually use the benefits of taking a lower cut and biting the bullet and regularly passing some of it off to consumers.
regardless of the situation, developers are stopping developers ultimately if they want to break the “consumer monopoly”