I have mixed feelings on it.
When I was putting out games, publishing on Steam would mean a guaranteed 1 million impressions on the “New releases” list. That’s incredible exposure for an indie title, which often succeed or fail on exposure alone.
But 30% can be a lot for those same indie teams, especially combined with taxes. You can put years of work into a title and lose half the money it earns to groups that didn’t directly contribute at all. It can easily be enough money that long-term support or follow up games just aren’t viable. It can be your entire outsourcing budget or a whole employee for a year.
And after that initial exposure, you’re not getting much for your perputual 30%. The value of Steamworks can vary greatly game by game so you could end up paying $30k for $100 of bandwidth and minor marketing through things like sales and rich presence.
I would much prefer to see something like “30% after the first $X in sales”. Their cut would kick in only after they’ve demonstrated their value as a platform and small teams wouldn’t have to watch a company with billions of dollars take a very large bite out of their very small pie.
Then generate the steamkey(for free) and sell them elsewhere! Steam is toatally Ok with that, as long as the price is the same.
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You absolutely can do what you are saying. You CAN sell games for lower on other platforms as long as they aren’t steam versions. You CANT sell games that use steam keys for cheaper on another platform which makes sense because steam is still providing bandwidth and other services for your game.
Oh yeah that’s right. Sorry, I haven’t put a game out for a long time.
Ah, Cosmoteer. Extremely fun for like 10 hours, then you realize there is nothing left to do. I guess that dev has made a fortune off of it though, so hats off to that guy.
Yeah I enjoyed it for longer than that but it just becomes so tedious once you have a few ships.
I prefer Starsector and Avorion.
Honestly that sounds fine. It’s okay if a small game is only entertaining for 10 hours provided the price is reasonable. We shouldn’t expect every game to be an infinitely replayability mill
wasn’t portal just a mod? very short game, but has some of the most memorable moments in all of gaming
portal was its own game, but it had a very unenthusiastic release. stanley parable and gmod were mods
It confuses the hell out of me that we don’t say that about any other media.
“This movie that I spent $18 per person on only lasts 97 minutes what a rip off.”
I mean, most of us who recognize that that’s shitty value just don’t go to theatres.
It’s why they’re dying.
I agree. But people should be aware that even though “1.0” released in 2022, Cosmoteer has been around since 2011. It’s far from being the worst example of a game in eternal early access, though I would say it isn’t one of the better ones.
Its still being updated and you can play for looong when you like building ships until your CPU melts.
Yeah, but you are then building for the sake of building. The crew limitations are a pain, so is getting the resources for the ships. If you are a purely combat player, having to mine asteroids for 95% of the time to get a bigger ship, or to get a necessary reactor isn’t fun gameplay. Then you build three large-ish ships and you cannot crew them all at the same time because people don’t want to work for you. Especially when you are a completionist and want to “finish” a system before heading out, you quickly stop getting fame and either need to jump to a higher difficulty system (which your ship won’t survive unless you know the “meta” well), or resort to more mining instead of the fun stuff.
Edit: all of these are choices made by the devs. In combat, you can take over a ship that has an airlock after you destroy the bridge. You cannot then scrap it for valuable parts, since scrapping captured ships nets you no materials back. It is viable for the very first or second sector you go to, when you don’t have factories (and finding a ship graveyard and scrapping for metal feels worthwhile) but you quickly outgrow it.
You can disable the crew limitations also you can have multiple ships. I usually play with one factory(for mining and processing), one starbase (a gigantic storage, waaay bigger than the ones from the game) some smaller ships for defense and quick intervention(often nuke carriers) amd one or two really big and heavily armored Fighters (record enemy destruction was 0,5seconds with a 20 rail guns offensive)
Most things you complain about can be changed in the options or with simple mods, you don’t even need to mine, you can just buy stuff. Also capturing enemy ships is unnecessary for farming, just drag the mine tool over it (or install a mod that lets you harvest them for no resource penalty)
The higher level systems aren’t that hard, you just need to upgrade your ship and larn how to combat with them, every ship plays different. Best way to survive is to outrange the enemy and be fast backwards to keep distance. (rail guns and rockets or lasers or everything)
What matters is default settings. If you expect people to jump into a game and know that 10 hours down the line they made a bad choice, then it’s a bad default. “Just buy stuff” doesn’t work when stations don’t have what you need - it’s fine for a tiny ship, try getting enough uranium for 10 reactors in a reasonable time by buying.
Its a sandbox everything depends on the mods and options you chose at start, thats… Literally what these games are about.
Some gamers are just looking for a simple out-of-the-box experience, and will immediately turn their noses up at the idea of mods.
I am not one of those poor souls, but I do know quite a few of them.
I had a friend refuse to use any 7 Days to Die modlets because they’re “unsafe” despite being simple XML translations. He wouldn’t even use one I wrote myself.
These people shouldn’t buy a sandbox game then. You know from the start. (and they are idiots, steam workshop is super easy)
You know what also justifies Valve’s 30% cut? Their outstanding efforts in getting games to run on Linux, and the overall impact that this had on the Linux community.
Noblesse oblige.
For most developers, that’s not much of a value. The Linux share of the gaming market only exists because of Steam. 99% of those gamers would just play on Windows if Valve hadn’t pu in the effort.
It is good for Linux though.
I don’t think I’d be running Linux as my only daily driver if not for this. I was slightly dreading switching because I feared spending hours trying to fix broken games, but it’s been astonishingly straightforward (which facilitated me learning to live in Linux in a way I hadn’t been able to when was dual booting with Windows)
“Steam will probably still outsell everything else combined by 100x”
Yeah, it’s a monopoly.
That’s not a complaint. It’s not a value judgement. People think the word is automatically negative or criminal, because of how often that market power gets abused - but it is just the label for having that market power. Valve is not a trust. Valve does not do any anti-competitive practices. (Their 30% cut is obscene, but it’s the same obscenity demanded by other monopoly storefronts.) Nonetheless, company after company keeps saying:
This store is the only store that really matters.
If you’re not on this store, you’re probably fucked.
We have a word for that.
Totally agree. They definitely have a monopoly in PC game distribution, but this feels different than most other situations. They are not forcing anything on anyone. This is really the consumer’s choice. The thing is, they offer a great service and consumers don’t really have much to complain about. The only time you would need to complain about something is if you lost your entire steam library. Which is a reminder that you don’t really own these games, you are renting them.
Think about other monopolies. Microsoft has a dominant force in the PC OS. You have other options like MacOS and Linux, but if you wanted to switch from windows to MacOS, you really can’t. Microsoft can force products onto people like edge browser or ads.
Comcast and Cox are monopolies as they normally service specific regional areas and stay out of each other’s way. Because of this, there is no competition when looking for an ISP and both companies generally act on bad practices and milk the consumers for everything they can.
The more you dig deeper into it, you’ll find that all these companies try and fuck over the consumer. The difference with Valve, is that they can fuck over the producer moreso than the consumer. The only other company I can think of that is similar is eBay. eBay is really a monopoly for an auction like or used goods marketplace. The consumer is more protected than the producer.
Tbh, I don’t know the ins and outs of the game development process, but at least for smaller teams and games, 30% seems very reasonable to get your game out there. I am in the process of making a game now and I am fine with that fee and not having to deal with all the headaches. I just want to make a game, publish it, and make some money.
Losing an entire third of your revenue, straight off the top, is egregious. It’s the figure console manufacturers settled on when they had game developers by the balls. Seeing it continue with a company that controls nothing about the platform they serve says a lot about how much power is inherent to simply having a supermajority market share.
Steam shoved its way onto everyone’s computer as mandatory DRM for Half-Life 2. Calling that move “forward-thinking” would not be a compliment.
Taking 1/3 of your revenue when they quadruple it absolutely is not egregious. Steam is the reason you’re capable of making a living selling PC games to begin with.
PC gaming existed for decades before Steam and wouldn’t magically disappear without it.
Steam increases sales because it’s the only store customers use.
Taking the same kind of money Nintendo charges for the privilege of publishing on Switch, just to be on the de-facto monopoly that Valve has secured, is not some kind of favor. It’s a sign of the power they wield. They didn’t help you make the game. They didn’t invent the video card. They don’t even make the OS that 95% of their customers use.
They’re a middleman.
For massive studios.
Indie games would not have the tiniest chance in hell of succeeding without Steam massively amplifying their reach. If you have a budget under a million, Steam is the best thing that’s ever happened to you and nothing is close.
Indie games would not have the tiniest chance in hell of succeeding without Steam massively amplifying their reach.
BECAUSE IT’S A MONOPOLY.
The internet is not some big-money-only affair, where independent creators have no chance of breakout grassroots success. Digital publishing has been the best thing ever for small games, except every platform is centralized, so there’s still some gigantic arbitrary gatekeeper.
Praising that gatekeeper as if they invented the internet is not a serious argument. Indie developers like this one have been held back - the game’s exactly the same, and it was just as available to anyone with a credit card, but it sold fuck-all beforehand because people only use one store.
We’re pretending Steam (who has done literally nothing to suppress any other platform) doesn’t exist. There is no “monopoly” involved in the discussion
It’s because people don’t have any interest in buying digital products from individuals, especially products that necessarily must change over time. Steam is the entire reason being an indie developer can be done, and very probably most of the reason most AAA PC ports exist at all. Without Steam, console gaming would quite possibly be the only option if you wanted modern demanding games.
Even without Steam around, do you really think Average Joe is going to check a bunch of storefronts looking for a game? Nah, they’re going to see what comes up on Twitch/YouTube and then play that. That would have meant nothing but sponsored garbage forever. Steam saved us from that fate with Greenlight and later opening the door entirely (and favouring indies in their upcoming and new lists)
Do you remember Direct2Drive? Opened up in 2004, digital storefront for games run by IGN? No? That’s ok, neither does anyone else, and it had the pull of fucking IGN. That’s the market Steam was launching into at the time, a time when many people were openly exclaiming PC gaming was dying.
At the time gamer chat was a mostly text-based affair over several places and services, and voice was the realm of the few people with the skills to get TeamSpeak/Ventrilo/Mumble going or a connection to those people. Steam did something wild and brought the whole community together in one place. All the games, all the gamers, and all the developers in one place.
That’s how Steam ended up a monopoly, and with their collection of mature services no one is going to beat them at everything. If you want to beat them you’re going to need to focus on one aspect of their service, beat that, and then work with other people who have targeted other parts of the service and connect. In other words, you need to do the exact opposite of Battle.net/Epic/Uplay/Origin/etc. but none of those companies will do that because they are too selfish to give up any part of the profits.
Only the FOSS community would have the required mentality and why would they step on Steam? Linux gaming has never been this good. It’s almost like the only people who could take on Steam view it as an asset.
Oh and just to be clear: virtually no other service has even tried to do anything but be a worse version of Steam. GOG and Itch.io instead opted to focus on what made them different and thus occupy meaningful niches, but everyone else continues to be worthless to this day and they only have themselves to blame.
On top of that, say it is a negative thing right? The hell are we going to do about it, they’re not like Microsoft where they have a crap ton of different divisions that they specialize in.
Their dominance in the market is due to their business choices where they Supply the product of that consumers wanted that no other competitor is willing to bring to the table,
they offer:
- a review/rating system
- a storefront that regularly gives damn good deals
- a mod workshop
- insane Linux support via proton
- a friend system that integrates with the games itself up to stream share and remote play capability
- a achievement system
- a discussion board
- a cosmetic and badge system to encourage people to buy and trade
The closest I’ve seen any other company do for that is epic but they actively shoot themselves in the foot with linux, their deals are absolute shit and while they give consistent free games out their feature set is super lackluster to even EA’s launcher.
Is this controversial? You’re paying for the storefront.
You aren’t even paying anything, you literally just give them a cut of your turnover when you don’t sell anything they carry the costs of it.
You give them a cut of the turnover on their site(steam). Important distinction. A developer can generate steam keys for free and sell them elswhere, as long as the price is the same as on steam.
Wait really? Are they just ok with losing the cut from sales?
Yes although they are being sued by developers for not being allowed to sell the keys at a lower price.
As I understand it the issue is actually that people weren’t allowed to sell their game for less on other platforms, but they weren’t necessarily trying to sell Steam keys.
Yes they are.
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Since the headline blew it, the game mentioned is called Cosmoteer.
Oh wow I’ve owned this game for quite some time. Decent game but ultimately I think Starsector and Avorion are better.
I played so much of it thru steamlink while at work
Thank you!
Currently 20% off!
I know this whole thing is probably just an ad, but it’s working on me lol
Looked like space pirates and zombies.
One of my top played game on Steam. Super fun!
It absolutely is.
It’s worth it if you’re in the 1% of titles that succeed because of Steam. The next question is should any company have that kind of power. Steam’s monopoly is a real problem. Microsoft had less of a monopoly on computers when they got investigated.
That’s not true at all. Steam does a lot more than just list a title…and there is a ton of shit games that are put out there, they don’t make it because they’re shit, not because they’re not part of some magical 1%. Tons and tons of indie games have made it because of steam. They akso don’t have a monopoly, its just what most people use. There is still the epic market, itch.io, gog, humble, etc all of which you can choose to sell on or not.
It’s a de facto monopoly, just like windows was a de facto monopoly despite macos and Linux existing. There are plenty of good games that don’t make it on Steam, and Valve does very little for the money.
I don’t think you understand the level of requirement and cost to host and keep stable a system like steam does for no cost to the user.
Anyone who is old enough to remember trying to buy digital copies of games pre-Steam knows how much value Stream brings to the table.
If it’s not on Steam, I don’t even consider it.
You mean trying to buy digital games in 2003.
Valve didn’t invent the credit card or anything. They just barged their way in, via everyone wanting HL2, and have since taken advantage of how much commerce has moved online.
If it’s not on Steam, I don’t even consider it.
I’m the same, but I’m dreading the day if steam stops being the savior of gaming.
Then we’ll switch to the next best thing.
Nobody can get a foot in the door. Epic tried by buying up exclusives but that just pissed everyone off. Me included.
Then steam will still be worth it. If valve ever goes public we jump ship collectively
That’s a sad take. You are just closing doors on yourself.
I use all the stores available.
As much as I like steam, I’m not putting all my digital eggs in one basket.
The day steam decides to shutdown or remove my account, I lose all those games. No thanks.
Blind faith ain’t for me.
Wait, so you put some of your digital eggs into baskets where it’s more likely that you’ll lose them? Pretty sure Steam has a better chance of surviving than a homegrown storefront of a third rate publisher.
I get your point, but a behemoth like Valve is so unlikely to be closing their doors in our lifetimes it’s hardly worth discussing.
The real point here is that after spending thousands or tens of thousands on Steam, our next of kin or beneficiary will not get them once our lifetime ends because Steam doesn’t sell games. They provide a license to access content.
Steam still suffers from the ‘illusion of ownership’ issue, and places that offer DRM free copies of titles are superior in this way. However it’s plain for all to see that not many people care about this point. All the masses want is to play their games.
In that regard, Steam is king.
Your lifetime is nearly 80 years. Companies lasting 80 years is ultra rare in history, large behemoths included. I bet you can already name several behemoth IT companies that’s already come and gone.
I wouldn’t trust even larger behemoths like google and MSFT to last another 80 yrs. It’s just too statistically unlikely.
I do agree with you on corporate longevity in general, however I disagree when it comes specifically to Valve.
Unlike most companies that bring in billions in revenue, Valve is part of a comparatively small group of privately held companies. They don’t have shareholders to appease, and they don’t have a stock price to juice forever upward. I feel this factor alone puts them ahead of the herd, so to speak.
More than just being a non combatant in the stock market though, with so few employees compared to anyone else is a surefire way to weather even the longest storm in my opinion.
Microsoft themselves estimated a few years ago Valve’s revenue to be 6.5 billion, which works out to 20 million per employee. Microsoft’s gaming division brought in 16 billion in the same year, which is less than 1 million per employee. Even assuming Microsoft’s profit per employee is a higher fraction of the revenue per employee compared to Valve, there’s no chance its 20x higher.
Microsoft, Google, Apple, Exxon Mobil, whichever, I can absolutely see a future (that maybe I’ll live to) where any of the humongous corporations die from providing worse products or service over time, or being knocked aside from the competition. In my view, primarily for the reasons I’ve written, I don’t believe that will be Valve.
The main counterpoint I’ve been able to think up as I wrote this is whatever might happen when Gabe Newell dies. There’s no doubt contingencies for this, and he’s probably hand picked a few names he believes would carry on with his ideals. Though unless they’ve enacted quite iron clad bylaws or policies to prevent certain operational changes, the next leader of Valve could conceivably destroy the company as we know it. Barring anything serious I will outlive Newell, and so in this way, I can see Valve ceasing to exist in my lifetime.
We have piracy for if Steam fails, GoG and Itch’d probably jump at the chance to take some of Steams happy customer base as well if Steam falls from grace post GabeN
As great a take as that is who will host the online service? Piracy can get you far but not always all the way. We need an open source game hosting option. But even that is not all. We need one that has the visibility of steam and the UI to boot. There a a couple of problems that legitimately need solving before we can just say piracy is the answer.
I’ve personally stopped buying games that can’t survive offline. If I need to pirate my collection back in a doomsday scenario, all of those games will still work.
I have a library with hundreds of games I don’t play anymore. If Stream closed I’d just have hundreds plus a rounding area I can’t play anymore.
I will have already got my enjoyment from the games but the time Steam ever closes down.
If that happens I’ll just start pirating the games I want again unless there’s a decent competitor. Until then the convenience steam offers is worth the money.
What about GOG and its DRM-free games? What about Itch.io and its exceptionally low cut and pretty much completely open-door policy? There are other services that are good. Origin, UPlay, Epic, and other stuff sucking does not mean they’re all bad.
GOG can suck my dick. They spammed my email with newsletters after I would repeatedly turn them off. We do need a DRM free alternative but for that I’ll stick with piracy
As soon as you add a free game, the newsletters are sent again. There is no “subscribe to get the game for free” which AFAIK is mandatory in the EU, they just resubscribe you silently.
Some sites just don’t give a damn about the “unsubscribe” link. Some don’t even include it in the first place.
All of the above get reported as spam and gmail will happily send them to trash ever after.
In this thread:
Steam is bad because they are a company that makes money. They would be better if they made no money and all games were advertised at their expense. Oh and I must post my game on Steam because it’s their fault no one else has bothered to even try and make a truly viable alternative.
I have not much against steam.
But gog is a more than viable alternative to steam.
Let’s not act as if there’s no alternative when itch.io or gog exists.
Has steam more features? Yes. Is better for some things? Yes. Is the only viable alternative as a game store? No.
I like GoG. I like that they push companies to remove DRM. I like that I can make offline backups of my games.
I prefer GoG over Steam when possible, but Steam is still infinitely more user friendly, and if the game in question is heavily multiplayer-focused, I’ll probably pick Steam over GoG just to use Steam’s multiplayer infrastructure.
GOG has had games that fail to maintain parity with Steam releases.
GOG requires workarounds on Linux moreso than Steam.
The first is not totally GOG’s fault but they should take action. If GOG is truly about preservation, they should make Linux a priority.
My second biggest gaming library is GOG. I love them in theory but Steam wipes the floor with them in terms of who gets my business in part because of those.
They suck.
Having a game on GOG is the same as not having it to me. I will pay for it on steam before playing it for free on GOG. Their launcher sucks (and unless it’s very recent doesn’t even support Linux despite their whole premise being supporting open shit), and manually updating games sucks. Plus they don’t get up to date versions even if you do use their awful launcher.
It’s not a book or movie where the source doesn’t matter. Convenient updates are obligatory for modern gaming to function correctly.
Bad-faith nonsense is worse than directed abuse.
I’d rather have someone tell me to fuck myself than push this ‘you just don’t LIKE it!’ horseshit. Or pretend the only alternative to being a monopoly taking a shitload of money is to be a charity that makes zero dollars. Other numbers exist. Be serious, god damn you.
Of course it’s worth it, there’s no question about it. Depending on the case it might probably be worth it if Steam took 95%.
For me, the question remains if 20% were “enough” for Steam and still make a shitload of money, or even 10%. Of course we can’t know but it seems likely.
95% is closer to what board game publishers take - best I’ve seen is 10% for the designer
Granted they have a lot more to lose
From that perspective seems Steam is perfectly fine
the only ones that conplain the 30% cut are bilionaries companies
It’s also just the standard for selling your game on a big storefront.
A few indie devs who hated the idea of storefronts because of the bad taste of Apple self published only on their website. When they finally (after years) switched to steam, every single one of them shared how they got like a multiplier of sales.
One indie dev shared how he made more in revenue in a month on Steam than he did in a decade of self publishing.
That’s life-changing.
Apple is the same deal, though. There’s a reason there’s a lot more solo devs/small teams making money on iOS than Android. Their ecosystem doesn’t do all the work for you, but it absolutely provides a lot of help. You might not like, for example, the Human Interface guidelines, but the enforced consistency in behavior makes a lot more people a lot more willing to buy things.
What do you call it when customers only use one store and all the sellers have to go through that store to get any sales?
Not a trick question. Four syllables. Starts with an M.
Where does it say you can only choose one store?
Upload to all and get all the benefits. Lower prise on those with lower cut, more exposure on those that don’t.
I don’t know if steam does this since I have no experience selling on steam, but generally when you sell anything anywhere the sales channels will often demand that you give them the lowest retail price. Most commonly done by ones that give the most exposure since they have that much more power. Failure to do so will result in some penalty (Amazon prevents your offer from being in buy box) or just outright refusal to take your product (such as Walmart).
Additionally, customers complain too when you sell at two different pricing elsewhere. If you’re a company that gives virtually no support (like you sell pickles or whatever), you prob don’t care. But for things like games, you’ll get bombarded with demands that they got ripped off by buying from one place and ask for difference in pricing or submit a refund request. Refunds are more expensive to sellers than not selling at all since you still have to pay transaction/refund fees by payment processors. Or if physical product, cost of shipping as well.
Different sales channels having different pricing isn’t really an option. It’s not really worth it. You’ll get problems left and right.
Then make it the same pruce after the before the cut. Still more money.
