Inspired by true events from this morning
this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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Does Steam take a cut for distribution?
If not, while this emotionally sucks, they've a solid operational policy.
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%.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah! Other publishers should open their own stores and compete!
.....
Oh wait no fuck oh god oh what have we done