this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
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I agree with you, but justifying anything by saying they're successful in a free market is really iffy. There are plenty of large evil companies that are incredibly successful. That said I agree with everything else you've said.
I personally think 30% cut is too much for any app/software store. But if anyone deserves it Steam does
My reference to free market is only a means of saying customers choose steam because of its offerings not that they have too.
I agree it would be nice if they charged less. However do we know their full PNL/balance sheet? People just keep taking revenue/employees as if employees are the only overhead.
They provide the servers, and do have an rde cost for development for services we discussed like cloud saves, control support etc. if people have this much energy over it attack pharmaceutical for there insane mark ups that would drive way more positive social change. But the people driving are mostly trying to make more money by cutting there publishing expenses through steam. I'm sure psn and Xbox also take 25 to 30percent cuts.
They also championed low publishing costs of only 100 dollars to list a game. I don't know enough to speak to their update charges though. Hell psn been known to charge 25k for visibility in top of their 30% cut and there are no other market options Reference
Everyone focuses here cause developers and publishers want more of this cut and to me seem to try to push steam into regulator cross hairs as a way to force the changes they have failed to negotiate.
I would also point out brick and mortar sellers also take 15 to 20% cut and then also charge for storage, disposal, fulfillment, return on and on. Amazon does the same. It's the nature of a market place. Reference
Overall it doesn't make sense to me as a community that we attack our best example of what a game market place should be.
No harm meant. I do think Steam is the golden example of a big business done right. All I'm saying is that there's room for improvement.
We can make an educated guess. Amazon's S3 charges roughly $0.025 per GB, so an 100GB game would cost $2.50 for Steam to upload to a user. For a $30 game, that's around ~8.5% or just over 3 downloads before it's unprofitable.
Obviously Valve isn't paying consumer level S3 prices, and obviously users can download multiple times. But I would be extremely surprised if they didn't make a rather large margin on each sale
Total fair always room for improvement, no ones perfect.
Appreciate the good discussion!
Assuming there will never be any updates, 3 downloads is what regular gamer can do. First computer, second(friend's) computer and reinstallation on first computer.
$0.025 per GB is the most expensive option on S3 I could find rounded up. It would be absolutely insane if Steam were paying those prices when they have their own servers. I also used 100GB game size as a large number, and $30 as a small price tag (for an 100GB game).
I was trying to be charitable with the numbers and it still came out pretty positive
What is cheapest and at what speed?
I get it, but then there are all those heavy f2p games like War Thunder, from which Steam doesn't get anything.
You can look it up yourself, I was just giving a worst case scenario
aws.amazon.com doesn't seen to work in Russia
For storage or for download?
Download. It's also rounded up. Storage is negligible compared to bandwidth, especially considering Steam's business model
And their cost is going down over time while their revenues are increasing since they take a % off every sales and sales are increasing and so is the average price of games.
They make enough profit for the boss to be a billionaire, enough said.
The important part is why they're successful; unlike many companies which try to lock customers in and take advantage of them as much as possible, Steam/Valve try to build a good product at a reasonable price, and trust that it'll bring them customers.
And look at that, it does.
In human societies culture matters. People who become managers often have intrigue and taking advantage of people as their main useful skills. So they just go on doing what they know. No reason to scold them even, this is life. After all, something should serve as the backdrop for companies doing it right.
Valve started differently.
But you surely already know all that, Revan. How's Bastila doin?