It’s not sale prices, it’s the regular price which is required. Steam has to have the lowest available regular non sale price (can be tied). This means that even if you sell on a site with a lower store cut, your price still has to reflect Steam’s 30% cut.
This artificially drives up prices across the board.
This is a pretty common tactic in retail spaces. Walmart also won’t let you sell the same product that you’ve contracted to put on their shelves elsewhere for cheaper.
The general idea is that you are benefitting from Walmart’s market dominance for exposure and advertising. You can’t get that benefit and then encourage consumers to buy it elsewhere by listing it for cheaper than Walmart sells it for.
You can agree or disagree with that approach, but it’s not unique to Steam and it’s so far generally been held up as reasonable.
That’s for other sites that sell Steam keys, which obviously use Steam infrastructure hence the limitation. If you sell your game on Steam and other real platforms, like GOG, Epic or Uplay (or whatever it’s called these days), you can set the price you want.
Of course Steam offers a lot more functionality, and many devs choose to tie their games to Steam because of that, not because Steam forces them to do it.
Let’s engage in a thought experiment. Let’s assume Steam were to offer 2 options:
30% cut of sales, all current services as they exist today.
8% cut of sales, but your game will never be featured on the front page of the store, can’t participate in sales, cannot be wishlisted, won’t show up in recommendations or ‘similar to games you play’ lists, will not be promoted at all. Can’t participate in community features or use the workshop. It’s still on steam; anyone who searches for it can find it, you can freely advertise it yourself and list it elsewhere and all of that, and you’re free to sell it anywhere else at any price.
How do you think that second option would work out for developers? Anyone who wouldn’t take that option is admitting that the services Steam is offering are worth the price of admission. By your logic, it should result in a 22% reduction in the cost of games; I doubt that would be the case.
Every developer is paying the same cut regardless if their game gets featured or not. So that’s a disingenuous argument. Devs aren’t paying for a service. They’re having their revenue garnished in exchange for a marketing lottery ticket
Valve is already incentivized to make games with popularity potential more visible, because it makes THEM money. Like every store in existence does.
I know (think?) you’re arguing that Valve needs the large profit cut to develop features, but Gabe is absolutely a billionaire. You don’t reach yacht and submarine levels of money unless you’re exploiting someone.
I don’t think they’re arguing they need the large cut to develop features, I believe they’re arguing the large cut is reflective of the added value.
In a capitalist system there’s no transaction that can’t be traced back to some form of exploitation. Profit is someone making more money than they put in.
There’s no game marketplace that isn’t looking to exploit someone.
The question isn’t “is someone being exploited”, it’s “how severe is the exploitation” and “is the exploiter using unfair means to reduce choice”.
Because we don’t have a magic wand that lets us see the objective value of the services being offered we can only compare preferences and tolerable prices.
I believe their argument to be that the high margin taken by valve isn’t reflective of monopolistic market practices, but a reflection of the value added by their service, and that if you were to offer a lower rate that didn’t have the listed perks you would see developers showing a preference for the higher rate.
It’s not that they need it to develop features, it’s that if developers want to claim that Steam is overcharging, they need to be willing to give up access to the features Steam provides, because Steam is providing a service to developers through that promotion. As a personal anecdote, I’ve bought tons of games that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere except on Steam, and would never have found at all if not for Steam promoting them to me.
The popular complaint is that if your game isn’t on Steam, it doesn’t sell on PC. The purpose of the thought experiment is to consider whether simply existing on Steam is all it takes, because if not, then Steam is clearly providing a service to them above and beyond simply having their game available to buy on its storefront.
It’s not sale prices, it’s the regular price which is required. Steam has to have the lowest available regular non sale price (can be tied). This means that even if you sell on a site with a lower store cut, your price still has to reflect Steam’s 30% cut.
This artificially drives up prices across the board.
This is a pretty common tactic in retail spaces. Walmart also won’t let you sell the same product that you’ve contracted to put on their shelves elsewhere for cheaper.
The general idea is that you are benefitting from Walmart’s market dominance for exposure and advertising. You can’t get that benefit and then encourage consumers to buy it elsewhere by listing it for cheaper than Walmart sells it for.
You can agree or disagree with that approach, but it’s not unique to Steam and it’s so far generally been held up as reasonable.
That’s for other sites that sell Steam keys, which obviously use Steam infrastructure hence the limitation. If you sell your game on Steam and other real platforms, like GOG, Epic or Uplay (or whatever it’s called these days), you can set the price you want.
Of course Steam offers a lot more functionality, and many devs choose to tie their games to Steam because of that, not because Steam forces them to do it.
Let’s engage in a thought experiment. Let’s assume Steam were to offer 2 options:
How do you think that second option would work out for developers? Anyone who wouldn’t take that option is admitting that the services Steam is offering are worth the price of admission. By your logic, it should result in a 22% reduction in the cost of games; I doubt that would be the case.
Every developer is paying the same cut regardless if their game gets featured or not. So that’s a disingenuous argument. Devs aren’t paying for a service. They’re having their revenue garnished in exchange for a marketing lottery ticket
Valve is already incentivized to make games with popularity potential more visible, because it makes THEM money. Like every store in existence does.
I know (think?) you’re arguing that Valve needs the large profit cut to develop features, but Gabe is absolutely a billionaire. You don’t reach yacht and submarine levels of money unless you’re exploiting someone.
I don’t think they’re arguing they need the large cut to develop features, I believe they’re arguing the large cut is reflective of the added value.
In a capitalist system there’s no transaction that can’t be traced back to some form of exploitation. Profit is someone making more money than they put in.
There’s no game marketplace that isn’t looking to exploit someone.
The question isn’t “is someone being exploited”, it’s “how severe is the exploitation” and “is the exploiter using unfair means to reduce choice”.
Because we don’t have a magic wand that lets us see the objective value of the services being offered we can only compare preferences and tolerable prices.
I believe their argument to be that the high margin taken by valve isn’t reflective of monopolistic market practices, but a reflection of the value added by their service, and that if you were to offer a lower rate that didn’t have the listed perks you would see developers showing a preference for the higher rate.
It’s not that they need it to develop features, it’s that if developers want to claim that Steam is overcharging, they need to be willing to give up access to the features Steam provides, because Steam is providing a service to developers through that promotion. As a personal anecdote, I’ve bought tons of games that I’ve never seen mentioned anywhere except on Steam, and would never have found at all if not for Steam promoting them to me.
The popular complaint is that if your game isn’t on Steam, it doesn’t sell on PC. The purpose of the thought experiment is to consider whether simply existing on Steam is all it takes, because if not, then Steam is clearly providing a service to them above and beyond simply having their game available to buy on its storefront.