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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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But but but the 30% cut is too high it's not justified and the epic game store takes only 12%!!!!!!111
You can agree that this is great without being stupid. 12% would be great for developers. This is great for consumers. They're different things. It'd be nice for Steam to take less of the developer's money. I hope you can agree with that.
I've had a long-winded discussion about that a few days ago. Yes, 12% would be great for devs, but guess what, 0% would be even better.
Steam takes care of the entire e-commerce and distribution side, which is very expensive. Just look up what publishers used to take back in the day for taking over game distribution, that was like 70%. Not exactly a time you want to go back to as indie dev.
If you think a 12% cut would be viable, idk. However, epic just recently laid off 1000 people so idk how financially successful that company currently is.
Laying off employees is not a sign of being unsuccessful. In fact, in many cases it's the opposite. Also Epic as a storefront is horrific, and Tim is a cunt, so it shouldn't be any surprise that very few people actually buy from them.
Yes, 0% would be better. What's your point? Valve is charging 30%. That's worse than 12%, correct? It's better. Why do people like you always have to defend what a company does all the time?
No one is saying we want to go back to that. Them being better than that does not make them good. Hitler killed a smaller percentage of the population than Genghis Khan, but that doesn't make Hitler not evil, right?
They make an incredible amount of money. Their employees are extremely generously rewarded. This means the 30% is well over what is required. I can't give a number of what they need, and neither can you. Notably, the Epic layoff was for Fortnite, because of a reduction in players, not the Epic store team. It has nothing to do with distribution or engine development. Even still, Fortnite was profitable. It was just less profitable.
Why do we have to defend every action Valve takes? Why can't we criticize them? Why does anyone still have loyalty to any corporation in the modern day? That was a fairy tale that I thought people here were over.
I'm a Linux gamer. I appreciate what they've done. I've been on Steam for I don't even know how long at this point. That sure as hell doesn't mean I'm not going to point out what they do that's wrong. If anything, it should be the opposite. I don't want them to become bad, so I need to call out when they're doing the wrong thing.
Because it's pretty fucking obvious that the 12% cut was just Tim Swiney trying to grab market share for EGS without actually putting in the work to develop it.
Remember how it took over 2 years for them to add a cart? Remember how they just laid off 1000 employees? Using Fortnite money to pay for exclusive deals and game givaways instead of actually developing the store hasn't turned out profitable.
Also, ever notice how nobody was complaining about Steam's cut before that? And let's not forget that Steam Greenlight and subsequent opening up of allowing nearly any game onto their platform is what made the indie market more than an extremely small niche. Or the fact that much of the 30% cut is getting reinvested into Linux and FOSS to keep PC gaming an open ecosystem, which benefits everyone, including indie studioa
Again, that was from the Fortnite team. It's like if Valve laid off people working on DOTA, it doesn't mean the storefront is doing poorly.
Yeah... you weren't paying attention then. People have been complaining about it before their storefront existed. This has been discussed a lot. Steam actually doesn't take 30%. That's the default. Big games, despite making more money, actually pay less, as dumb as that sounds.
Citation needed. Some is. How much is going towards Gaben's several yachts?
I'm not defending them. I'm saying that a service has to be financially successful, something that many people on lemmy seemingly forgot after reading too much Marx. Are they making more than they need? Absolutely. But the value they are providing is just worth a great deal to devs and I just don't think that giving up 30% of your sales is a bad deal for handling the entire distribution. I've worked in E-Commerce for over 10 years now and 30% is like the standard fee for this kind of stuff - in many industries, the fees are way higher.
So, COULD they charge less? Very likely. But I don't really see why. The service they provide is just worth that much. I think it's a fantasy that companies can suddenly start to charge less just because they already have a lot of money.
Afaik, theyl aid off people across the entire company. The reason was a reduction in fortnite money, but the layoffs were even across the UE development teams.
You can. I just don't agree with that criticism. Valve does shitty things at times. The fact that they are really opaque when it comes to algorithms and support decisions is shit, the price parity rule, while being standard in the industry, is shit and the lack of control for early access games is pretty shit - we can criticize all that and more.
And yes, you can also criticize the 30% cut. That's your right. However, I'm just not agreeing with that stance. That isn't defending a company, even tho you're trying to frame it as such. That's just me having a different opinion. And you trying to frame disagreement as "being loyal to a company" is a great way to completely stifle a discussion. Why even argue at that point, just insult me and move on lmao.
No, the comment above brought up the stupid argument to defend them. You implying they need to to remain solvent is defending them too. How many yachts does Gaben have? How generously are the employees paid? Clearly they're making more than enough money with 30%. Where that number would need to be to not make a profit is unknown, but it's certainly far lower. You can understand this, right?
I said this already, but this is assuming the sales wouldn't happen if Steam didn't exist. I doubt it. The sales numbers would be approximately the same, provided by someone else. They just have almost full market domination, so you don't have a choice but to sell on Steam. It isn't because it's so great for the developers. It's because they don't have a choice.
"Thats just the way things are" isn't an argument. "Slavery is just the way we do things! You can't say it's bad! We wouldn't make a profit otherwise!" Not a good argument, right?
To help developers. It seems like you're purely capitalism brained. My argument was that it'd be better for developers. I didn't say they'd make more profit. There's a lot of bad things you can do to make more money. It doesn't mean you should. It'd be good for the industry if they charged less. It'd allow smaller studios to make a profit for more niche games.
Again, there isn't a choice (for developers). It makes it worth it in the same way it's worth it to hand over my wallet when someone points a gun to my head. It doesn't mean it's the best outcome for the developer if other options were equally viable.
IIRC, no. It was Fortnite specific.
What do you define "defending" as? You're making arguments supporting the behavior. Who in the world wouldn't define that as defence? I'm not framing it as defence. It just is.
Yes. But nobody knows. It certainly is lower. But again, and this is the last time I say this: A service needs to be finanically successful. This business is more than just it's operating cost. On top of that, I'll say this one again: The service is just worth it. Nobody in the world offers such an easy handling of the entire distribution chain combined with such a massive audience.
While that's true, that wasn't my argument. My argument is that 30% is usually a fairly decent sweet spot for a platform when it comes to running a distribution system. I've build quite a few marketplaces in my time, and the standard fees were between 20% and 40%, all depending on how much work the platform had to do.
There's plenty of choice. You can choose not to sell your game on steam, put it on the EGS exclusively and accept that you're never going to reach the audience you'd do with steam. Now you just gotta figure out if the lesser sales at 12% are more profitable than the more sales at 30%.
You make defending sound like I'm a company white-knight that'll defend a company from any wrongdoing ever, which simply isn't the case. Valve does some shitty things and I have called them out for it. I just don't think the 30% cut is bad in any capacity.
Yeah, it won't be more profitable. It isn't a choice. There is a small choice for some games of distributing it yourself. This is incredibly cheap (which proves Valve's profit margin is insane), but 99% of players won't leave Steam. This means it isn't a choice for all but a few niche games. Starsector, for example, distributes it on their own, so they get a 100% cut. The players who want to play that are generally more intelligent and can get it off of Steam. For something like CoD, that's marketed towards mass appeal go the absolute minimum of technological literacy, you have to be on Steam. There isn't a choice.
You've already agreed it's worse than it being lower. You don't think it's bad enough to be upset over, but you agree it's worse than it could be. That's the difference. I won't stop at "better than it could be." I'll always argue for more from a company, and you should too.
As long as Steam can give at least 25.8 percent more sales than Epic (or other place that offers 12%), it's a better deal for developers as well.
(math: (1-0.12)/(1-0.30)=1.2571=1+25.71%)
Only if we assume a sale not made on Steam is a sale lost. If Steam didn't get the sale and the purchase was made somewhere with a higher return instead, the dev would make more from the sale. Odds are, if Valve didn't have almost full market control, people would still buy games, they'd just buy them somewhere else.
By that logic valve would be justified with even 95% cut if network efect was even stronger. That's stupid logic that only thinks in terms of working with what you have. Valve already takes a cut and not a hard value. It's in their very business to increase sales and they shouldn't be additionally rewarded for such because by increased sales they already get the money.
Fair enough - I was thinking in terms of choice rather than justification. A better question, then, would be: what is a fair percentage given Steam's services both developer-side and player-side (more satisfied players are also a perk for developers)?
Plus, their investment into Linux gaming and FOSS in general are preventing PC gaming from being locked down to a singled OS that becomes a walled garden.
Ultimately the EGS has shown 12% is not profitable, a lower cut would be nice for smaller devs but I don't see why Valve would when every other platform of Steam's size also takes 30%.
Citation needed. They're still operating, while paying games for exclusivity, and giving away games for free (at their own cost). Sure, a lot of this is likely funded by Fortnite, but to say it isn't profitable when they're giving away this much money is a big claim. Also, Valve would be significantly more profitable at the same rate, because they have almost total market capture. Even if Epic isn't profitable (I've seen no evidence of this) we can't extrapolate to say Vlave wouldn't be.
If it needs to be subsidized by Fortnite then it's by definition not profitable
Also note that nobody was saying this before Tim Swiney started trying to break into the marlet
Steam is a multi-billion dollar company and Gabe owns like 4 yachts. They can easily afford to lower their commission.
I agree. We need more kids being exposed to gambling. Steam earning money from ruining children is very important for those neat features. :3 Steam FTW. Amirite g*mers? <333
For real though. This is just long term business strategy. They are not your friend. They can do things things that are good and things that are very bad. Stop defending big corporation that doesn't know or care about your existence. I can't even discribe how sad it is to be a person that needs to get defensive about a corporation because their service is alright for the most part.
I'm honestly tired of debating that point again and again. However, to summarize my stance on this: If parents are unable or unwilling to monitor what their child is playing or spending money on, that is not the problem of steam - or any platform for that matter. It's also not EAs fault if a child is spending thousands of bucks in ultimate team. If my child stole my credit card and did that, I would refund the money immediately and get his account locked. It's honestly tiring of hearing people demanding companies to "protect the children" when many parents do fuck all to protect or educate THEIR children.
Saying that a 30% cut is justified for everything steam offers isn't "defending" steam, it's just stating my opinion, but yeah whatever, you do you.
That's exactly why they need to do more... Children shouldn't suffer because corporations exploit them and their shitty parents.
Disagree. Not because I don't want corporations to do something, but because the ways they'd need to implement are a net-negative overall.
There's a huge discussion going on right now about age verification on OS level. That's exactly the kind of shitty results we get when we have other entities being responsible for child safety than the parents. And that's not a world I want to live in. I don't want to have to upload my government ID to any service I want to use and live in a borderline surveillance state because parents aren't able to pay attention to their children.
Yup. People forget that the internet is adult by default. A child cannot buy an internet connection.
The "protect the children" crowd, while they think they mean well, are fucking clowns. Let's start with actually protecting them, you know what the biggest killer of children is? Cars. Let's ban them first, shall we?
We should never have to show ID to use the internet, it's crazy dystopian, giving governments and corporations more and more control of our lives.
We need walkable cities and ample public transit first.
Not disagreeing though. It'd be great to transition back to them in the US
Yeah, obviously we shouldn't ban them, just like we shouldn't be requiring ID to visit websites or whatever.
Ager verification is absolutely not a necessity to curtail gambling, obviously.
It is. There is no other way to "protect the children" if you don't want parents to do their job.
It isn't. There are lots of other ways. Gambling is a heavily regulated industry. Valve just sidesteps this by not being designated as such.
I do want parents to do their job. The problem is they don't, and there's nothing we can do about that. And who suffers when they don't? Not me, not you, and not the parents. Its the children.
What are these other ways then? Hell, if you can think of something that does not include age verification or the removal of the entire steam marketplace, I'm more than willing to listen.
And all of those regulated gambling sites (at least those in the EU) require you to provide ID or a valid bank account - both things you only have as an adult and basically qualify as an age verification. There is no other way. You cannot ensure a person is who she says she is if you have no legal document. And yes, of course a child could steal it from their parents, but then the parent is legally responsible for any damages that incur.
Oh, there definitely is things we can do about that. We can punish the parents if kids use social media before legal age, for example. In germany, there are fines on certain things. If you child is missing from school repeatedly, for example, you can get fined. And I feel it's time to punish parents if their child does stuff on the internet that it shouldn't do and the parents have absolutely a chance to prevent the behavior. A child won't buy a smartphone/PC and a internet connection by themselves. These are provided by the parents and the parents then have the responsibility to set up the device in a way that ensures their child is protected.
Initially, yes. When overreaching government surveillance is introduced (only to protect the children and avoid terrorism, of course), I'm suffering pretty badly aswell since that's not a world I want to live in. And that's not a world you want to live in either.
So this might be harsh to say, but the future of society is more important than the kids with shitty parents.
It's not just about the children buddy. Adults are veulnerable too. There's no need to throw them off the cliff just because they passed that special age mark. Your solution about requiring id check to prevent children from gambling wouldn't do anything about adults because the issue is far more fundamental and about how the system is structured not how you enter it. Also it's not about corporations doing parent's job but about wanting something as simple as corporations not exploiting people including in big part children. You're paiting this thread like valve is good and we are asking valve to do more good by doing job of the parents while in reality we want valve to stop doing evil that valve does. And yet you will insist that you are not defending a corporation. The delusion is crazy.
Yes, but those adults are responsible for themselves.
No, not at all. I just don't think that offering a marketplace that is abused by a massive third party gambling industry is "evil". The marketplace in general is a cool feature imo and I see no reason to remove it. As soon as you introduce rarity, you will have a certain value attached to those items. It's a lot like playing an MMO - if you have a rare drop, you can sell that shit on ebay for actual money. Removing the entire concept of value from skins is honestly pretty stupid. And all because you want to "protect the children" and people with no impulse control.
In short: You want to take a feature away because some people abuse it and potentially harm people, and I just don't think that's right.
It's not about defending valve, it's about me not wanting people like you to remove good features from platforms.
They were also the ones to bring out the 30% cut mocking the people talking about it in general and when I called them out they doubled down saying that sharing an opinion is not defending a corporation. Lmao
I see so many bad takes from them in this thread and it's wild to see people upvote them. I thought the users here would know better about tech instead of getting parasocial with a corporation and thinking it can't do bad...
Or, hear me out on this one...
Real-money-and-equivalent gambling could be removed from Steam completely. No age verification needed.
As for child safety, Steam already has parental control features. I don't know how extensive/useful are they, though.
As the entire betting and gambling market is outside of steam, the only thing they could do is removing the entire steam marketplace, which would be a pretty impactful step that overall would just take a fairly cool feature away. I think it's honestly pretty cool that I can make use of skins or other items in games that I no longer play, much better than playing a game, having plenty of skins and then do nothing with them.
Idk either, but from what I know, child safety features in most platforms are pretty extensive and powerful these days.
As for how Steam Family mode works: you can lock the account behind a pin. Without unlocking, you cannot access the store or any community features. Also, every game in your library must be manually added to "Family view" or it will not show up.
So the child has to ask if it can have access to a game, which is necessary anyways since children don't generally have money. Probably a good concept and very similar to how apple or microsoft structure their child safety features.
And I was talking about literal casinos running on steam and not the exploitative games in there. There's absolutely no reason for steam virtual market (don't remember the name) to exist (besides it making valve money) and they could crack down on casinos easily but again, that makes them money. Also steam popularised lootboxes and they have this dumb case + key psychological trick in cs to drive more purchases. As for the 30% cut, the indie devs already have it rough. Developing a game takes a lot of effort and time. Taking 30% cut while publishers take another cut on top makes it hard for indies to sustain themselves and so they often close down. Not to mention the insanity of steam actually lowering the cut for really big studios (the more you earn the lower the cut) to keep them on the platform when corporations will do just fine and the indies need the money the most.
That is a separate and valid issue Steam needs to be called out on, yes.
Like taking a massive cut because they have network effect to their advantage isn't. I'm mocking them because they mock people pointing out issues with the platform doing shitty stuff for money without anything in this thread prompting them to do that.
Well, the closest they have to a decent competitor is GOG. Epic is only good for free games (and supports AI slop).
I don't understand why you are bringing other platforms up. This isn't sport. Just because I'm calling out valve doesn't mean I side with other platforms (teams) and think that they are better and need to win...
I was bringing them out from a developer choice standpoint and acknowledged that it was a bad angle for this later.