Valve have adjusted their revenue share for bigger titles on Steam

In their defense, though, their content distribution system is nothing to scoff at (plus handling the financial aspect, and some support), and sort of justifies their cut (the service is especially interesting for small, indie studios, I guess, plus there are some non-recurring costs to each game, such as storage space on the CDN, that probably get amortized at some point). The client could use some love, though (and it looks like it's getting some).

What would be interesting for them is to take a (slightly) lesser cut if the game is cross-platform. Everyone would be happy about this, I think, especially bean counters :)

What would be interesting for them is to take a (slightly) lesser cut if the game is cross-platform. Everyone would be happy about this, I think, especially bean counters :)

This could also be used as an argument to offset some of the extra costs associated with supporting another platform

What would be interesting for them is to take a (slightly) lesser cut if the game is cross-platform. Everyone would be happy about this, I think, especially bean counters :)

now that is one of the best ideas i've heard in a while to boost Linux-acceptance among the devs...too bad valve is not looking into this comments xD

What would be interesting for them is to take a (slightly) lesser cut if the game is cross-platform. Everyone would be happy about this, I think, especially bean counters :)

now that is one of the best ideas i've heard in a while to boost Linux-acceptance among the devs...too bad valve is not looking into this comments xD

I know for a fact a few people at Valve do read stuff here now and then :)

What can I say? It's consistent with non-digital businesses. Large corporations get tax breaks and subsidies. Small companies get lots of red tape and will be milked by the taxman. By making the rich richer, Steam is just doing what everyone else does.

It's a shame they didn't actually tie this to Linux / SteamOS support and it doesn't apply to smaller devs but oh well, it's quite understandable in the light of lots of AAA companies moving to their own stores.

So, big AAA publishers will pay a lesser share than indie developers? Nice move, Volksvagen, very fair. Epic Games lowered their cut for selling UE4 assets from 30% to 12%.

Most certainly a move to keep AA/AAA titles from Ubisoft, Square Enix, WB Games, .. on Steam.

Considering Epic's launcher is the only place on Windows to get Fortnite, they could have a pretty huge pull

That's why abandoning game development to concentrate on Steam was a mistake. Valve leveraged the draw of Half-Life 2 to establish Steam in the first place. It's understandable that they thought simply carrying everyone else's games on the platform would be enough to keep it afloat, and, to be fair, so far it has; Steam's taken a few punches lately, but it's still the 800lb gorilla. However they should know better: if they could do it, why can't Epic, if it has a big enough exclusive? I hope, for their sake (and for the sake of freeing PC gaming from Microsoft) Artifact is just the beginning of a new Valve.

What can I say? It's consistent with non-digital businesses. Large corporations get tax breaks and subsidies. Small companies get lots of red tape and will be milked by the taxman. By making the rich richer, Steam is just doing what everyone else does.

True, but it is more a reflection of the balance between costs and value. If big publishers could ship XBox and PlayStation titles direct without paying MS and Sony they probably would.

Valve probably charge more than their service is worth to a large developer, but are quite valuable to smaller concern.

What would be interesting for them is to take a (slightly) lesser cut if the game is cross-platform. Everyone would be happy about this, I think, especially bean counters :)

now that is one of the best ideas i've heard in a while to boost Linux-acceptance among the devs...too bad valve is not looking into this comments xD

Super good idea. It could also be platform-specific incentives as opposed to the whole cake, ie. they take their 25% cut for Windows sales but only 15% or less for Linux. Something like that might actually tip the balance and would cover the port costs presumably.

All in all though, I think this is a great move. I see a lot of developers like Bethesda with their much maligned Fallout 76 and CDProjekt with Gwent just releasing themselves since they make the money lost in sales back from not giving Valve anything. This is a good way of getting them back on Steam.

That said, they might need to think of a way to curb "review bombing" since that's another thing people fear on Steam. Though a lot of the time it's justified and calls certain companies out on anti-consumer bullshit, a lot of the time it could just be the result of some YouTuber anger bandwagon which sees a game panned on mass for being "too politically correct" or some other petty reason.

That's why abandoning game development to concentrate on Steam was a mistake.

What are you talking about?

This seems to be a good move on Valve's part. In addition to the discounted rate being used to keep the bigger developers from leaving steam for their own store, it may also be a way to keep them from becoming a windows store exclusive as well. Lets face it, most sales are on windows, and why pay to support and ship out patches to two different stores if they both cost the same... and one in particular does not need the end user to ever download a software package to use the store.

And yes, the small developers have to pay more. While I strive for fairness, the fact is that support costs per sale go down as the sales go up. While bandwidth costs increase proportionate to the number of sales, other things such as initial setup, review, even accounting costs stay relatively flat regardless of whether one copy is sold or 1000.

While $10 million in sales is quite a lofty goal, it is far from impossible. Ludeon Studios has done it with Rimworld, and Wube has done it with Factorio; both are indie developers with just a single title that went on to sell over 1 million copies.

I am still waiting for my Steam key for Albion online.


Bought the game when it was a standalone client.
Upset about being unable to migrate account.

While other companies may like having their own online store, things aren't always rosy for consumers. Having to install several clients on your computer is a shore, and the experience outside Steam for me was terrible. To this day I still get angry at the idea of installing Ubisoft's client to play their games, such bad piece of software that was. EA's one also can't hold a candle near Steam in terms of resources.

While for some Steam may come as a prison, for me is a very nice and organized place to organize my collection.

I'm quite surprised by this announcement. I thought that it is standard NDA contract with AAA publishers - they always pay much less than Indie developers. It is the only reason why they still are on Steam (only one big publisher abandoned them - EA). All others, still are present on Steam, even they could bundle games with their own game stories (Ubisoft Uplay, but they are kind enough for Valve and they do not allow to play games bought via Steam without Steam client started). Even Microsoft is selling some of their not XboX/Metro exclusive games via Steam - it doesn't make sense without very big "NDA promotion".

Perhaps it is some kind of even bigger NDA promotion - Valve will take much less than usual from AAA publishers, but even if - why such information is announced publicly?

Perhaps it is "strike ahead" before some kind of "disaster"... Perhaps some very big publishers will soon abandon Steam (ZeniMax? Ubisoft? Take2?)... It could make some gamers very upset, so Valve gave such information that it is not their fault - publishers are too greedy...

TBH I've always thought that bigger publishers got lower fees by the rest of individual negotiations. Maybe they did and now Valve just wants to make things simpler and more transparent.

I am still waiting for my Steam key for Albion online.


Bought the game when it was a standalone client.
Upset about being unable to migrate account.

Literally nothing to do with this or Valve. Take it up with the developer.

The best way to survive is not to charge less money but to make people NEED you, and know that you are the only one they can get what they want from.

Bill Gates knows this well.

Their cut adjustment strategy seems fair but they should really push hard on developing their console that way they can own their own mountain of gamers giving their store even more value than it currently has as the major PC platform.

STEAM MACHINES 2.0 - LET IT COME.

Edit: The 5% of 10 Million is $500,000. So 10% of 50 Million is $5,000,000 on some single AAA games. I am not sure how much money would be necessary to deploy Steam Machines 2.0 but I imagine that a 20 million - 100 million dollar investment should be able to setup a Linux Platform that serves as a "Walled Garden" for consumers who really just want to go down to best buy and buy a thing to play games with 0-extra-effort or intellectual admin skills.

Until Valve fortifies its own platform they will not be a real estate owner of the gaming space, they will only be a player battling with other stores over a shared market.


Last edited by ElectricPrism on 1 Dec 2018 at 9:57 pm UTC

I'm quite surprised by this announcement. I thought that it is standard NDA contract with AAA publishers - they always pay much less than Indie developers. It is the only reason why they still are on Steam (only one big publisher abandoned them - EA). All others, still are present on Steam, even they could bundle games with their own game stories (Ubisoft Uplay, but they are kind enough for Valve and they do not allow to play games bought via Steam without Steam client started). Even Microsoft is selling some of their not XboX/Metro exclusive games via Steam - it doesn't make sense without very big "NDA promotion".

Perhaps it is some kind of even bigger NDA promotion - Valve will take much less than usual from AAA publishers, but even if - why such information is announced publicly?

At a minimum it sets a new floor for the NDA negotiations to go from. Valve can say, well by default you get this rate, by all means, take that deal if you want. If you want more, here are the following provisos you have to fulfill (back catalog titles on the platform, sale participation, Linux port or supported Proton implementation, etc.).