Wolfire versus Valve antitrust lawsuit gets dismissed

Valve don't really provide marketing

Well, there are the Steam Next festivals that they do regularly.

its pointless.
steam next select the games they think are worth, wich isnt a bad thing (curation is aways good) but wont help with exposure if you arent selected.

other than that, i think there is a big miss conception here about marketing.
if valve is helping you, but its also helping your competition, they are helping no one.

by competition, i mean competition for the consumers atention, to discover that your game even exists


Last edited by elmapul on 20 November 2021 at 10:49 pm UTC

The 30% is quite likely not justified if you think about Steam like a traditional utility

Why?

There was an analysis I read relatively recently, based on the figures released through the Epic vs Apple trial (I'll include the link if I happen to find it again) that had Valve's break-even point at around a 20% cut, and GOG's at around 25%. Valve's cut is 20-30%, depending on your sales, and they provide a whole lot in exchange.

Well, perhaps. It's very hard to be sure because they're pretty opaque.

I don't think there is anything wrong with taking 30%. They don't have a monopoly, so they can set the prices and if you don't like them you can still use gog, itch or your own launcher. Ubisoft, League of Legends, Overwatch, Fortnite,... seem all to do fine without steam.
Also, as a Linux user, I don't buy games that do not run on my system. Windows only games that run through proton are therefore sales that wouldn't have happened without Valve's work. Keeping 70% vs. no sale at all sounds like a good deal to me.

that is non sense.
linux has 1% of marketshare.
valve takes 30% of all the sames on a platform with 90% of marketshare.
if you earn 900.000 dollars with an game and valve takes 30%, you end up with 630.000 dollars.
then you sell more 1% wich give you aditionally 9.000 dolars, and out of those valve take 30% and you end up with 6300 extra dolars thanks to valve making your game avaliable for linux.

Maybe I've worded the Linux part wrong. From my personal point of view, I want valve to take a cut because they make the game playable. That the developer doesn't care about the 1% is a different story.

Steam is replaceable (in case competitors ever get their shit together... it's a cosmic joke that so far they don't), the games are not.

depend on what kind of game we are talking about, there are countless clones of tetris, so we can say they are replaceable.
i also dont care about owning all platforms out there, i'm happy with a few, as long as i have at least one, i gave up on mario because the cost of an nintendo console for the benefit of an platform isnt worth it, i can play other platform games.
the same goes for fighting games, since im not an expert in any genre to be able to tell the minimum differences between each one.

Did Valve develop or market that game? No. They host its data and provide some (good) service around it

They provide quite a lot of marketing, actually. But it's simple: if you don't feel that Steam provides sufficient value, don't put your game on Steam. If all you want is packaging and distribution, use Itch; they are amazing at that.

I really want to agree there....except that it's not so simple for smaller developers. The marketshare is skewed to Steam, and those developers will need to put their games on Steam to stay afloat. That's the problem with lack of a good competitor to Steam (itch serves a different demographic).

Valve don't really provide marketing (at least, I don't think they mention anywhere that they do, making discussions on taking a cut for it immaterial) - if you can get in with their algorithms you have a shot, but from what I hear that's pretty hard to do. More sales come through marketing/news/info on external sites, just to have a chance of sticking out from the crowd.

Funny thing is, I would use itch.io if they would package it.

Hello first,

And I have great, lets go back to old good times of physical media and let see what today's dev would say after paying for: physical media, transportation, retail space, advertising, publishers. ROM cartridge cost (%) of final game price? 30% unfair... ask farmers (if subsidies removed) or other producer what they get for product and what you pay at checkout.

Couple question: Cut for nintendo, sony, xbox, apple, google stores? If only xbox type rental services left, no unit sales, (true) indies will be royally screwed?

Epic, with fight against 30% cut, showed which "indie" devs I need to avoid. Thanks, saved me a bit and will save more in future too.

You are again arguing the strawman that Valve makes better use of their excessive cuts than others do.
How nice. Not the point, not argued against by anyone. Stop it.

Cost+investment+profit would be a perfectly acceptable basis for funding even if Steam were the regulated utility that Purple Library Guy was contemplating.

You've still made no argument that Valve's share is "excessive" other than that developers want more money.

No, the argument is that developers deserve more money from their sales.

Oh, my bad: developers really want more money.

Developers aren't paying for anything, customers are.

That's semantics, really.
I'd say customers give 100% of the money to the developers, which have to forward 30% of it to Valve. Or customers give 100% to Valve, which withhold 30% from the developer - that's probably more correct.
Either way, developers lose 30% of what the customers were paying for their game. The developers are the ones losing more money in that scenario than they should.
Keep in mind that taxes go on top of that, in the EU that's about 20% gone additionally (unless you add 20% to the price in VAT countries, which I don't think anyone really does).
So from the get-go you lose 50% of value. Ouch. I'd be pissed about that, too.

Did Valve develop or market that game? No. They host its data and provide some (good) service around it - which is fair to compensate, of course, but 1/3rd is excessive. 1/4th or 5th would be much more reasonable, you don't have to do the lowballing that Epic does to just cover the expenses (of the hosting/service).

Developers can go with other stores that takes a lower cut like Epic Store if they are not happy.

You've still made no argument that Valve's share is "excessive" other than that developers want more money.

I have, as have others, you just didn't read or understand it or chose not to.

I'm just going to quote myself:

I actually work in this field and no, it isn't free. But you don't need 30% for that. Not even remotely.
15% would be much closer to cover maintenance and still have a small profit.

...
As a developer, if I sell something on a storefront, I'm fine paying the maintenance cost of what I actually use and a bit extra for the storefront's profit - but anything beyond that I'd not be okay with.

FFS, going back, you yourself quoted some source that Valve's breaking even point was 20% (which is bogus if you look at the costs they have just for hosting games and operating their storefront, but hey, even that number still proves the point).
That's a profit margin of 10%. Ten percent. That's not "a bit extra" that I wrote above.
Such a profit margin is unheard of in most fields on this planet.
Wholesale/retail is about 2-3%, services about 6-7%, online retail 1-5%. 10% puts you closer to Apple, and I don't think I need to elaborate how Apple is not exactly engaging in ethical business practice
Yet even Apple reduced their cut to 15% for smaller devs and are still in wild profit margin regions.

But somehow that's not supposed be "excessive"?!
How can you even arrive at that conclusion?

Developers can go with other stores that takes a lower cut like Epic Store if they are not happy.

While I'm quoting myself since people do not read what has been written already, I might as well go on...

As others have pointed out, that's not a choice that especially small devs have.
Many gamers quite simply demand a Steam release or they won't buy a game. So, what choice does a developer have here, really?
Lose more money than you should on a sale or lose the entire sale. Hmm...

Big names can somewhat pull that off.
Small devs? I could maybe name a handful that have successfully sold a game outside of Steam.

I honestly find it shocking how people on a gaming forum are so blindly defending bad practices of a huge corporation while simultaneously being anti-developers (the ones providing games for them, usually not by working nicely paid and safe 8-5 jobs) by insisting they should just pay an excessive share and shut up about it just to get their game hosted where most people expect it.

Either way, I'm outta this thread, getting a bit tired of repeating what I or others have already explained.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 21 November 2021 at 8:38 am UTC

Valve don't really provide marketing

They have millions of pairs of eyeballs they can put your game in front of, and they've invested heavily in putting it in front of the eyeballs of customers that are likely to buy your game, as well as providing detailed sales data about which regions are interested in your game and when interest is generated. If you have a better term for that than "marketing," please share.

Except Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers. It could be argued that way long ago, but not anymore. Steam provides the marketplace, but a developer must still do their own marketing to make it stand out from the rest.

--edit
Again, which is really inconsequential - I don't believe Valve officially offer marketing in general for their normal cut, though obviously will have agreements with certain publishers. That's special case I would think, not part of the generic 30% (or less, if you're one of the bigger publishers that will move enough units).

Steam Next festival

That's a profit margin of 10%. Ten percent. That's not "a bit extra" that I wrote above.

That's not what valve gets though - through key-sales on other platforms (for which valve still covers the infrastructure-cost without seeing a cent of the revenue!) and lowered % at bigger sale numbers it's likely more towards the 20% overall.

And the other thing is: it's not only infrastructure that has to be covered, but also the development of the offered tools an services.

With all rightful critique to valve/steam, but one simply has to admit, that the services and user experience offered by steam is way ahead of any of the other stores - which is probably the (or at least a big) reason why both users and developers tend to prefer steam over other offerings. And as "value" is always subjective, that fact speaks against the "overpriced" argument.

Such a profit margin is unheard of in most fields on this planet.

Ask basically all "premium" car manufacturers, many OEMs, Apple, furniture brands and so on - if you step outside of highly competetive and price sensitive areas like sustenance or low-cost/noname brands, 10% profit margin is all but "unheard of"...

Ask basically all "premium" car manufacturers, many OEMs, Apple, furniture brands and so on - if you step outside of highly competetive and price sensitive areas like sustenance or low-cost/noname brands, 10% profit margin is all but "unheard of"...

Yeah we don't even have to go that far, Microsoft have a profit margin of about 40%. But I do think that one part of the problem in determining if the cut is reasonable or not is that we don't know the financials of Valve, we only know that they "make a hefty profit" but not how much and from where since they not only operate a store but also sells their own games and hardware.

Apparently it pays off to be consistent.

Well here it does since one of the arguments was that Steam took 30% due to their monopoly position which was easily countered by the fact that the cut was 30% even back when Steam was a tiny lemonade stand at the street curb.

As a developer, if I sell something on a storefront, I'm fine paying the maintenance cost of what I actually use and a bit extra for the storefront's profit - but anything beyond that I'd not be okay with.

That is one of those things that sounds better in theory that they work in practice, e.g people tend to make the same arguments for paying taxes that they would like to pay taxes only for X and not for X+Y+Z when always ends up in situations like the US where nobody are willing to pay for infrastructure such as roads and bridges but every one uses them anyway so they tend to just disintegrate until they collapse in some huge accident.

E.g lets say that you don't want to pay for using the steam discussions pages, then your users will simply use some other games pages to discuss your game anyway (like how you'll find lots of PS4 and Epic games users using the Steam discussions pages right now). Or that when the cost of all services are no longer distributed equally over the entire user base then the extra cost per service will be much higher so if you really want to use 100% of the services that Valve have then you'll end up paying perhaps 40% or 50% instead of the 30% flat fee.

Valve don't really provide marketing

They have millions of pairs of eyeballs they can put your game in front of, and they've invested heavily in putting it in front of the eyeballs of customers that are likely to buy your game, as well as providing detailed sales data about which regions are interested in your game and when interest is generated. If you have a better term for that than "marketing," please share.

Except Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers. It could be argued that way long ago, but not anymore. Steam provides the marketplace, but a developer must still do their own marketing to make it stand out from the rest.

--edit
Again, which is really inconsequential - I don't believe Valve officially offer marketing in general for their normal cut, though obviously will have agreements with certain publishers. That's special case I would think, not part of the generic 30% (or less, if you're one of the bigger publishers that will move enough units).

Steam Next festival

Sorry, but is there some point you're trying to make?

Yes, in response to your "Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers" which I have demonstrated is just not true. There are also other mechanisms within Steam that are constantly being developed like recommendation systems, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzdyx5Vj00

This is a good video about that 30% cut and looking through the payment methods

Nobody could have anticipated that.

Valve don't really provide marketing

They have millions of pairs of eyeballs they can put your game in front of, and they've invested heavily in putting it in front of the eyeballs of customers that are likely to buy your game, as well as providing detailed sales data about which regions are interested in your game and when interest is generated. If you have a better term for that than "marketing," please share.

Except Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers. It could be argued that way long ago, but not anymore. Steam provides the marketplace, but a developer must still do their own marketing to make it stand out from the rest.

--edit
Again, which is really inconsequential - I don't believe Valve officially offer marketing in general for their normal cut, though obviously will have agreements with certain publishers. That's special case I would think, not part of the generic 30% (or less, if you're one of the bigger publishers that will move enough units).

Steam Next festival

Sorry, but is there some point you're trying to make?

Yes, in response to your "Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers" which I have demonstrated is just not true. There are also other mechanisms within Steam that are constantly being developed like recommendation systems, etc.

Well Steam doesn't. The developer/publisher still has to make it happen. Steam is a marketplace - it provides the infrastructure, but don't confuse that with actively marketing someone's game for them. And those other mechanisms all rely on gobbling up existing user data, moving it through some algorithms, and feeding the output back to the users; it's the typical case of Valve having the customer base do such work without Valve needing to put much effort in. Is there some kind of problem with that I'm not aware of?
If Valve put a title up front & centre on their store, then that won't come out of the 30% cut. That's from something extra.

Valve specifically puts on sales for certain games. They are for example planing a "Games from Germany" event that will happen in a few months.

It's their incentive to do that... to sell more games. To sell more games you gotta put them in front of people.


Last edited by kuhpunkt on 21 November 2021 at 2:18 pm UTC

I worked for a largish online internet shop, internet payment methods alone took anywhere from 2.5%-10%, and indirect payment methods such as gift cards was more expensive.

According the the video shared, that value is around 15% range.

So, if Steam needs to drop their cut, to stand on its own, they would need to have variable payment rates. This would cost them then extra, negating some of the potential cut.

Also, if a currency exchange needs to happen, the exchange rates will eat a further ~2% of that margin as well.

Valve don't really provide marketing

They have millions of pairs of eyeballs they can put your game in front of, and they've invested heavily in putting it in front of the eyeballs of customers that are likely to buy your game, as well as providing detailed sales data about which regions are interested in your game and when interest is generated. If you have a better term for that than "marketing," please share.

Except Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers. It could be argued that way long ago, but not anymore. Steam provides the marketplace, but a developer must still do their own marketing to make it stand out from the rest.

--edit
Again, which is really inconsequential - I don't believe Valve officially offer marketing in general for their normal cut, though obviously will have agreements with certain publishers. That's special case I would think, not part of the generic 30% (or less, if you're one of the bigger publishers that will move enough units).

Steam Next festival

Sorry, but is there some point you're trying to make?

Yes, in response to your "Steam doesn't put a person's game in front of the eyeballs of customers" which I have demonstrated is just not true. There are also other mechanisms within Steam that are constantly being developed like recommendation systems, etc.

Well Steam doesn't. The developer/publisher still has to make it happen.

Wrong. What does the developer have to do? Enlighten us.

1. The recommendation systems are data driven and automated.
2. Sales you *can* do yourself, but for the regular Steam sales, Valve sends an email with a link when there's an upcoming sale and all a dev/pub has to do is opt in and define the allowed discount percentage.
3. If you are referring to devs streaming their games during festivals as the devs having to do everything themselves. That'd bs because if you don't do streams, you still get in the listings, people can still play the demos, etc.

Stop arguing your wrong opinion.