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PayPalWell this was very much expected wasn't it? A judge has ruled in the case of Wolfire versus Valve to dismiss the case.
As a brief reminder of what's been going on - Wolfire Games took Valve to court over a couple of things like: the 30% cut Valve take, and an apparent clause that forces developers match their prices on Steam to other stores if they release their game elsewhere. Valve of course moved to have it dismissed and now a ruling has been passed down.
In the new filing on November 19, the judge has dismissed and denied the case in part, giving Wolfire leave to amend their case, which going by the documentation Wolfire requested and it has been granted, so we might see Wolfire back again with an amended case at some point (they have 30 days).
Going over why it was dismissed, the ruling makes it pretty clear, mentioning that Valve's store fees have remained a constant, even with competition and even when they weren't the "dominant" force in the market. It additionally mentions an older case with Sommers v. Apple, where Apple had a 99 cent music download fee:
"There, as here, the price remained the same throughout, even during periods of intense competition in the marketplace."
It also notes that other stores have charged less than Valve and failed:
"The market reality, at least as plead in the CAC, is that, in spite of Defendant’s 'supracompetitive' fee, others who charge less have failed, even though they had significant resources at their disposal."
When looking to the footer notes, the filing brings up the "substantial" consumer base on Steam and favoured features on Steam, noting the backlash that generates when a developer chooses to release elsewhere and not on Steam. It wasn't named directly but they're hinting at things like the Epic Store here, which is interesting to see it used like this, so it's actually clearly helped Valve's defence here. Competition is good, obviously.
On the subject of the apparent most favoured nation clause, which is what Wolfire claimed Valve used to force prices to remain the same on Steam as other stores, the documents state the complaint lacks the allegations to actually back it up. Not only that but this too:
"If anything, the facts provided by the CAC, at least with respect to output, suggest the opposite—a consistent increase in the number of games available in the market and on the Steam Platform."
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPThat'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.
Quoting: TheSHEEEPSuch 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"...
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Quoting: TermyAsk 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.
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Quoting: pbApparently 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.
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Quoting: TheSHEEEPAs 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.
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rustybroomhandle Nov 21, 2021
Quoting: GuestQuoting: rustybroomhandleQuoting: GuestQuoting: CatKillerQuoting: GuestValve don't really provide marketingThey 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.
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somebody1121 Nov 21, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNzdyx5Vj00
This is a good video about that 30% cut and looking through the payment methods
This is a good video about that 30% cut and looking through the payment methods
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Nobody could have anticipated that. 
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Quoting: GuestQuoting: rustybroomhandleQuoting: GuestQuoting: rustybroomhandleQuoting: GuestQuoting: CatKillerQuoting: GuestValve don't really provide marketingThey 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
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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.
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.
2 Likes, Who?
rustybroomhandle Nov 21, 2021
Quoting: GuestQuoting: rustybroomhandleQuoting: GuestQuoting: rustybroomhandleQuoting: GuestQuoting: CatKillerQuoting: GuestValve don't really provide marketingThey 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.
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