Valve lowers their % of cut for 3rd-party games on Steam with new tiered fee system

[Mihle]

1 hour ago, asus killer said:

I'm lost in your logic. Sorry. So because consoles are a bigger scam it's ok what steam charges?

 

Things you missed: less piracy (virtually none now) so more money for developers. Also anti piracy measures are sonys and ms expenses. In the pc the developers pay them themselves.

Console hardware is sold initially at a lost.

Sony and ms have costs marketing games in bundles for example, steam doesnt. If a pc developer wants publicity they have to pay for it.

Steam do have cost of for example online backup of saves and stuff btw, rember that. Don't know how much that makes up in costs tho.

[Sauron]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

I hate it when games go off platform and do their own "Steam". Like monopolies are bad in all but well, it's bloody annoying and I'm fundamentally lazy.

Ideally things would be DRM free and available on whichever store you prefer with no strings attached... but alas...

[Jito463]

4 hours ago, asus killer said:

if you put a 30% tax you are indeed setting at least part of the price

 

false issue, they still charge 30% tax on single player games. So no way that is related to server costs.

The 30% cut to Valve is not a tax, it's their fee to cover hosting fees and other distribution costs.  This fee is still far lower than what companies used to pay previously when retail was king, as @Delicieuxz previously pointed out.  Could it be lower?  Probably.  However, it is not comparable to a "tax" that's tacked on to the price.  It's just part of the costs associated with doing business.  Any business will have inherent costs that must be factored in.  If you've ever run/managed a company, you would know that.

 

You either have a short memory or are too young to remember before digital distribution became popular.  It used to be much worse for developers, profit-wise.

[Firewrath9]

7 hours ago, asus killer said:

i still remember the days PC games were a lot cheaper then in consoles. Probably just a coincidence that changed after steam

 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/606280/Darksiders_III/

https://store.playstation.com/en-us/product/UP4389-CUSA08880_00-DARKSIDERS3US001

 

sure it is 

cant forget lord gaben sales, nier automata was 15$ once i think

[MoonSpot]

Too late; if everyone hadn't already sunk money into making their own clients and delivery system, steams clear dominance could have been clearer for longer.  Even CDProjectRed made GOG, and I'd not have called them a large developer back then. 

There've been some interesting things I've noted over the past stretch, but I'm not sure what they mean or if they mean anything.  We've seen CDProjectRed, Ubisoft & bethesda sell some titles on EAs Origin.  Then we saw Sqeenix(SquareSoft) test all the waters by selling their stuff on all the platforms too(even Ubisoft platform which was weird IMO).  I think the publishers are and were testing everyones platforms and piecing out where things are for them while considering sinking money into developing their own client, improving what they've already made, or where to make their bed.

 

Things are changing, steam will never again be what it was.  If publishers are in the business of making money, the largest and most succulent 'low hanging fruit' is the client.  It was a much harder thing to do when they killed physical retail.  Compared to that, steam is nothing.

I can't escape the feeling that the only clients actually competing are GOG and steam, the others seem more the machinations of protectionist producers.  Even Origin rarely has another big publisher sell titles on their platform.  Whether thats their choice, or because they make it an unattractive option to other publishers/devs; IDK.

 

Whatever.  Less tax should be a good thing.  We'll see what happens.

[asus killer]

1 hour ago, Jito463 said:

The 30% cut to Valve is not a tax, it's their fee to cover hosting fees and other distribution costs.  This fee is still far lower than what companies used to pay previously when retail was king, as @Delicieuxz previously pointed out.  Could it be lower?  Probably.  However, it is not comparable to a "tax" that's tacked on to the price.  It's just part of the costs associated with doing business.  Any business will have inherent costs that must be factored in.  If you've ever run/managed a company, you would know that.

 

You either have a short memory or are too young to remember before digital distribution became popular.  It used to be much worse for developers, profit-wise.

come on you're not comparing steam with the cost of brick and mortar stores right, psychical cds or dvds?

 

 

2 hours ago, Delicieuxz said:

 

 

Piracy is still alive and well, though I don't think it's significant to this topic. If a console developer wants a marketing campaign, they also pay for it.

 

 

there is no piracy on xboxone and ps4

[Thaldor]

5 hours ago, asus killer said:

if you put a 30% tax you are indeed setting at least part of the price

 

false issue, they still charge 30% tax on single player games. So no way that is related to server costs.

What do you think Steam uses to distribute the games and updates? Potatoes and couriers?

 

There's quite a huge bill for Valve to run Steam. Just current 48h numbers: Users online peak at over 16 million minimum being 10 million users, dowload bandwidth peaks at 4.4 Tbps, on country level US residents have dowladed 38.7 PB of data with average dowload rate being 41.4 Mbps and Chinese have downloaded 32 PB of data at 43.4 Mbps and that's only 29,4% out of global downloads.

Next fun numbers are the Steam support (in 24h):

Quote

Refund requests 84,267 typical response time 49.90 minutes to 1.52 hours

Account security & recovery 39,167 typical response time 2.41 hours to 1.39 days

Game & Steam technical support 3,064 typical response time 10.02 hours to 2.16 days

Purchase & billing support 2,701 typical response time 6.49 hours to 22.36 hours

There was quite a big peak in support tickets 24.11.2018 with 232,391 tickets submitted and next day there was "only" 44,089 tickets waiting for response.

 

Personal experience: Valve does very good job with Steam and it's support. The couple of time I have needed support the response has been within the same day. Compared to UPlay support that I foolishly once contacted about reclaiming Heroes VI DLCs from a bundled package while owning Heroes VI already: they responded a week after and there was around 4 messages within which the problem was solved taking over a month and whole thing could have been handled with 2 messages but they didn't give me first or second time the CD-key for the Heroes VI DLCs but for other games because "system error" (they were fast to remove those games from my account, around 2 hours from me sending the message, but they answered a week later).

 

So, yeah, Valve has some serious costs in running Steam, but it's still the cheapest and most profitable way to release a game for anyone except EA, Ubisoft, Microsoft and others with their own platforms and it's far more luxorious for a game developer to release their game by themselves through Steam than gain probably more stable income from selling their souls to a publisher like EA or Ubisoft, which sooner or later come and pee in your cereals by putting unattainable release schedules, talking to press past you about your game somethign that the game will never have, decide that the game needs "this and this" feature which will be hated by the fans and players, monetize the shit out of your game giving you only the breadcrumbs and then driving you bankrupt because "your game didn't do well enough" after they have directed the whole development process and monetization.

[asus killer]

1 minute ago, Thaldor said:

What do you think Steam uses to distribute the games and updates? Potatoes and couriers?

 

There's quite a huge bill for Valve to run Steam. Just current 48h numbers: Users online peak at over 16 million minimum being 10 million users, dowload bandwidth peaks at 4.4 Tbps, on country level US residents have dowladed 38.7 PB of data with average dowload rate being 41.4 Mbps and Chinese have downloaded 32 PB of data at 43.4 Mbps and that's only 29,4% out of global downloads.

Next fun numbers are the Steam support (in 24h):

 

you're joking if you think those costs are anywhere near 30% of every game. gabe is worth 3.9B USA, ranks #190 on forbes list

[Thaldor]

6 minutes ago, asus killer said:

you're joking if you think those costs are anywhere near 30% of every game. gabe is worth 3.9B USA, ranks #190 on forbes list

Of course there's a lot of profits, but it's still the cheapest offer out there and also the surest.

 

Fun fact, not anybody can release just any game to a console and it's far more expensive than what Steam offers. If you are not ready to sign a contract and basicly sell your soul to the platform owner (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, Activision-Blizzard etc.) you need to have a game that they want to publish before even thinking about the costs of publishing it. Costs then depend on what you promise, usually timed exclusivity or even full exclusivity drop costs a lot mainly the part where you get the dev kit (IIRC PS4 dev kit costs $2,500 and Xbox One $500+monthly fee, both are very generous with dev kits, but you may need to wait a While to get one). Unlike Steam other platforms usually also require professional localization, age ratings and usually insurance (for that you did something in the game that gets bad reputation to the platform, like you used CR protected art or music), for Xbox One these are around $4,800 (source from 2014) and still Microsoft takes their cut from the sales. Nintendo, Origin, Uplay and Battle.net are a different story, you most probably need to have game good enough that EA, Ubisoft or Activision-Blizzard agree to publish it, which basicly means selling your soul to them (yay!) and Nintendo is really picky. Also the costs don't stop at the release, you need to patch something or add a DLC and you pay for the platform (at least during PS3 and Xbox 360 era, Double Fine stopped patching their console games because apparently releasing a patch would have costed them $40,000 (source))

 

Steam stands still the best option to gain audience and release a game for smaller companies even if it takes 30% out of the sales. Just because other options are even binding, don't accept nearly everything and are more expensive. Self release is always an option but then you start from complete zero and need to build the audience and take care of everything.

[Belgarathian]

11 hours ago, asus killer said:

valve takes 30% from us, consumers, not developers. it's our money. I always considered this a robbery, useless blood sucking vampires with a monopoly

Yes because servers, development, support, advertising, and business development are free these days.

[AntiTrust]

regressive system makes perfect sense to me, this is a good move. their fees are still extremely high though 20-30% cut is a disgusting price 

[Eaglerino]

I wonder how much money Steam lost with Bethesda and Activision leaving their platform

[asus killer]

1 hour ago, Eaglerino said:

I wonder how much money Steam lost with Bethesda and Activision leaving their platform

lesson: don't be greedy. others will follow

[Eaglerino]

26 minutes ago, asus killer said:

lesson: don't be greedy. others will follow

Pretending Activison/Bethesda wouldn't do the same thing given the chance

[ZacoAttaco]

It's kind of crazy to think only Take-Two/Rockstar and Ubisoft are the major publishers releasing titles on Steam. Ubisoft can easily stop when ever they feel like because they actually have an ok client in uPlay. Even Bethesda is no longer releasing new titles on Steam, I assume they are in all in their own client now...

 

Now it makes sense why I hardly ever open Steam anymore...though, this is a step in the right direction for the company.

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, ZacoAttaco said:

Ubisoft can easily stop when ever they feel like because they actually have an ok client in uPlay

Blasphemy!! 

[ZacoAttaco]

7 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Blasphemy!! 

 

I'd argue that uPlay is better than Origin and the Epic Games Launcher. I'd say it's on par with Battle.net, although Battle.net has a weird social interface. Nitpicks in the end.

 

Steam is still the gold standard, just because it's clearly had the most time and effort put into it.

[mr moose]

Only on LTT does  the news of a business reducing it's fees result in a debate about it being a good/moral/ethical/consumer oriented thing.

 

11 hours ago, Jito463 said:

You either have a short memory or are too young to remember before digital distribution became popular.  It used to be much worse for developers, profit-wise.

Whether this be true or not,  I think we can all agree that before electronic distribution,  most of the games were (99% of the time)  finished, the content was complete in it's entirety and the game was playable without bugs.

 

 

[ZacoAttaco]

19 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Whether this be true or not,  I think we can all agree that before electronic distribution,  most of the games were (99% of the time)  finished, the content was complete in it's entirety and the game was playable without bugs.

The only argument otherwise, is that games are more ‘ambitious’ than before the days of digital distribution.

 

But I think it’s more like publishers know they can just patch after release so there isn’t the same focus on QA. Publishers really really don’t want to delay a title’s launch these days. 

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, ZacoAttaco said:

 

But I think it’s more like publishers know they can just patch after release so there isn’t the same focus on QA. Publishers really really don’t want to delay a title’s launch these days. 

It's definitely something like this, because it's not just games,  just about every consumer product has the same  problems with bugs, update requirements conflicts, etc.  

[D13H4RD]

4 minutes ago, mr moose said:

It's definitely something like this, because it's not just games,  just about every consumer product has the same  problems with bugs, update requirements conflicts, etc.  

Especially since over the air content delivery is a thing these days 

[Jito463]

32 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Whether this be true or not,  I think we can all agree that before electronic distribution,  most of the games were (99% of the time)  finished, the content was complete in it's entirety and the game was playable without bugs.

Eh, I'd agree that there were fewer bugs in released games back then, but I wouldn't go so far as to say that they didn't have bugs at all (sometimes even game breaking bugs).  Though it is pretty clear that developers and/or publishers believe the digital distribution concept gives them carte blanche to be lazy in their QA.

[suicidalfranco]

41 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Whether this be true or not,  I think we can all agree that before electronic distribution,  most of the games were (99% of the time)  finished, the content was complete in it's entirety and the game was playable without bugs.

and before electronic store fronts games like Undertale, Owlboy or even Stardew Valley wouldn't have had the chance to shine 

[PocketNerd]

If the Royalty fee mattered at all everyone would be on Itch setting their royalty at 0%

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

and before electronic store fronts games like Undertale, Owlboy or even Stardew Valley wouldn't have had the chance to shine 

I'm not saying electronic store fronts or the internet is bad, I'm just saying it has allowed for a lot more problems to surface in software products than otherwise would have.   Look at all the issues with MS and Apple with OS updates, look at games not being finished many of them selling as "work in progress", know we have a preorder pandemic and god know what the future will bring.