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[Fabieter]

Wasn't it leaked in the Microsoft Court documents that Microsoft calculated that for Steam to break even, they need a 16% cut, so that would leave a 14% profit.

It makes me laugh when people then say that Valve should lower their cut to 5% or lower... Cause at that rate Steam would disappear in a year or 2. Lol



Yeah, it was known that Sony was also on 80/20 cut too and I believe they still are till the end of this year.

Which is a pretty good profit margin. They also have their own games which are mostly gaas which they barely Touch and still make billions every year. The profit for such a small company is insane.

 

[Sentenza]

Wasn't it leaked in the Microsoft Court documents that Microsoft calculated that for Steam to break even, they need a 16% cut, so that would leave a 14% profit.

Their cut becomes 25% above a million dollar in revenues and 20% above 50 millions, so it's less than 14% for anything even remotely successful.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Probably nowhere.

Also, "it's now a class action" but at the time the article was published it was a class action including just two people.

That doesn't sound right - you can't certify a class with two people.

So yeah, you're probably right - going nowhere.

 

[Z O N E]

Which is a pretty good profit margin. They also have their own games which are mostly gaas which they barely Touch and still make billions every year. The profit for such a small company is insane.

Yeah, 14% is perfectly fine considering the cut gets smaller the more the game sells, so their cut can go down to 9% or even 4% depending on the game sales.

Their cut becomes 25% above a million dollar in revenues and 20% above 50 millions, so it's less than 14% for anything even remotely successful.

Exactly.

25% = Steams profit becomes 9%
20% = Steams profit becomes 4%

EGS is proving why a lower cut is not financially feasible. It has been 6 years and Epic Game Store STILL hasn't turned a profit.

 

[Melon Husk]

Yeah, 14% is perfectly fine considering the cut gets smaller the more the game sells, so their cut can go down to 9% or even 4% depending on the game sales.



Exactly.

25% = Steams profit becomes 9%
20% = Steams profit becomes 4%

EGS is proving why a lower cut is not financially feasible. It has been 6 years and Epic Game Store STILL hasn't turned a profit.

Valve reinvests at least some of the profits into improving the platform with new features. EGS makes no money and has invested $0 to improve the store.

 

[Fabieter]

Valve reinvests at least some of the profits into improving the platform with new features. EGS makes no money and has invested $0 to improve the store.

They definitely do to some extent but they are really small for what they do. But it's easier to make a good store than big games these days so it definitely makes sense because everything we get from them is gaas games.

 

[Bumblebeetuna]

So they have a customer class action lawsuit and a developer class action lawsuit against them now?

 

[Brakum]

They'll probably lose the ability to force price parity with other stores. At least the nonsense about their backend system being some kind of entitlement that should be available to games sold outside the store seems to have been tossed aside.

That clause only applies to steam keys which makes PERFECT sense. If this goes through they'll just stop doing the keys thing and the industry will be worse for it and 99% of key selling websites will be gone over night.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

Yeah, 14% is perfectly fine considering the cut gets smaller the more the game sells, so their cut can go down to 9% or even 4% depending on the game sales.



Exactly.

25% = Steams profit becomes 9%
20% = Steams profit becomes 4%

EGS is proving why a lower cut is not financially feasible. It has been 6 years and Epic Game Store STILL hasn't turned a profit.

When giving games away PS+ style, but without the sub is one of your main draws... they should have incentivized getting a free game through buying one. They threw their Fortnite warchest at Valve for market share.

 

[Sorcerer]

So, what is going to happen on the consumer side, is everybody going to find 5 dollars in their Steam Wallet one day? And how are people who don't use Steam (but seem somehow entitled to something if I am reading this right) getting compensated.

About Valves 30% cut. Do developers get access to cloud saves and other features through Steam in exchange for the cut? Would they have to implement all those features themselves, or it does not work that way? I would guess not because there does not seem to be parity across all games with say cloud saves and achievements.

 

[SportsFan581]

That clause only applies to steam keys which makes PERFECT sense. If this goes through they'll just stop doing the keys thing and the industry will be worse for it and 99% of key selling websites will be gone over night.

That would suck for sure. I probably have more redeemed keys in my library than I do purchased games.

 

[chakadave]

That clause only applies to steam keys which makes PERFECT sense. If this goes through they'll just stop doing the keys thing and the industry will be worse for it and 99% of key selling websites will be gone over night.

Yep and that is bad for eveeryone. If you hace to sell game keys that can't be used on STeam what is the point?

 

[ozz ex machina]

As a consumer - steam has always treated me well. I couldn't give a fuck what cut the developers get. Steam brought in refunds first, has competitive pricing and allows me to buy steam keys elsewhere and utilise the steam ecosystem - which is how i get most of my games.

 

[mayham2199]

I don’t even know what they could do to resolve this even if Steam lost.

 

[simpatico]

This kind of lawfare always felt un-American to me.

 

[Dirk Benedict]

This kind of lawfare always felt un-American to me.

It got crazy after we entered the 2000s. Oi vey!

 

[Kataploom]

That clause only applies to steam keys which makes PERFECT sense. If this goes through they'll just stop doing the keys thing and the industry will be worse for it and 99% of key selling websites will be gone over night.

Did you not know? Epic is fighting the good fight against evil Steam, those other nobodies have nothing to do in this conversation, let's keep pretending that their efforts to burn money on free games don't effect those many others small competitors, it's only evil monopoly Steam the one effected!!

Now srsly (i was serious tho), valve being such an iron walled business by being private and dictating gaming business rules so easily it's probably alienating too many big fishes in favor of a public and weaker to control alternative, that's why Steam literally does no wrong and you keep seeing these news.

 

[Soodanim]

This kind of lawfare always felt un-American to me.

To the rest of the world it feels very American.

But I get what you're saying. It's pathetic, fueled by either jealousy or personal greed. Extremely short sighted and could well have negative ramifications for the entire PC space.

 

[kikkis]

Sometimes i think neogaffers are on steam because of steam and not because the games they actually play.

Edit. Thought about this more. For total steam spending, Valve makes 30% with couple of hundred devs and rest of the hundreds of thousands of devs make 70%. Recurring costs like cloud saves and bandwidth are not nothing, but not much either. For example youtube uses much more storage and bandwidth and lot of it's users use it completely free with ad blockers.

 

[DaciaJC]

Sometimes i think neogaffers are on steam because of steam and not because the games they actually play.

Edit. Thought about this more. For total steam spending, Valve makes 30% with couple of hundred devs and rest of the hundreds of thousands of devs make 70%. Recurring costs like cloud saves and bandwidth are not nothing, but not much either. For example youtube uses much more storage and bandwidth and lot of it's users use it completely free with ad blockers.

Do you think that's all Valve spends money on with the profits from Steam, just server bandwidth?

 

[Alexios]

Hope Steam gets on mobile proper, with APK or whatever versions of games. Probably the one store that can actually dethrone the "default" choices like Play Store and App Store just because it's so much more pro consumer and better than everything else with constant evolution & improvement.

Like, no reason to buy Balatro 2x, just log in Steam and you have it crossbuy with the PC version. Where applicable of course, not forced on developers, if the mobile ports have substantial changes to match then they could be offered separately (they can keep f2p trash anyway).

It would also be fun to see Tim and misguided fans completely lose their shit over it after eagerly anticipating the possibility to be on those walled garden platforms to come to know they'll not have a chance to compete there either after all.

 

[Alexios]

Their cut becomes 25% above a million dollar in revenues and 20% above 50 millions, so it's less than 14% for anything even remotely successful.

And they offer free keys for sale on 3rd party storefronts, free alternative payment methods like Steam cards or in some regions popular pay by cash (person actually goes out to collect) and constant evolution and upgrading of their services on the front and the back end (so funny when a random no name dev says omg you can't do this or that on Steam, they take 30% for nothing and turns out you can, learn to use the best and easiest tools you made the choice to have you bozo) yada yada, haters don't wanna learn in any of these threads so it's all futile to repeat but I guess it has to be said.

This case will obviously be lost since it's so easy to prove anyone can set their own price on Steam and any other store as different as they wish, only Steam keys have (super lax and hardly enforced, just there to avoid abuse) price & sale parity clauses given you still use all Steam services for 0% cut...

Going class action just means it will be further prolonged I guess, with Tim and co funding efforts to perpetuate the slander and lies. Maybe some small court will grant a tiny win here and there by some clueless judges failing to understand what they're ruling but the core of it will be thrown out