Although I can agree on the part of the 30% sale commission being a bit much, the end user usually never sees much of a price increase because of it unless the devs decide to up their price because of that commission.
We’re also not seeing companies like Sintendo charging $80+ for their new games because of competition with Steam nor is GTA6 gonna cost $100+ when it drops February 31st, 2170 because of Steam.
$903,000,000? This is just so greedy and dumb.
Is itch.io not a thing in the UK? Is GoG? No Micrsoft? No Robl-ox? I have many purchases on all of those platforms (except robl-ox), but Steam just continues to deliver the best experience and quality. Steam empowers me as a gamer and a customer.
Plus! Valve, not only includes Linux as an option, but actively develops for Linux and other Open Source technologies such as Proton and FEX, contributing back to the community; which arguably drives down the cost of gaming for everyone in the Sol system.
A game on Steam essentially sells itself.
The meme about Valve/Steam “does nothing, keeps winning” is mostly true (I don’t think the average gamer knows about Valve’s contributions to FOSS).
Because of Fortnite EGS has a very big installed base. People added their friends on Epic because of Fortnite. And yet gamers buy other games on Steam instead. That may have something to do with the fact that the main page of EGS mainly promotes Epic’s own games, whereas Steam promotes third party games first.
I’ve commented elsewhere about this, but it’s probably more about the customer experience than anything else. I can only speak to me and my friends use cases, but steam has the best infrastructure for social gamers in my opinion. Remote play together and family sharing encourages me to buy through steam over any other platform. Steams friend list features are not even what I’d call robust, but I can’t even set my status to invisible on epic. If I want to play a game with online connectivity I have to appear online to my friends list on epic. That is a bare bones feature that any platform that takes social experience seriously would add. Any game I expect to want to play solo/without interruption will be purchased through any platform other than epic for that issue alone. I don’t need a lot of the features steam has (discussion boards/game guides), but the fact that epic doesn’t see reviews as an important feature of their platform is also a huge oversight. If I see a game I like I’m checking steam reviews and since I’m already there, I might as well buy it there and potentially leave my own review. Steam also has robust infrastructure that can recommend similar games and lets me see a games tags to help me decide if I’ll enjoy it or help me manually search for similar games. EGS offers me nothing of the sort.
Taking a 30 percent cut seems to be standard for the industry, and Valve provides above-standard services such as Workshop, matching, cloud sync, various community integrations. That aside, if they took a smaller cut, none of this would be passed on to the customer. In summary, whichever way the suit goes, I don’t see a reason to care.
Okay. So how is Steam causing Nintendo to release their games at 80 dollars or rockstar threatening to sell the next GTA at 100 dollars due to Steam’s undue market dominance?
Also game developers have the option of using other platforms like epic, humble, itch, or using mostly DRM free GoG, my personal favorite.
As for the whole Steam preventing developers from selling elsewhere, I’d actually be interested in seeing their proof on this because developers have their games multiple storefronts at launch all the time. And kind of hypocritical to not sue Epic to for their exclusivity deals they make with publishers, literally preventing them from selling on another storefront.
Seems like a bullshit grifting lawsuit to me but hell I’m open to seeing what their actual evidence is.
As for the whole Steam preventing developers from selling elsewhere, I’d actually be interested in seeing their proof on this because developers have their
Just confirmed with an indie dev that I know (I have 2 more I could ask as well), only restriction he has is “Sell games at same list price on all platforms” nothing about “on sale” prices just list price
Yeah, despite being an Epic exclusive at launch Square Enix pushed retail price from the standard $60 to $70 for Final Fantasy Remake.
Publishers also opted out of Epic’s $10 off sale despite Epic eating the costs, since they didn’t want to devalue the price they could charge for future sales.
https://kotaku.com/publishers-pull-their-games-from-epics-store-during-its-1834828248
Publishers don’t want to sell games cheaper. They want to price it higher. They only lower if less people are buying the game at a higher price and are forced to lower it. I don’t understand why some can’t see publishers are not altruistic and some how exempt from maximizing profits like other industries.
Ones that remained exclusive on their own launcher for a long time yet didn’t deviate from pricing the retail price of their games any lower despite paying 0% cut like EA and Ubisoft in the past is proof enough.
It’s as naive as when Microsoft tried to push an always online digital console and some believing it’d lead to lower game prices due to not having to account for physical costs of discs as though companies want to price games lower instead of higher.
Epic Games Store is one of the few gaming platforms that charges well under 30% — adopting a 12% comission rate.
Itch is 10%, and isn’t run by a scumbag.
I forgot about Itch. The games on there are so weird
Wut? I don’t buy games often or right away. I put them on my wish list and sometimes there are ridiculous sales. I think I have paid $20 max, and lowest was $2 for an prior version of a Rally game.
3hrs of their time, btw.
Good! Fuck their monopoly!
All billionaires get eaten, regardless if they make a thing you like.
Fuck their monopoly!
Interesting monopoly when the world’s biggest PC games – Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite – aren’t even on Steam.
