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That lawsuit against Steam’s 30% cut of game sales is now a class action, meaning many other developers could benefit
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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2024
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Because that's not beneficial for companies. They want to make (more) money.
The only option most developers and publishers would have is to move to another store, where the cut is usually the same, with the exception of Epic Games Store. And as pointed out elsewhere, setting up and managing your own store ends up being more expensive than a 30% cut. And then you still don't have the same features as Steam.
No, it absolutely does not. But if you're not on Steam, your indie game doesn't sell.
As a counter example, Vintage Story seems to be doing okay regardless.
They delibarately decided to not be on Steam.
edit 2: They do run their own store, but it's a bit janky, has less payment options if I recall, and no regional pricing.
edit: Besides, one of the reasons indies like to be on Steam is because Steam basically does free advertising for you, with Discovery Queue and just generally pushing games that do well to more people (beneficial for Steam also, of course). But that's a service that's paid for by that 30% cut (among other things).
If having a lower price means you make more sales, then yes, it definitely can be beneficial for companies.
If you want to make $40 per copy, you could sell for $60 on Steam, or about $47.00 on Epic.
Being on sale for $47 would "unlock" more customers than you'd get if your game was only available for $60 everywhere. Some customers won't ever buy the game at $60, but they would at $47, and the company makes the same amount of money.
That is beneficial for companies.
But you can sell for 47 on epic. You just cannot sell for 47 on epic giving a key that redeems on steam.
Exactly; this whole price restriction on Steam is for games that will be hosted and downloaded from Steam.
It makes no sense for Steam to allow developers to sell Steam keys for cheaper via other stores when Steam has to then shoulder all the bandwidth and Remote Play/etc.
As long as you never want your $60 game featured on Steam, you can absolutely do that.
Which do you think is worth more?
Why wouldn't that happen?
Why are you making it my responsibility to explain why companies are not passing on their savings to consumers?
As a bystander I appreciate you. I learned some things I didn't know.
Or they could sell on Epic for $60 and just pocket more per sale because most players are used to new games being $60 anyway.
Besides, Steam itself also unlocks more customers even at same or higher prices because it can be a pain to get EGS games working on Linux sometimes, whereas Steam's seamless. Maybe we're a non-existent market force, but personally I've been maining Linux for my gaming PC for 4 years and now about 2 years ago I deleted the Windows partition I'd only kept around because I had Forza on the Microsoft store rather than Steam.
For AAA publishers, definitely. For indie developers or anyone who'd be wanting to try to bring customers to Epic, that wouldn't be the ideal long-term strategy.