Despite facing increased competition in the space, not least from the Epic Games Store, Valve’s platform is synonymous with PC gaming. The service is estimated to have made $10.8 billion in revenue during 2024, a new record for the Half-Life giant. Since it entered the PC distribution space back in 2018, the rival Epic Games Store has been making headway – and $1.09 billion last year – but Steam is still undeniably dominant within the space.
Valve earns a large part of its money from taking a 20-30% cut of sales revenue from developers and publishers. Despite other storefronts opening with lower overheads, Steam has stuck with taking this slice of sales revenue, and in doing so, it has been argued that Valve is unfairly taking a decent chunk of the profits of developers and publishers.
This might change, depending on how an ongoing class-action lawsuit initiated by Wolfire Games goes, but for the time being, Valve is making money hand over fist selling games on Steam. The platform boasts over 132 million users, so it’s perfectly reasonable that developers and publishers feel they have to use Steam – and give away a slice of their revenue – in order to reach the largest audience possible.
Humble still has to charge you entire Valve’s cut this way. 30% is way more than the real infra cost.
Valve backend is effectively a public utility in this scenario. This thing has been proven to work and bring prices down fast. Actual free market.
It wouldn’t be a public utility they would be a company that needs to make a profit still and would find a way to do so with fees on downloads.
And humble does not pay the 30% if you buy in their storefront currently.
So your complaint is that prices are high and getting rid of Steam would alter that?
Monopolies that were broken down this way were private companies. You’re making an argument against something that’s proven to work. You don’t really support it well (or at all).
How do you know Humble gets any discount?
Consider me not in your head to understand your perspective and try to get it across clearly to me. No sarcasm or condescending tone.
I do not see how these are comparable and don’t think of steam as a utility that owns the singular option for infrastructure as it’s a digital service that others can and will spin up to avoid using Steams backend.
They literally don’t have to.
And sure I am welcome to information if it is accurate and you have it.
You have a whole Wikipedia article that describes this into detail. I’m making an effort, you’re making none. Looks like sealioning to me.
I am asking you to explain your point. You can not rely on making others do your work for you.
That is you obstructing your point through others. Make your point and make it clearly since you seem insistent on doing so.
Effort is not dropping a link and thinking it argues on your behalf.
Sealion.
Right. Ok then. You have wasted enough of your time. I hope you figure out how to make your life less miserable through actions rather than complaints.
I’m having fun because I don’t need to make up things to compensate for debilitating cognitive dissonance.