It just comes off as greedy and whiney.
Games get my money on Steam because Steam provides me with a great experience to play those games. It's far more than just a CDN, and all it takes is to try to use an EA game on the Deck to see how bad other platforms are.
They're whiny and petulant and they play dirty with the press, but Epic is ultimately staking their deep pockets and public reputation on championing the cause of many little guys.
When they launched, afaik they were being pretty selective. A game being on Steam meant it was a good game, and in a way they were actually a publisher providing you with high converting distribution channels. It was like marketing and PR were almost baked in.
Now being on Steam means nothing. In fact they happily declared it means nothing: https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-says-it-will-no-longer-police-...
Steam even normalized a class of game (Early Access) that actually means negative things in general.
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Once they transitioned from publisher to glorified CDN + Forum Hosting, I think they should have reworked the pricing to reflect that.
The following page lists some high level features but there's a lot more if you dig in: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features
Worth noting that Epic's store does not provide most of this. You get what you pay for.
A dev's game being on Steam and having access to that massive customer base is much more valuable to that dev than Generic Looter Shooter #8589 is to Steam.
It is similar to how Microsoft is now unhappy to have to deal with Apple and Google, after killing Windows Phone, when it was around 10%.
Turns out 10% market share was still better than not owning any mobile platform where they can't really push XBox games as they wish.
According to the verge they killed it when it was 2.5% [1]. IDC also lists 2.5% by the second quarter of 2014 and a peak of 3.4% in 2013 [2].
[1]: https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/10/16452162/windows-phone-h...
Valve investing in Linux gaming? Same deal.
People keep putting Steam on their desktop because Valve has spent decades cultivating customer's trust, meanwhile every other MBA has been burning it for short term gain. Partnering with Valve comes with access to things like APIs and tools, but you also receive a little bit of that trust by association.
Not only has EGS seemingly failed to build something with equivalent features, APIs, tooling, etc. but in doing so they've failed to show a reason to trust them. So if the lower cut isn't resulting lower prices, what's the value prop for customers? GOG has an angles: games nobody cared to make available for a long time and being DRM free. To me it looks like Epic took the MBA route and wanted to build a moat via console style exclusivity, but that's not trust. Free games aren't trust. Just being on the customer's machine isn't trust.
(Also, these letters aren't current. iirc Vale doesn't simply take a flat 30% cut in the current day)
Steam has a track record of making their product better and better and the biggest scandal I can remember is when they introduced paid mods since that risked undermining the free mod market and GabeN did adjust the pricing afterwards and did personally get involved with the PR fallout. Otherwise the service has just gradually gotten better and better for the customer. Steam is privately owned instead of being owned by publicly traded companies and that helps with my confidence in the company.
it's a direct result of its private ownership, there is no need to constantly squeeze customers/suppliers for more every quarter
if it was owned by a VC/PE fund, or a public company then it would be very different experience indeed
maybe (MAYBE) back in the days of physical distribution the 30% would make sense... and don't bring it "Steam offers more than distribution" because plenty of big fish don't use it or wouldn't want to but the brain-less gamer community seems to like fancy trophy, streaming etc. so they have to comply
edit: wonder what if Nvidia, Intel, AMD and the likes starts charging 30% of all you created...
Even big fish like EA and Ubisoft can't run their shops anywhere near the reliability that Valve provides. Sure, 30% isn't holy for me and I'm happy for Epic try and beat Valve, but so far, which is now nearly two decades, it's been worth very cent of the thousands of currency I've thrown Valve's way. Especially Proton is something I don't see anyone else do, and it's saves me money too.
No, back in physicals distribution times publisher was swallowing >70% and actual dev houses were bottom feeders often working on fixed commission.
Steam does not require pricing parity between marketplaces as long as you are not distributing Steam keys through them. I.e. if you sell Steam keys on Humble Bundle, you have to have price parity with Steam and match sales within 30 days before/after the Humble sale. But if you also sell on GOG, which does not provide Steam keys, the GOG price can be whatever you want. (So if you sell on these 3 platforms, if the normal Steam price is $30, then the normal Humble price also has to be $30, but you can price it on GOG at $5 all the time.)
To further illustrate my point, let's take some real-world examples. Ubisoft owns the Ubisoft Store and presumably takes a 0% cut for their own titles. The Ubisoft Store does not sell Steam keys, so it is not required to have pricing parity with Steam. One would therefore expect Ubisoft would attempt to court players into its own store with lower prices so they could get a higher percentage of each sale.
But if we look at Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the regular price is the same on both storefronts. Even more interesting is when we look at historical price data [0], which shows it actually goes on sale on Steam more often than it does on the Ubisoft Store.
Likewise, EA has F1 2024 available for pre-order at $69.99 on both Steam and the EA Store [1]. EA Sports FC 2024 also has the same normal price of $69.99 on both Steam and the EA Store, and it seems to go on sale on both platforms at about the same rate [2].
Cyberpunk 2077, developed by CDPR, owners of GOG, is also priced the same across all storefronts and goes on sale at about the same frequency on each [3].
For lack of a better term, the cut is a cost of doing business - it's a hidden tax that doesn't affect the end price consumers pay, even absent the typical pricing parity agreements that many D2C companies have entered into to get their product on traditional retailers' shelves.
Even in cases where there are no legal obligations to price match, the companies still do it, and when you think about it, the reason is obvious: the only people who benefit from a cut being lowered are executives who see bigger bonuses and shareholders who see larger dividends and increased stock prices. It doesn't actually affect the consumer, nor does it result in better pay for the individual developers.
If the cut were reduced (and back when games were mostly distributed by retailers, the cut was typically 60%+, so we have historical precedent for the effects of it being reduced), very few companies would drop prices - most would be content to enjoy the extra revenue because games are not a standardized commodity thanks to IP laws. (Think about it: Forza and Dirt don't really compete in the same market, despite both being racing sims, so one dropping the price won't be winning many customers from the other.)
I'm sure some small indie devs could meaningfully benefit from a smaller cut by the storefront, but indie devs typically price their games lower, so the ultimate monetary gain is much smaller for them than it is for Ubisoft, EA, etc. and if a decreased cut is what saves them from bankruptcy, they weren't in a very sustainable position to begin with.
I'm not trying to say a 30% cut is right, just that people talk about it as if lowering it would be a win for the consumer and for individual developers (and that Valve is holding the industry back as a result), when historically, the only ones who have really benefited are the AAAs' C-levels and shareholders.
[0]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/assassins-creed-valhalla/his...
[1]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/f1-24/info/
[2]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/ea-sports-fc-24/history/
[3]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/cyberpunk-2077/history/
He is fighting everyone's 30% fees.
Perhaps, just perhaps, they are worth it because if they weren't the it would be easy to create a platform.
Proof of his absolute stupidity is here [0], where he says (referring to MS, Nintendo, and Sony), "* Well, they subsidize hardware, so they sell their hardware, as far as I can tell from widely published reports, at a loss, and so the fee needs to cover that*".
WTF???? So if you lose money, the he isn't going to sue you, but if you make money, then he will sue you. At this point, I hope someone destroys his damn company due to a slip & fall lawsuit. God, I can't take his shit anymore!!!
[0] - https://www.gamesindustry.biz/epic-explains-why-it-hasnt-sue...
/rant
That seems totally reasonable to me.
Why 12% ? That's not cheap for what is essentially basic ACH billing service.
If I go to get a service like that, I have several vendors to choose from and only pay about 1/4 that price. [1]
Maybe someone should sue Epic for unreasonable pricing.
[0] - https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/9/23630864/epic-games-store-...
It is maybe easy to create a platform, but much harder to beat network effect.
Perhaps. And perhaps its monopolistic behaviour. If so, we all stand to win by challenging it.
> WTF???? So if you lose money, the he isn't going to sue you, but if you make money, then he will sue you.
Sounds like Sweeney is suggesting the hardware itself is sold at a loss, not that console manufacturers make no money.
I play so few games that I'm happy to buy mostly from the much smaller gog.com. I'm not sure if their fees are less, but it at least raises competition.
I generally don't trust DRM platforms like Steam or Epic, but bravo to Tim Sweeney for championing smaller publishers unable to negotiate down from Steam's 30% fees.
As much as some Mall in your city charging high rental rates. If they are not stopping other malls from being built (say by bribing politicians), and they are not stopping people from setting up solo shops, I don't see where the anti-competitive force is.
Apple's case is much different. They are using oligopoly power in one area (high share of OS), to extract revenue in other area. It's like if one of the biggest cities in the country, had a Mayor who also owned the only Mall in that city and stopped any other Malls from being built and charged super high rental rates in that Mall.
I had a quick look.
Per https://www.shacknews.com/article/130287/valve-faces-antitru... , Valve are currently (?) being investigated for Most Favored Nation practices.
This is the equivalent of a high rent mall demanding that its shops don't charge less for its wares in lower rent malls.
Steam also doesn't do exclusives (beyond Valve's own titles), nor do they pay any OEMs to pre-install Steam - with the exception of the Steam Deck, all Steam installs come from people who actively seek them out. It's not like Apple where (until recently) you had to go through them to get your app on iOS and pay them every step of the way for the privilege.
