Indie developer behind 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rated shipbuilder argues that Steam's "free advertising" is worth the 30% cut
Indie developer behind 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rated shipbuilder argues that Steam's "free advertising" is worth the 30% cut
"Steam will probably still outsell everything else combined by 100x"
You know what also justifies Valve's 30% cut? Their outstanding efforts in getting games to run on Linux, and the overall impact that this had on the Linux community.
I don't think I'd be running Linux as my only daily driver if not for this. I was slightly dreading switching because I feared spending hours trying to fix broken games, but it's been astonishingly straightforward (which facilitated me learning to live in Linux in a way I hadn't been able to when was dual booting with Windows)
For most developers, that's not much of a value. The Linux share of the gaming market only exists because of Steam. 99% of those gamers would just play on Windows if Valve hadn't pu in the effort.
It is good for Linux though.
Since the headline blew it, the game mentioned is called Cosmoteer.
Currently 20% off!
I know this whole thing is probably just an ad, but it's working on me lol
I played so much of it thru steamlink while at work
Damn that's a good use case
Thank you!
One of my top played game on Steam. Super fun!
Looked like space pirates and zombies.
Oh wow I've owned this game for quite some time. Decent game but ultimately I think Starsector and Avorion are better.
Is this controversial? You're paying for the storefront.
You aren't even paying anything, you literally just give them a cut of your turnover when you don't sell anything they carry the costs of it.
30% seems rather high
but... when they handle payments, refunds, advertising (within their application) and game download costs (server infrastructure?), etc etc etc. it doesnt seem that crazy.
at least, for a lot of indie developers, not having to worry about those things, might easily be worth those 30%
Not to mention the reviews, community hubs, workshop, video streaming and recording, controller support, cloud saves, family sharing.
30% may be a lot, but it's not like they're just sitting on it.
EA and Ubisoft don't offer (most of) those features with their launchers where they do get the full proceeds.
Not to mention Steam/Valve uses a significant portion of their resources to develop Proton.
Putting pressure on Microsoft is PRICELESS.
I remember PirateSoftware talking about the remote play online co-op on steam, I think I found it here:
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Iu4kpM692vI
Definitely doesn't seem to be sitting on it. Hell man, I have re-bought some games on other platforms just to re-play it on my Steam Deck.
I can't defend/accost the 30% simply due to my lack of knowledge in the industry.
A couple of times, Steam Achievements have been a deciding factor in me not pirating a game. I know it's dumb but ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯
I'd say it's very reasonable. Steam is EXPENSIVE. If you know anything about bandwidth, it's the insane cost. They don't do many exclusivity deals, and they even let you sell steam keys elsewhere with 0 cut for steam without giving users a degraded experience.
For it to "even out" they'd only have to increase your reach ~50%.
They do way more than that. And they give you an inherent legitimacy that putting it on your own site doesn't. It's not just handling refunds; it's the certainty as an end user that you'll get one hassle free.
Without Steam (or another retailer with similar traits), selling an indie game would be closer to a pipe dream than really hard. In almost all cases (and this seems to apply even to AAA publishers as most of them come back), the 30% they're taking is money you wouldn't have without them.
I think there are a lot of people who weren't around for, or don't remember, how buying digital titles was before Steam got quite so popular.
It was pretty rare, and the overwhelming majority of indie games were released for free. There just wasn't many good ways to get the word out, and most ways of taking payment were costly enough to set up that it was rarely worth trying to get some meager amount of pay if you were just a one man show with no external financial backing.
30% is industry standard (although it is starting to change). Until recently, both Apple and Google took 30% cuts from their phone app stores. Numbers I can find for GoG range from 30%-50%. Epic games is like 12%.
Anyone who is old enough to remember trying to buy digital copies of games pre-Steam knows how much value Stream brings to the table.
If it's not on Steam, I don't even consider it.
What about GOG and its DRM-free games? What about Itch.io and its exceptionally low cut and pretty much completely open-door policy? There are other services that are good. Origin, UPlay, Epic, and other stuff sucking does not mean they're all bad.
That’s a sad take. You are just closing doors on yourself.
I use all the stores available.
As much as I like steam, I’m not putting all my digital eggs in one basket.
The day steam decides to shutdown or remove my account, I lose all those games. No thanks.
Blind faith ain’t for me.
I get your point, but a behemoth like Valve is so unlikely to be closing their doors in our lifetimes it's hardly worth discussing.
The real point here is that after spending thousands or tens of thousands on Steam, our next of kin or beneficiary will not get them once our lifetime ends because Steam doesn't sell games. They provide a license to access content.
Steam still suffers from the 'illusion of ownership' issue, and places that offer DRM free copies of titles are superior in this way. However it's plain for all to see that not many people care about this point. All the masses want is to play their games.
In that regard, Steam is king.
Wait, so you put some of your digital eggs into baskets where it's more likely that you'll lose them? Pretty sure Steam has a better chance of surviving than a homegrown storefront of a third rate publisher.
If that happens I'll just start pirating the games I want again unless there's a decent competitor. Until then the convenience steam offers is worth the money.
I have a library with hundreds of games I don't play anymore. If Stream closed I'd just have hundreds plus a rounding area I can't play anymore.
I will have already got my enjoyment from the games but the time Steam ever closes down.
A few indie devs who hated the idea of storefronts because of the bad taste of Apple self published only on their website. When they finally (after years) switched to steam, every single one of them shared how they got like a multiplier of sales.
One indie dev shared how he made more in revenue in a month on Steam than he did in a decade of self publishing.
That's life-changing.
Apple is the same deal, though. There's a reason there's a lot more solo devs/small teams making money on iOS than Android. Their ecosystem doesn't do all the work for you, but it absolutely provides a lot of help. You might not like, for example, the Human Interface guidelines, but the enforced consistency in behavior makes a lot more people a lot more willing to buy things.
In this thread:
Steam is bad because they are a company that makes money. They would be better if they made no money and all games were advertised at their expense. Oh and I must post my game on Steam because it's their fault no one else has bothered to even try and make a truly viable alternative.
I have not much against steam.
But gog is a more than viable alternative to steam.
Let's not act as if there's no alternative when itch.io or gog exists.
Has steam more features? Yes. Is better for some things? Yes. Is the only viable alternative as a game store? No.
I like GoG. I like that they push companies to remove DRM. I like that I can make offline backups of my games.
I prefer GoG over Steam when possible, but Steam is still infinitely more user friendly, and if the game in question is heavily multiplayer-focused, I’ll probably pick Steam over GoG just to use Steam’s multiplayer infrastructure.
They suck.
Having a game on GOG is the same as not having it to me. I will pay for it on steam before playing it for free on GOG. Their launcher sucks (and unless it's very recent doesn't even support Linux despite their whole premise being supporting open shit), and manually updating games sucks. Plus they don't get up to date versions even if you do use their awful launcher.
It's not a book or movie where the source doesn't matter. Convenient updates are obligatory for modern gaming to function correctly.
the only ones that conplain the 30% cut are bilionaries companies
I have mixed feelings on it.
When I was putting out games, publishing on Steam would mean a guaranteed 1 million impressions on the "New releases" list. That's incredible exposure for an indie title, which often succeed or fail on exposure alone.
But 30% can be a lot for those same indie teams, especially combined with taxes. You can put years of work into a title and lose half the money it earns to groups that didn't directly contribute at all. It can easily be enough money that long-term support or follow up games just aren't viable. It can be your entire outsourcing budget or a whole employee for a year.
And after that initial exposure, you're not getting much for your perputual 30%. The value of Steamworks can vary greatly game by game so you could end up paying $30k for $100 of bandwidth and minor marketing through things like sales and rich presence.
I would much prefer to see something like "30% after the first $X in sales". Their cut would kick in only after they've demonstrated their value as a platform and small teams wouldn't have to watch a company with billions of dollars take a very large bite out of their very small pie.
Of course it's worth it, there's no question about it. Depending on the case it might probably be worth it if Steam took 95%.
For me, the question remains if 20% were "enough" for Steam and still make a shitload of money, or even 10%. Of course we can't know but it seems likely.
95% is closer to what board game publishers take - best I've seen is 10% for the designer
Granted they have a lot more to lose
From that perspective seems Steam is perfectly fine
Ah, Cosmoteer. Extremely fun for like 10 hours, then you realize there is nothing left to do. I guess that dev has made a fortune off of it though, so hats off to that guy.
Honestly that sounds fine. It's okay if a small game is only entertaining for 10 hours provided the price is reasonable. We shouldn't expect every game to be an infinitely replayability mill
I agree. But people should be aware that even though "1.0" released in 2022, Cosmoteer has been around since 2011. It's far from being the worst example of a game in eternal early access, though I would say it isn't one of the better ones.
Its still being updated and you can play for looong when you like building ships until your CPU melts.
Yeah, but you are then building for the sake of building. The crew limitations are a pain, so is getting the resources for the ships. If you are a purely combat player, having to mine asteroids for 95% of the time to get a bigger ship, or to get a necessary reactor isn't fun gameplay. Then you build three large-ish ships and you cannot crew them all at the same time because people don't want to work for you. Especially when you are a completionist and want to "finish" a system before heading out, you quickly stop getting fame and either need to jump to a higher difficulty system (which your ship won't survive unless you know the "meta" well), or resort to more mining instead of the fun stuff.
Edit: all of these are choices made by the devs. In combat, you can take over a ship that has an airlock after you destroy the bridge. You cannot then scrap it for valuable parts, since scrapping captured ships nets you no materials back. It is viable for the very first or second sector you go to, when you don't have factories (and finding a ship graveyard and scrapping for metal feels worthwhile) but you quickly outgrow it.
Yeah I enjoyed it for longer than that but it just becomes so tedious once you have a few ships.
I prefer Starsector and Avorion.
Just a few days ago, I wrote a comment about how you would theoretically try and become a significant competitor to Steam, and one of the points I raised was that Steam's storefront and recommendations are very generous (compared to others). It makes a huge difference that even indie games can appear on the front page regularly, both improving user and dev experiences. Players find games that they enjoy, while devs pay a very small amount to get effective, targetted advertisements.
I found weird ass games like Age of Decadence because of steam. I dount I wouldve found that lovingly crafted load of slavic jank without steam, or atleast it wouldve been until Warlocracy made a video on it.
It's also just the standard for selling your game on a big storefront.
It absolutely is.
This is a really decent game. I do have a complaint about it though. In late game you NEED 3 or 4 ships just to still be relevant against all the threats (not a bad thing, I like the difficulty being like this). Then you need a cargo ship to haul around all your junk. Resource and supply transfers between ships have to be done manually. This eventually gets tedious and ultimately causes me to stop playing after I get to that stage of the game. I hope some day someone makes a mod for this or the developers add something to address this issue. Some kind of system for automatic resource sync between ships while stationary or parked in stations could fix this.
Where does it say you can only choose one store?
Upload to all and get all the benefits. Lower prise on those with lower cut, more exposure on those that don't.
I don't know if steam does this since I have no experience selling on steam, but generally when you sell anything anywhere the sales channels will often demand that you give them the lowest retail price. Most commonly done by ones that give the most exposure since they have that much more power. Failure to do so will result in some penalty (Amazon prevents your offer from being in buy box) or just outright refusal to take your product (such as Walmart).
Additionally, customers complain too when you sell at two different pricing elsewhere. If you're a company that gives virtually no support (like you sell pickles or whatever), you prob don't care. But for things like games, you'll get bombarded with demands that they got ripped off by buying from one place and ask for difference in pricing or submit a refund request. Refunds are more expensive to sellers than not selling at all since you still have to pay transaction/refund fees by payment processors. Or if physical product, cost of shipping as well.
Different sales channels having different pricing isn't really an option. It's not really worth it. You'll get problems left and right.
Then make it the same pruce after the before the cut. Still more money.
Yeah, steam isn't a monopoly or anything like it. The gaming community is absurd going to bat for steam lol.
Folks go to bat for Steam because it is significantly better then the competition in every metric that customers care about. Only one thats close is Gog and we all know it isn't getting all the new releases.
It's worth it if you're in the 1% of titles that succeed because of Steam. The next question is should any company have that kind of power. Steam's monopoly is a real problem. Microsoft had less of a monopoly on computers when they got investigated.
That's not true at all. Steam does a lot more than just list a title...and there is a ton of shit games that are put out there, they don't make it because they're shit, not because they're not part of some magical 1%. Tons and tons of indie games have made it because of steam. They akso don't have a monopoly, its just what most people use. There is still the epic market, itch.io, gog, humble, etc all of which you can choose to sell on or not.