How come Green Man Gaming can sell this game 18% cheaper than steam ?

[Kaynos]

95$ CAD for a new game. This is starting to get insane ! I know inflation is a thing, but new games went from 79 to 89 to 95 in a space of 2 years. Enough is enough. How come a 3rd party re-seller can afford to sell new game 18% cheaper than Steam ?

[PocketYoda]

Originally posted by Barbas:

Originally posted by PocketYoda:

Steams cut goes down if you sell a lot of copies, only indie games pay 30% most AAA pay like 11% or something..

That's not true.
- 30% cut on the first 10 million $ in revenue
- 25% cut between 10 - 50 million $
- 20% cut after 50 million $
The end. If your game makes 200 million $ for example Valve's cut would be 3 + 10 + 30 = 43 out of 200 million = 22.5% total cut for Valve. Most games don't make 200 million just on PC though.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard
30% is apparently industry standard...

[Barbas]

Originally posted by PocketYoda:

Originally posted by Barbas:

That's not true.
- 30% cut on the first 10 million $ in revenue
- 25% cut between 10 - 50 million $
- 20% cut after 50 million $
The end. If your game makes 200 million $ for example Valve's cut would be 3 + 10 + 30 = 43 out of 200 million = 22.5% total cut for Valve. Most games don't make 200 million just on PC though.

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard
30% is apparently industry standard...

What does that have to do with why Steam games are more affordable outside of Steam?

[PocketYoda]

Originally posted by Barbas:

Originally posted by PocketYoda:

https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard
30% is apparently industry standard...

What does that have to do with why Steam games are more affordable outside of Steam?

Everyone bashing steams 30% cut 24/7 and everyone else bar a couple do it.. I wasn't completely wrong steams cut does go down if you make a successful game..

[Barbas]

Originally posted by PocketYoda:

Originally posted by Barbas:

What does that have to do with why Steam games are more affordable outside of Steam?

Everyone bashing steams 30% cut 24/7 and everyone else bar a couple do it.. I wasn't completely wrong steams cut does go down if you make a successful game..

Yea, and with my point it's even better. If you were to account the keys the publisher is allowed to sell outside of Steam at 0% rate than Valve's cut goes even lower.

[PocketYoda]

Originally posted by Barbas:

Originally posted by PocketYoda:

Everyone bashing steams 30% cut 24/7 and everyone else bar a couple do it.. I wasn't completely wrong steams cut does go down if you make a successful game..

Yea, and with my point it's even better. If you were to account the keys the publisher is allowed to sell outside of Steam at 0% rate than Valve's cut goes even lower.

We have no idea if those keys are sold at 0%, without GMG or Fanaticals input we never will.

[Aris]

These third party sites like GMG and Fanatical also take a 30% cut from each sale. What they do with these big releases is lowering the price themselves, taking it from their cut (so the publisher gets paid the same money: 70% of the full price). The shops earn less per unit sold (in this case, 12% (30-18) of the full price would be left for GMG), but with this lower price they attrack a lot of customers, so they expect to earn more than if they sold the game at full price.

[GrandTickler]

allkeyshop, which always compares the cheapest prices for these games are heaven for poor people like me. they are also great because they buy in bulk whenever a game is on sale, so once the sale is over on steam, these websites can still deliver it for that sale price, and some discount ontop of that.

[Taddy Mason]

Originally posted by Aris:

These third party sites like GMG and Fanatical also take a 30% cut from each sale. What they do with these big releases is lowering the price themselves, taking it from their cut (so the publisher gets paid the same money: 70% of the full price). The shops earn less per unit sold (in this case, 12% (30-18) of the full price would be left for GMG), but with this lower price they attrack a lot of customers, so they expect to earn more than if they sold the game at full price.

a concept too complicated or heretical for most gaming companies to either comprehend or implement. if your game is cheaper, more people buy it and you can make more sales overall while moving more units.

if they're worried about costs/profit margins, the first place they should be looking is to cut the marketing/advertising departments/budgets. advertising games is so cheap these days. streamers will do it for a free copy of the game, that's how cheap it's gotten.

[Merceal]

The tradeoff is you can't refund GMG keys.

[PocketYoda]

Originally posted by Merceal:

The tradeoff is you can't refund GMG keys.

I believe you can if you don't use the key.

[lukaself]

Originally posted by Kaynos:

95$ CAD for a new game. This is starting to get insane ! I know inflation is a thing, but new games went from 79 to 89 to 95 in a space of 2 years. Enough is enough. How come a 3rd party re-seller can afford to sell new game 18% cheaper than Steam ?

I've seen quite a lot of misinformation in this thread so let me chime in:

Valve simply does not take any cut from keys that are sold outside of Steam. GMG buys directly from publishers generating keys for them though Steamworks' developer interface which subsequently allows lowering the prices. Publishers make a better margin from those, GMG gets a cut, everyone's happy.

It's a long-time yet little known policy which is often conveniently omitted when arguing that Valve takes too much from developers. It used to be a common practice for indie developers to have their own website set-up on the side to sell Steam keys (Factorio for instance) but Valve had to change from unlimited requests to a case-by-case basis due to rampant abuse - as is expected with anything goodwill-related.

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

[Barbas]

Originally posted by lukaself:

Originally posted by Kaynos:

95$ CAD for a new game. This is starting to get insane ! I know inflation is a thing, but new games went from 79 to 89 to 95 in a space of 2 years. Enough is enough. How come a 3rd party re-seller can afford to sell new game 18% cheaper than Steam ?

I've seen quite a lot of misinformation in this thread so let me chime in:

Valve simply does not take any cut from keys that are sold outside of Steam. GMG buys directly from publishers generating keys for them though Steamworks' developer interface which subsequently allows lowering the prices. Publishers make a better margin from those, GMG gets a cut, everyone's happy.

It's a long-time yet little known policy which is often conveniently omitted when arguing that Valve takes too much from developers. It used to be a common practice for indie developers to have their own website set-up on the side to sell Steam keys (Factorio for instance) but Valve had to change from unlimited requests to a case-by-case basis due to rampant abuse - as is expected with anything goodwill-related. :clickbutton:

https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys

Finally. Someone that gets it

[zachboi61]

If you want legit then better use partners steam and microsofts like https://hypestkey.com/

[m_train1]

Wait until you go grocery shopping. Several items jumping $10, $20, and even $30. Thanks Biden.

[St0rmwielder]

Originally posted by Kaynos:

95$ CAD for a new game. This is starting to get insane ! I know inflation is a thing, but new games went from 79 to 89 to 95 in a space of 2 years. Enough is enough. How come a 3rd party re-seller can afford to sell new game 18% cheaper than Steam ?

Careful with GmG. They like to scam you. They sell keys that you can't activate due to region lock, despite telling you that it will activate in your country. They refuse to refund for no reason and breach the refund policies in Europe.