How does Steam make money?

[epic FUZZ]

And how do games get on Steam?
Does Valve pay developers/publishers for games or does the developer/publisher pay Valve? How does that make either party money especially since the prices are not unreasonable, there's so many sales going on, there's no ads for anything other than the games on the service and yet Steam and the dev/publisher make money

[Simpie Senpai]

The same way a store makes money off the goods you buy. You take a percentage off the cost. You can charge the sallers like Ebay, Amazon, and any other online seller.

Also I think unreasonable is comparing Steam prices to say PSN or Microsort. They want full price at gamestop for something "new" after peeling the security wrapping off the games.

[Simpie Senpai]

"I think its up to the developpers/publishers to decide wheter they put their games on sale or not, so the lose is more on their side than on steam side." I found that in another post and I remember reading something on it. PSN and Microsoft have full control over their respective marketplaces and make the choices. Maybe they don't have 3000 dead games that the developers want to Necro?

[Shaxe]

Put it this way. Steam is providing these devs with a commodity. This is Valve's space. Valve sells this store space for a fee. Each time a game is bought, Valve gets a cut because they act as the medium at which the game is sold. This is a universal concept that is applied in all of marketing. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Just remember that time and all of the space around it is money, and that applies everywhere, and the next time you ask a question like this, more than likely you will be able to answer it yourself. Cheers, have a great day and congrats on being inquisitive, it is a path to knowledge :)

[аdvicebanana]

Market transaction fees, 30% of every game sold on Steam goes Valve, game fees for market items of Valve IPs (Dota/TF2/CSGO), selling in-game items (keys/stickers/music kits).

[epic FUZZ]

Originally posted by Shaxe:

Put it this way. Steam is providing these devs with a commodity. This is Valve's space. Valve sells this store space for a fee. Each time a game is bought, Valve gets a cut because they act as the medium at which the game is sold. This is a universal concept that is applied in all of marketing. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Just remember that time and all of the space around it is money, and that applies everywhere, and the next time you ask a question like this, more than likely you will be able to answer it yourself. Cheers, have a great day and congrats on being inquisitive, it is a path to knowledge :)

I thought it may work something like this, but I thought let me ask and get an answer

[dont add me]

Valve takes 30% from all game/DLC sales from the steam store and 15% from all sales on the steam community market. This is in addition to the profits they make from microtransactions in their own games such as DotA 2, TF2, and CSGO. They might also be taking a cut from storefronts in other games on steam depending on the individual arrangements they've made with respect to those games.

[duckiE]

Originally posted by Son-Shaxe:

Put it this way. Steam is providing these devs with a commodity. This is Valve's space. Valve sells this store space for a fee. Each time a game is bought, Valve gets a cut because they act as the medium at which the game is sold. This is a universal concept that is applied in all of marketing. It makes a lot of sense when you think about it. Just remember that time and all of the space around it is money, and that applies everywhere, and the next time you ask a question like this, more than likely you will be able to answer it yourself. Cheers, have a great day and congrats on being inquisitive, it is a path to knowledge :)

This, and devs can opt in to use steams network. Meaning servers are managed by valve themselves. COD does not need this benefit however, as servers are held on a peer-to-peer basis.