Do you think Valve's 30% cut of sales is too high?

[muckymucks]

I just read that Epic Games plans to give 100% of revenue of new games to publishers in the first six months for exclusivity on their platform, then take their regular 12% cut after that. Which got me thinking if Valve was too greedy taking 30% of sales.



https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/epic-will-start-offering-devs-100-of-revenue-for-epic-games-store-exclusivity

[UrbanMech]

Did you forget the "exclusivity" deal part OP? Not even a fair comparison first off.

This is all temporary until EGS gets a upperhand in the market. They are losing money trying their best to get in.


I'll stick with Valve. They could be better in certain areas but overall they are a lot more trustworthy and ahead than other companies. I don't trust companies that are majorly owned by a company in a country that doesn't respect international laws. They already slipped up in the past being suspicious snooping in files.

[Satoru]

fluxtorrent eredeti hozzászólása:

I think the developers have already voted. There is a reason they put their games on Steam not EGS. Obviously the benefits of the platform are worth that 30%

What you're seeing is that the marketing budget bucket is drying up. When it was christmas in july at least semi-established devs could get their games featured as free downloads for money. Epic was also paying devs to be exclusive for a certain time. The move to a 'its free' is not really 'free' its more 'it costs Epic less'. They've got a few years of data for their exclusivity for various games. Meaning that they know "hey instead of paying X to make this game exclusive, we can basically just not pay X and given most games only sell A amount that's generally less than X with our existing 12% cut. So we can have more exclusive titles for way less money". Even with the better revenue split, overall most gamedevs seem to agree that steam is still the majority of their revenue and it vastly offsets the Epic's revenue cut.

As time goes on Epic's willingness to just leave money on the table will be less and less.

An interesting conundrum might be whether giant AAA studios are going to jump on this. Now 'traditionally' a game woudl only really sell well in the first 6 months anyway so if you're making say $5 million for a game pocketing 100% of that is very attractive. BUT given AAA is pivoting away from one time paid games does that matter anymore? Alos if you release DLC for your game is that also 100% revenue for when the DLC releases? If you make DLC Epic exclusive, then how does that work in a MP setting. This kind of system could get extremely complicated and convoluted for consumers

Also Epic has basically Steam's old OAuth keyless game registration system. I still am baffled why Steam got rid of that on Humble?

[Slav Mcgopnik]

__++__== eredeti hozzászólása:

Start_Running eredeti hozzászólása:

the better question is. Is EGS actually making money?
Because even they themselves admit they're not being profitable.
I mean lets face it. When you have an inferior service you have to charge less.
This likely is EPic saying that they can no longer afford to payout for exclusivity as they did before .


It's happening folks. Sweeny's Cash Reserves are starting to run low.

They have an actual game engine, unlike Source 2 vapourware

And yet their storefront still fails to turn a profit and continues to suck money away from them.

[Azure Fang]

Valve is not the only company that takes 30%. Google, Apple, GOG (variable), Amazon, Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft all take 30% for their storefronts. The only reason Epic calls out Steam is because they're the biggest direct competitor. That said, the 0% cut thing on EGS is opt-in, subject to approval, and only lasts 6 months. You also have to take market share into consideration and the phrase "100% of nothing is still nothing" springs to mind after a number of reports that games that sell on EGS have failed to meet sales projections.

No, 30% is not unreasonable, because:

1. It has been an accepted industry standard for a long time.
   
2. Publishers actively agree to the 30% terms when they sign up, this isn't something that's snuck in on them.
   
3. PC publishing is a free and open market. If someone doesn't agree with the split, they have the option to self-publish and self-distribute and keep 100%.

[UrbanMech]

I've seen some retail stores take %50 cut. %30 really isn't unreasonable for digital stores.

[Satoru]

Slav Mcgopnik eredeti hozzászólása:

__++__== eredeti hozzászólása:

They have an actual game engine, unlike Source 2 vapourware

And yet their storefront still fails to turn a profit and continues to suck money away from them.

Valve have never been in the game engine business that much. So that person complaining that Source2 is 'vaporware' is functionally meaningless since no one outside of Valve cares about it. It exists internally and that's the only thing that matters. Its like claiming the RED Engine was 'vaporware' because CDPR only used it for their own games.

[Satoru]

GhostBear eredeti hozzászólása:

I've seen some retail stores take %50 cut. %30 really isn't unreasonable for digital stores.

Retail ends up being around 50-70% but that's due to the sort the amount of fees and cuts that all the middle men take out between a disc being printed and it hitting the shelves. For example

1) Most big stores require a certain amount of copies to be distributed across their stores so you have to move a fairly large amount
2) you then have to print X amount
3) if a store doesn't sell enough, they send them back to you and you eat the cost!
4) really big stores like walmart charge you money, per unit, just to be on the shelves. This is non-refundable even if your stuff rots on their shelves for a month and they send it back
5) oh we haven't even gotten to your publisher deal yet and how much they take

If you thought Steam was nickel and diming you, you don't even want to know how terrible it is to get on a physical shelf

[Azure Fang]

Satoru eredeti hozzászólása:

GhostBear eredeti hozzászólása:

I've seen some retail stores take %50 cut. %30 really isn't unreasonable for digital stores.

Retail ends up being around 50-70% but that's due to the sort the amount of fees and cuts that all the middle men take out between a disc being printed and it hitting the shelves. For example

1) Most big stores require a certain amount of copies to be distributed across their stores so you have to move a fairly large amount
2) you then have to print X amount
3) if a store doesn't sell enough, they send them back to you and you eat the cost!
4) really big stores like walmart charge you money, per unit, just to be on the shelves. This is non-refundable even if your stuff rots on their shelves for a month and they send it back
5) oh we haven't even gotten to your publisher deal yet and how much they take

If you thought Steam was nickel and diming you, you don't even want to know how terrible it is to get on a physical shelf

This. I think GameStop alone pulls up to 70% depending on contract. You'd think 30% and a lack of packaging material costs would bring prices down on Steam, GOG, etc., but no, it's just a chance for companies like Epic to keep wanting more and EA to try to push the "games need to be $70 now because of inflation" narrative. This whole "platform war" amounts to corporate posturing.

[Satoru]

Azure Fang eredeti hozzászólása:

This. I think GameStop alone pulls up to 70% depending on contract. You'd think 30% and a lack of packaging material costs would bring prices down on Steam, GOG, etc., but no, it's just a chance for companies like Epic to keep wanting more and EA to try to push the "games need to be $70 now because of inflation" narrative. This whole "platform war" amounts to corporate posturing.

I mean I sort of hate to break it to you but accounting for inflation a $70 today is literally cheaper than anything you would have bought back in the day. This doesn't even account for the fact htat games today can't be made by 2 guys in a garage anymore. Even games like Starfox were functionally made by what in today's world would be considered a tiny indie studio. GameFreak pre-Pokemon made the Yoshi games with literally 5 people. Pokemon Red has credits that had 20 entreis in it. Pokemon Scarlet has literally DOZENS of pages of credits there are more people working on just the UI of Pokmeon Scarlet than the entire Pokemon Red team.

If you know some magic by which you can make a AAA game, with AAA fidelity graphics, and AAA movie quality, that will sell millions of copies with you 20 people go ahead and try that. And then you'd immediately complain about why the game doesn't have MP or coop or something else. Games are hard to make. They are expensive to make. They take a long time to make. And consumer expectations are through the roof. People doing sub-pixel complaining and whining about things. They're complaining that Spiderman was 'downgraded' because a puddle doesn't reflect. People are 'demanding' that every single asset in a game be an original hand crafted thing as opposed to you know just using a similar asset they used previously. And you're now complaining about why game prices are so expensive?

[Satoru]

phantomproductionset eredeti hozzászólása:

This is a good list but I'd think most of this is just default for a proper digital market, yes you have to pay for the stuff. Yes there is a lot of stuff Steam provides, but lets not call a sword a spade, jk sure you can dig with both sure.
.

I think people vastly underestimate how much setting up their own storefront is.

Facepunch, the makers of Gmod and Rust. They have moved MILLIONS of copies of these games.

They closed their own web store that sold Rust

Why?

They couldn't handle all the fraudulent charges. It required too many FTEs to manage the web page, the payments, the fraud etc. again this is an indie company that would have the resources to manage their own store, they had a popular game that printed money, and they literally just gave up because it was too expensive.

[Donald Trump]

I think it’s perfectly fair

[phantomproductionset]

Satoru eredeti hozzászólása:

I think people vastly underestimate how much setting up their own storefront is.

Everything has a startup cost, but maintaining a billing/distribution website is extremely simple not that I could personally afford it just to sell this game vs doing it off steam, only those with a vast enough library of games that'll make stable money flow should even try it. Steam attracts small & big devs because they have it all setup for ease of use. Your over estimating the cost for just hosting a simple website where a popular enough game property could easily sell a quick subscription type site for access.

But your absolutely correct on if anyone ever tried to put in place even a fraction of steams features into a their own website would costs millions upon millions, but you don't need that amount of stuff just to sell a single game/series, 50k that's about as much as it would cost.

[UrbanMech]

phantomproductionset eredeti hozzászólása:

Satoru eredeti hozzászólása:

I think people vastly underestimate how much setting up their own storefront is.

Everything has a startup cost, but maintaining a billing/distribution website is extremely simple not that I could personally afford it just to sell this game vs doing it off steam, only those with a vast enough library of games that'll make stable money flow should even try it. Steam attracts small & big devs because they have it all setup for ease of use. Your over estimating the cost for just hosting a simple website where a popular enough game property could easily sell a quick subscription type site for access.

But your absolutely correct on if anyone ever tried to put in place even a fraction of steams features into a their own website would costs millions upon millions, but you don't need that amount of stuff just to sell a single game/series, 50k that's about as much as it would cost.

Its extremely simple if you aren't doing all the billing system yourself while also offloading liability. I see most small stores opt for shopify ect which aren't free and or you sacrifice privacy of your business and customers.

[phantomproductionset]

GhostBear eredeti hozzászólása:

Its extremely simple if you aren't doing all the billing system yourself while also offloading liability. I see most small stores opt for shopify ect which aren't free and or you sacrifice privacy of your business and customers.

Bethesda.net Launcher has sunset their stuff.

But this could be for two likely reasons, the Xbox Merger, since adding everything to to xbox/gamepass would be easier & while just using steam.

Or it would because or ulterior motives from not being able to afford to just to have a place to sell their games but rather they set it up for making more of the money vs steam but might have realized steam provides more end user features to make it worth using it instead to save themselves/xbox extra work.

A popular game will break even with devs just doing it themselves, more so if it's not a server/pvp type game requiring extra work.

In which case It's possible that they could even add a steam store for their game that is a just a free to play offline version that can upgrade to their online/server version for a (one time or recurring)fee charged on their end avoiding steams cut while still getting all hosting advantages of steams client, then simply have the microtransactions for it on steams end.

[ReBoot]

Sweeney's bribing game devs/publishers for EGS exclusivity. GabeN doesn't. Exclusivity ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks (from a customer's perspective), as does loss-leading (from a customer's perspective). Running the EGS isn't free (obviously), people downloading games cost Epic money. Where do they get this money? According to Sweeney himself, the EGS is hemmorhaging money.

So loss-leading it is. From a customer's perspective, loss-leading ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sucks and I'm glad Valve ain't following Epic's business strategy.