Dunno what Valve is waiting for, going to ~15% should be a no brainer. Perhaps they are structured such that if they did that a lot of people would lose their jobs? If so I have genius idea: get those folks together and make a fucking videogame.
A games journalist had this to say about it when Tim Sweeney claimed that Epic would back away from buying exclusivity if Steam were to adopt the same pricing model.
From this article.
https://venturebeat.com/2019/04/25/...om-exclusives-if-valve-changes-revenue-model/
Also what a fucking hypocrite. What does Steam's pricing practices have to do with GoG or Origin or any other potential game storefront? I really hate people like Tim Sweeney, and I used to be a HUGE fan of his.
And shouldn't they be trying to buy exclusivity from the console maker's as well? Since Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft have a similar pricing model to Valve? They should be considered evil as well and Epic should be trying to "save gamers" from their evil practices, right?
Steam are also still the only major storefront that allows unproven indie developers equal footing with the big AAA developers and established indie developers. While this leads to a lot of trash, it also leads to a lot of gems that may otherwise never see the light of day.
All of that costs money. And in the case of unlimited free keys to game developers in order to put their games on other storefronts or for free giveaways to promote their games, no revenue for Valve.
It's easy to rag on Valve for being the 800 lb. gorilla in the room, just like it's been easy to rag on Microsoft the past few years despite the many good things they bring to consumers and developers. In many cases far beyond the public perception that those companies receive.
And while I detest Epic for their anti-consumer behavior, I'm still not blind to some of the good things they can do when they want to. Like their 100 million USD MegaGrants fund which doesn't have any obligations to Epic tied to it (game developers that get approved don't have to be exclusive to the Epic store, for example).
Also interesting from Tim Sweeney himself.
Oh, you mean markets that Valve operate extensively in? What about costly game cards in stores? What about other payment methods? What about things like being able to purchase a game directly in a convenience store (like in Japan which Steam enables) which costs far more than 12%? What a hypocrite.
A large portion of the 30% that Valve takes goes towards making their games available and accessible to as many people as possible. 15% just for payment processing in some countries. I wonder how much the physical payment cards that Steam provides to retail stores in Western countries costs them? After all, retail stores have to get a cut as well.
Regards,
SB
