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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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You can agree that this is great without being stupid. 12% would be great for developers. This is great for consumers. They're different things. It'd be nice for Steam to take less of the developer's money. I hope you can agree with that.
I've had a long-winded discussion about that a few days ago. Yes, 12% would be great for devs, but guess what, 0% would be even better.
Steam takes care of the entire e-commerce and distribution side, which is very expensive. Just look up what publishers used to take back in the day for taking over game distribution, that was like 70%. Not exactly a time you want to go back to as indie dev.
If you think a 12% cut would be viable, idk. However, epic just recently laid off 1000 people so idk how financially successful that company currently is.
Yes, 0% would be better. What's your point? Valve is charging 30%. That's worse than 12%, correct? It's better. Why do people like you always have to defend what a company does all the time?
No one is saying we want to go back to that. Them being better than that does not make them good. Hitler killed a smaller percentage of the population than Genghis Khan, but that doesn't make Hitler not evil, right?
They make an incredible amount of money. Their employees are extremely generously rewarded. This means the 30% is well over what is required. I can't give a number of what they need, and neither can you. Notably, the Epic layoff was for Fortnite, because of a reduction in players, not the Epic store team. It has nothing to do with distribution or engine development. Even still, Fortnite was profitable. It was just less profitable.
Why do we have to defend every action Valve takes? Why can't we criticize them? Why does anyone still have loyalty to any corporation in the modern day? That was a fairy tale that I thought people here were over.
I'm a Linux gamer. I appreciate what they've done. I've been on Steam for I don't even know how long at this point. That sure as hell doesn't mean I'm not going to point out what they do that's wrong. If anything, it should be the opposite. I don't want them to become bad, so I need to call out when they're doing the wrong thing.
Laying off employees is not a sign of being unsuccessful. In fact, in many cases it's the opposite. Also Epic as a storefront is horrific, and Tim is a cunt, so it shouldn't be any surprise that very few people actually buy from them.
As long as Steam can give at least 25.8 percent more sales than Epic (or other place that offers 12%), it's a better deal for developers as well.
(math: (1-0.12)/(1-0.30)=1.2571=1+25.71%)
By that logic valve would be justified with even 95% cut if network efect was even stronger. That's stupid logic that only thinks in terms of working with what you have. Valve already takes a cut and not a hard value. It's in their very business to increase sales and they shouldn't be additionally rewarded for such because by increased sales they already get the money.
Fair enough - I was thinking in terms of choice rather than justification. A better question, then, would be: what is a fair percentage given Steam's services both developer-side and player-side (more satisfied players are also a perk for developers)?
Only if we assume a sale not made on Steam is a sale lost. If Steam didn't get the sale and the purchase was made somewhere with a higher return instead, the dev would make more from the sale. Odds are, if Valve didn't have almost full market control, people would still buy games, they'd just buy them somewhere else.
Ultimately the EGS has shown 12% is not profitable, a lower cut would be nice for smaller devs but I don't see why Valve would when every other platform of Steam's size also takes 30%.
Citation needed. They're still operating, while paying games for exclusivity, and giving away games for free (at their own cost). Sure, a lot of this is likely funded by Fortnite, but to say it isn't profitable when they're giving away this much money is a big claim. Also, Valve would be significantly more profitable at the same rate, because they have almost total market capture. Even if Epic isn't profitable (I've seen no evidence of this) we can't extrapolate to say Vlave wouldn't be.