It's "funny" when people try and defend Steam's cut to me, completely ignoring the fact Steam has an uncontested monopoly position in the PC gaming market. They generally claim that Steam offers some kind of services for their 30% cut though nobody ever seems to come up with what those services are beyond "discoverability" (often phrased as "access to a large audience")
Thing is for the vast majority of games they take 30% from they don't even do that at all. Unless your game is on track to gross a quarter million on Steam in the first year, the cream of the crop of indies basically, Steam does effectively nothing to surface your game. It's not like YT where there are algorithms tuned to show your video to the maximum number of people, so videos sort of get the audience their quality can maintain
On Steam you either overperform and get visibility for life or you get nothing. There's no algorithm that tries to find the setpoint for your game, just if you sell lots you'll sell more
So what's the effect of all this? Well when your game isn't even recouping its investment, 30% is a lot more "expensive" than if your game is making a profit. So with the lowest performing games (99.9% of games released) Valve charges so much on Steam that they won't even be able to pay off their creditors effectively, while also offering no services
Put another way, Steam is most expensive and offers the least (basically nothing) to the vast majority of games. Is that fair? I don't think so but I guess you can debate on that one, but I think it's definitely pretty scummy
But it gets worse somehow! Because there is a way to get a better cut on Steam: by selling a grotesque number of copies there are two lower tiers of cut they'll apply! So the problem of Steam charges the game developers most in need the most for the least help becomes even more stark
Anyway games that don't even gross a 100k USD don't fucking cost Valve any noticeable amount of money. They could just say "hey, the first 100k is on the house" and their bottom line wouldn't shift an inch. And that'd help so many first time developers survive to their second and third games, instead of going immediately bankrupt and the devs going back to day jobs at some office. And gaming would be better for it
But people are too keen to perform fellatio for Gabe and his crew so instead I'll continue getting people claiming it's fair to charge usurous rates from devs who are just trying to break even for nebulous access to some large audience even though Steam's surfacing of games to those who may want them is multiple orders of magnitude worse than something like YT which is still (rightly!) criticized all the time
"Oh well there's just too many games! They can't possibly make sure games get the exposure they deserve!"
YouTube handles a far, far greater volume of videos than Steam does and does a far better job at determining how large an audience a video can actually sustain so fuck off with that argument
And why is YT so much better than Steam anyway?
On YouTube you can make a niche video that appeals to niche audiences and assuming your video is good, YT will match it with people who will watch it. Good here means that it has a title and thumbnail that reliably gets clicks, and the video is engaging enough that people watch most of it. YT will show your video to a wider and wider audience until those metrics slip, and then it kinda settles into a stable pattern when it finds the set point. How do I know this? Talking to other niche creators and publishing my own niche videos
If you put a niche game for a niche audience on Steam and you haven't farmed mainstream appeal 5-figure wishlist numbers beforehand Steam will not do any of that. It will notice your game isn't selling copies day 1, it will drop your game on the floor, and not even the niche audience that would enjoy it will see it. Your game will make no money, but Steam will gladly take 30% of the sales you drive directly to them for the privilege of nothing
In conclusion: when you tell me, an 11 year indie veteran who's shipped 4 games on Steam one of which topped the charts for the month of its release, that Steam has to charge 30% for the supposed services it provides, all you're showing me is that you don't know what the fuck you're talking about in the slightest
For the record I don't even think reducing their cut is a particularly good solution. The solution is for them to implement discoverability that actually works (and I'll repeat, YT does this far better for far higher volume) but given that they seem utterly incapable or unwilling to do that, the next best thing is to not squeeze smaller games that they're doing nothing for out of business by lowering the cut
Right now the tactic to get discoverability from Steam is this:
- Farm as many wishlists as you can by release
- Pray to god that your game is in the top 10 of best selling games on the day of its release so you get into new and trending
Thats it, that's what "discoverability on Steam" looks like. That's what they're charging 30% for
EDIT: before you feel the need to play the clever Steam apologist in my mentions, please ask yourself why you're so emotionally invested in defending greedy middlemen over the people who actually make the fucking games