What about game devs though? They are clearly hurt already by the insane fees.
Just think about it. When you buy a game for 10€ on steam, steam get’s a flat 3.33€ just for giving you a “buy game” button. The gamedeev get’s maybe half of what you payed (Taxes, engine fees etc.).
Don’t you think, that there is something kind of fucked up about that?
That’s disingenuous. They do a lot more than that.
Discovery for one. Hosting the game so that downloads are fast and paying for the server and network infrastructure for that. Handling payment processing from all around the world.
That all has a cost. And any developer can just drop the installer on their own website and pay all of these things themselves.
if that was all they got the money for, and the devs were indeed hurt to a significant degree by it, a competitor with a lower fee (say, epic, with their 8%) would have outgrown them years ago, since steam doesn’t do exclusivity deals.
That’s not how this stuff works. Gamers decide, what stores succeed, not game devs.
Also Valve has policies, that say that you can’t offer your game for cheaper elsewhere, which means, that gamers can never notice the difference between a 30% cut or an 8% cut.
okay, so all a storefront has to do is build a better system and take, say, 20%. that would pull in both sellers and buyers. why isn’t the other storefronts building competitors? epic has infinite money but all they seem to use it on is bribes. gog offers standalone installers and online community systems, but not both at the same time. itch is held together by duct tape and dreams.
What about game devs though? They are clearly hurt already by the insane fees.
Just think about it. When you buy a game for 10€ on steam, steam get’s a flat 3.33€ just for giving you a “buy game” button. The gamedeev get’s maybe half of what you payed (Taxes, engine fees etc.).
Don’t you think, that there is something kind of fucked up about that?
That’s disingenuous. They do a lot more than that.
Discovery for one. Hosting the game so that downloads are fast and paying for the server and network infrastructure for that. Handling payment processing from all around the world.
That all has a cost. And any developer can just drop the installer on their own website and pay all of these things themselves.
if that was all they got the money for, and the devs were indeed hurt to a significant degree by it, a competitor with a lower fee (say, epic, with their 8%) would have outgrown them years ago, since steam doesn’t do exclusivity deals.
That’s not how this stuff works. Gamers decide, what stores succeed, not game devs.
Also Valve has policies, that say that you can’t offer your game for cheaper elsewhere, which means, that gamers can never notice the difference between a 30% cut or an 8% cut.
okay, so all a storefront has to do is build a better system and take, say, 20%. that would pull in both sellers and buyers. why isn’t the other storefronts building competitors? epic has infinite money but all they seem to use it on is bribes. gog offers standalone installers and online community systems, but not both at the same time. itch is held together by duct tape and dreams.