Technically, you can sell Steam Keys for less. But if you sell Steam Keys somewhere else for cheaper, you need to plan giving Steam Customers the same opportunity at some point.

True, but I would consider that as technically the same as my statement.

There’s plenty of store that have pricing differences even from same country. For example, Vintage Story on itch.io and Humble Bundle has higher price than the official direct purchase.

No store cut, cheaper price.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fees-dont-lead-to-lower-prices-on-the-epic-games-store/

Devs don’t complain about the cut anyways. Publishers do because they’re the one affected the most by the cut.

Steam isn’t adding in the DRM. Stop buying games with DRM and you won’t have this problem.

When Ubisoft left steam and created their own store front their games not only didn’t get cheaper but they also laid a bunch of their staff off. Did they hire bigger better talent? No. They laid off 1700 people when they were making record profits.

What you’re saying might be true potentially of indie developers but in the event that they could hire more staff/talent. But indie games aren’t expensive for the most part both because of the cost to make their games and subsequent game quality, and because they have less staff to pay and investors to please. It’s like you have no idea at all how this industry works and you’ve got a layman’s understanding of economics from the 1920’s.

That this is the only counter example you came up with should tell you enough.

Yes because Steam is not part of capitalism. We all know if Ten Cent were the ones getting sued, we’d be all over it.

I want you to draw me a line to connect the dots between some assumptions I’m seeing here.

1. Valve lessening the percentage of a developers profit per unit from 30% to 25 or 15 % would make the developer put the game on sale more often or make the developer pass on those savings to you the consumer by lowering the price.

2. That Steam doing so would somehow affect the price elsewhere (consoles, online retailers like Amazon, other online store fronts, physical brick and mortar stores).

3. If Valve were not in the picture to take this cut (and to provide the services they provide) the developer would not otherwise have to provide such services for themselves (point of sale transactions and security, the production and distribution of product keys or physical media, services to market the game or product in question etc).

4. That the 30% cut is strictly profit for Valve and they offer nothing for that cut.

Just because Valve is charging less doesn’t mean that that cost savings will be passed on to the consumer. We’re living in a time where companies have record price increases and are seeing record sales numbers and profits that have eclipsed inflation meanwhile gaming prices are actually on a continual downtrend as far as value for money and aren’t rising with inflation at all and pretty much never have been.

If what you’re supposing is true then games sold on Epic’s game store would be cheaper. They aren’t. Humble Bundle only charges a 25% cut of developer profits for a game. There are obviously some games available on both those store fronts. Point me to one of those and show me definitively that this has happened. That the developer of that game used that 5% savings with Humble Bundle to hire better talent to develop their game, or discount their games more often.

Simple economics says that the more plentiful a thing is, the more likely it is to be cheaper. By that metric we might extrapolate that games would be cheaper the more readily available they can be made (for instance not having to publish a game on physical media making game distribution cheaper and easier). We have not really historically seen that.

We might be able to conclude that it is a factor in why game pricing has stayed the same (meaning that games haven’t much gone above being $60 since the 80’s and so when taking into account inflation they are in fact cheaper). But that’s only one singular factor and there’s probably tens or hundreds of other factors in the mix.

Simple economics also says that there is a point where when something is in demand it will be more expensive. Because demand for it will drive up what people are willing to pay. In this instance the less competition there is, the worse prices get. If Epic and Humble Bundle didn’t have to compete with steam, would the cut they take decrease or increase?

Without steam enacting certain sales seasonally or during certain holidays, would those other storefronts have more sales or less sales? If steam didn’t exist would gaming storefronts treat consumers better or worse?