I don’t have a problem with Steam but if they lose, games can get cheaper, and/or game development becomes more lucrative. You can’t lose by looking into the case and not throwing it out.
What substantiates the claim that games will become cheaper? We already know games are one of the few commodities that are getting cheaper over time when taking inflation into account. I’ve seen this claim everywhere but I don’t understand what makes people think it’s true and nobody has been able to show me the logic or reasoning of it. Also, you claim that game development becomes more lucrative. It only becomes lucrative at all with a return on investment which requires that a developer be able to afford to make the game, market it, advertise it, and sell it to a wide audience all while handling the financial side of things (licensing agreements, handling the financial details of consumers in a secure fashion, providing refunds within the constraints of laws worldwide, etc).
These cases and the litigation process also cost money. You absolutely can lose by looking into it.
What substantiates the claim that games will be cheaper? You’re having to pay less money to Steam? Games go on discount all the time, and with less entities to pay, developers can afford to discount their games more often, or pay more talented developers.
I want you to draw me a line to connect the dots between some assumptions I’m seeing here.
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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.
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That Steam doing so would somehow affect the price elsewhere (consoles, online retailers like Amazon, other online store fronts, physical brick and mortar stores).
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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).
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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?
What about now with the Black Friday discounts? Also, I indicated two possibilities: games getting cheaper or game development getting more lucrative. More money means the gaming industry getting software dev talents.
That this is the only counter example you came up with should tell you enough.
You can look at literally any other storefront that takes 10% less than Valve does with Steam and see they’re not 10% cheaper. Which is also one of many ways you can tell this case is bullshit.
That’s why I added the other possibility of game development getting more lucrative. Also, with games, people should really be waiting on a discount. And how often a discount will be offered depends on multiple factors like how big the cut of the storefront is.
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.
I’m happy to pay a premium for convenience. Steam is a great product that saves me from having 20 different store-fronts clogging up my computer, most of which wouldn’t have proper Linux support. If developers don’t like Steam’s terms of use then don’t use it, and best of luck selling your game that nobody ever sees.
That’s naive. People already pay 80$-90$, publishers will pocket the cut and keep the price the same.
Devs don’t complain about the cut anyways. Publishers do because they’re the one affected the most by the cut.
Epic Games promise cheaper games with 12% cut, but most of them have same price as Steam or even console release.
