I don’t know where you got lost with:
As a consumer I’m more concerned about Epic’s anti-consumer practices than what they are paying devs.
Talking about how much they could charge devs does not change my experience as a consumer. It does not provide a compelling argument for me to use a service that does noticeably make things worse for the consumer.
You think Valve taking an extortionate amount of the budget doesn’t affect you as a consumer?
Games have budgets. With Valve taking as much money as the actual development budget for many games, the end product is significantly impacted. Games are regularly released late while missing features and so buggy as to not work. The extra 18% of the gross taken up by Valve versus EGS could be used to put more resources into the actual game.
Gog takes 30%, The Microsoft store takes 30%, Xbox and Nintendo take 30%, GameStop and Walmart take 30%…
So why is Steam the villian here?
https://www.ign.com/articles/2019/10/07/report-steams-30-cut-is-actually-the-industry-standard
EGS charges 12%. That’s what makes the market leader the bad guy.
At least Xbox provides a platform and Walmart and Gamestop provide physical products at physical locations.
Steam doesn’t have those expenses. And they also have exclusive titles, just like EGS.
