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.
Walmart and GameStop provide a physical place, that’s it. The Developer sends them the physical product.
Steam provides unlimited downloads, user forums, automatic updates, remote play, user reviews, Steam workshop etc…
None of these other stores provide these things.
Maybe Epic should charge more than 12% and invest that money in improving their client, or at least do that instead of wasting it on exclusivity deals. Then maybe I as a consumer will give a shit about Epic.
