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this post was submitted on 05 Apr 2026
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I've had a long-winded discussion about that a few days ago. Yes, 12% would be great for devs, but guess what, 0% would be even better.
Steam takes care of the entire e-commerce and distribution side, which is very expensive. Just look up what publishers used to take back in the day for taking over game distribution, that was like 70%. Not exactly a time you want to go back to as indie dev.
If you think a 12% cut would be viable, idk. However, epic just recently laid off 1000 people so idk how financially successful that company currently is.
Laying off employees is not a sign of being unsuccessful. In fact, in many cases it's the opposite. Also Epic as a storefront is horrific, and Tim is a cunt, so it shouldn't be any surprise that very few people actually buy from them.
Yes, 0% would be better. What's your point? Valve is charging 30%. That's worse than 12%, correct? It's better. Why do people like you always have to defend what a company does all the time?
No one is saying we want to go back to that. Them being better than that does not make them good. Hitler killed a smaller percentage of the population than Genghis Khan, but that doesn't make Hitler not evil, right?
They make an incredible amount of money. Their employees are extremely generously rewarded. This means the 30% is well over what is required. I can't give a number of what they need, and neither can you. Notably, the Epic layoff was for Fortnite, because of a reduction in players, not the Epic store team. It has nothing to do with distribution or engine development. Even still, Fortnite was profitable. It was just less profitable.
Why do we have to defend every action Valve takes? Why can't we criticize them? Why does anyone still have loyalty to any corporation in the modern day? That was a fairy tale that I thought people here were over.
I'm a Linux gamer. I appreciate what they've done. I've been on Steam for I don't even know how long at this point. That sure as hell doesn't mean I'm not going to point out what they do that's wrong. If anything, it should be the opposite. I don't want them to become bad, so I need to call out when they're doing the wrong thing.
Because it's pretty fucking obvious that the 12% cut was just Tim Swiney trying to grab market share for EGS without actually putting in the work to develop it.
Remember how it took over 2 years for them to add a cart? Remember how they just laid off 1000 employees? Using Fortnite money to pay for exclusive deals and game givaways instead of actually developing the store hasn't turned out profitable.
Also, ever notice how nobody was complaining about Steam's cut before that? And let's not forget that Steam Greenlight and subsequent opening up of allowing nearly any game onto their platform is what made the indie market more than an extremely small niche. Or the fact that much of the 30% cut is getting reinvested into Linux and FOSS to keep PC gaming an open ecosystem, which benefits everyone, including indie studioa
I'm not defending them. I'm saying that a service has to be financially successful, something that many people on lemmy seemingly forgot after reading too much Marx. Are they making more than they need? Absolutely. But the value they are providing is just worth a great deal to devs and I just don't think that giving up 30% of your sales is a bad deal for handling the entire distribution. I've worked in E-Commerce for over 10 years now and 30% is like the standard fee for this kind of stuff - in many industries, the fees are way higher.
So, COULD they charge less? Very likely. But I don't really see why. The service they provide is just worth that much. I think it's a fantasy that companies can suddenly start to charge less just because they already have a lot of money.
Afaik, theyl aid off people across the entire company. The reason was a reduction in fortnite money, but the layoffs were even across the UE development teams.
You can. I just don't agree with that criticism. Valve does shitty things at times. The fact that they are really opaque when it comes to algorithms and support decisions is shit, the price parity rule, while being standard in the industry, is shit and the lack of control for early access games is pretty shit - we can criticize all that and more.
And yes, you can also criticize the 30% cut. That's your right. However, I'm just not agreeing with that stance. That isn't defending a company, even tho you're trying to frame it as such. That's just me having a different opinion. And you trying to frame disagreement as "being loyal to a company" is a great way to completely stifle a discussion. Why even argue at that point, just insult me and move on lmao.