this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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That's a completely irrelevant number.
I have no idea how many devs worked on BG3 and that number has 0 impact on my enjoyment of the game. Given the number of hours I spent playing BG3, the price made it one of the cheapest forms of entertainment available.
And, as a developer, I really don't care how much companies pay to marketing vendors. Developer pay is generally negotiated when you're hired. I haven't worked in B2C but, as I understand it, they usually pay bonuses on sales volume rather than profits.
Whoosh.
You seem to have completely missed the point that Valve does not deserve 1/3 of all gaming revenue for running an automated digital store.
Honestly what are you even trying to say here? That because you write B2B software on a salaried basis, that that means that an indie game dev doesn't care whether or not Valve takes 30% of all of their revenue?
Like no shit sherlock, thats a matter of you being a salaried employee. If you owned your own company you would very much care about a middle man taking 30% off the top.
So you don't care that Larian isn't harmed, you don't care that the dev's aren't harmed, you don't care that the consumer isn't harmed.
You just feel bad for Epic?
What are you talking about? Larian loses 30% of every single dollar spent on their game.
Of course that harms them.
Do you think Larian's management is also stupid?
Any halfway decent GTM executive would have checked their distribution channel options and chosen the mix that makes them the most money, net of fees.
Why would they pay for a service that harms them?
Because it's the only one. That's how a monopoly works.
That would be how monopolies work. You realize that Steam doesn't require exclusivity, right? You can get BG3 all over the place. When customers have choice between vendors it's not a monopoly, even if they tend to make the same choice.
If Larian didn't list their game on Steam and subject themselves to Valve's 30% mafia fee, they would get no sales because Valve has a monopoly of customers.
That is why devs choose to keep listing on Steam and paying Valve's extortionate fee.
Consumers keep using Steam because Steam's terms of service prevent a developer from selling their game cheaper on other stores, meaning that consumers never have an incentive to buy it elsewhere.
And developers have to agree to that condition, because Steam has all the users.
See the circular trap that monopolies create?
This is why Tim Sweeney is calling them out.