I’ve made a comment before in the past when dealing with game publishing. All of the things Steam provides, including worldwide distribution to a lot of regions EGS, MS store, etc don’t sell in because of a variety of laws, Steam just does better.

You pay less because you get less. I’m selling a product. The last thing I’m going to cheap out in is sales. I’m not going to see great sales from the EGS because A)Nobody uses it and B) the shopping experience is terrible. I don’t have access to the same makers and (hearsay) the actual process of getting your game distributed is a pain. I wouldn’t know, I don’t sell on EGS.

Further, we were having a conversation about a problem that doesn’t exist. You’re more than welcome to use Steam and other storefronts.

Hell, you can handle all of the sales yourself AND put it on steam. Most people will buy it on steam simply because that’s where all of the customers are.

Asking Steam to lower their prices because that’s where you’d make the most money is a mind bender.

It’s like trying to sell your hand made Combs. The gas station on the corner is happy to take only 20% of the profit. They’re all over the place and accessible. But you really want to sell it at the boutique shops because they have more comb-seeking customers. But then when they ask for 30% of sales, you balk and tell them that’s too high and they should lower their cut to that of the gas station.

That you’re like, 12 years old? Or at least have the fundamental world view of a 12 year old.

Fukkin lmao “steam is a necessity they owe me to make it cheaper”

Get the fuck back to reddit child. Enjoy your block.

Lmao, thanks for demonstrating my point for me better than I ever could.

This thread contains a lot of great bangers. But let’s play devil’s advocate for just a minute.

Let me know when you build a global distribution platform with 5-9 uptime, credit card processing, full compliance with all of the various laws in all the countries you serve and also provide a cdn for my game for free.

I’ll be waiting. You better pull through on this, you owe the community your labor

Valve’s 30% is high, sure. But you’re not seeing the total cost of selling a game.

And yes, I’ve done this before.

Besides the user count, besides all other factors. Digital sales are kinda hard.

You need to offer the actual game. If you’re selling an indie game that’s a few hundred megs, well you get to go sign up for a service to deliver it. Could be as simple as a google drive link, but because this is business use you get to pay business prices.

Are they charging a flat rate per month, per gig? Per download? Some combinations?

Now there’s updates and patches that need to be delivered. Same deal as before, but also now you need to handle the actual patching. Do you ship one big patch that checks for previous patches? Small individual patches that your users have to figure out what one they need?

Does your game have multiplayer? Well damn have fun with that.

What about support and refunds and GDPR stuff? Gotta factor all of that in too.

Now we get to do payment processing. You get to pay a company to accept payments on your behalf because you are NOT doing that yourself you WILL get stuck on inane and silly laws.

That’s part of it. Paying steam 3 bucks on my 10 dollar game to handle ALL of that? Yeah that’s fair. Could it be cheaper? Sure. a lot of things could. I don’t spend months on a game and then cheap out on the most important part: sales.

My time is valuable and worth 30%