this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2024
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Which is exactly what Apple does with their iTunes store.
Not exactly, apple forces their users to use their stores, whereas Valve just offers a better experience than the other stores out there.
There is nothing stopping you from using other stores to buy your games on, unlike the appstore.
That has no impact on both of them taking a 30% cut.
In the case of Steam that's because no other corpo run by parasites can create anything close to it. You're completely free to get any other launcher or store that takes a smaller cut.
And now is where your misguided comparison completely falls apart: Apple users have no other choice than the AppStore. Even if someone wanted to create a better store, they just can't.
Apple ties their hardware to iTunes with no competition. Steam offer a platform which is better than every other piece of COMPETING software on a variety of hardware.
Yes, it's all massive profiting, driving the cost of everything up, or putting less money into the hands of the people who make the thing you like.
When I really love a game, it bothers me that valve, or apple, or Google, or Sony, take 1/3rd of the money. They don't deserve it.
What if you could buy direct from the publisher or developer, but you could only download the game once? Let's say you could still install it any number of times on any device so long as you had the source file in this scenario. Would you still be willing to pay $60 for a major title?
Would your willingness to buy a game change if you couldn't get a refund in the above scenario, regardless of time played?
Fortunately thanks to steam allowing free key generation you can buy directly from the publisher and still get all the features of steam except refunds maybe.
That's the same as buying from Steam. The publisher pays Steam and then gives the key to the customer. They get the same cut either way.
Steam doesn't take a cut on keys.
That's great if true. I'm seeing a lot of different information when searching for that though. Older sources say valve doesn't get a cut, but newer sources are saying that deva can only issue 5000 free keys. Do you have a more recent source with a definitive answer?
Relevant sections from the official documentation: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
There is no fee but you can be denied keys if you have already requested over 5000. I don't know how often that happens but IIRC the 5000 limit was added to stop abuse by mainly shovelware developers.
.... like a disk or cart? Yes that's fine. I do that.
Sure, that's fine for a release that has a physical edition, but many do not.
Also, when buying physical copies I'm guessing that the dev gets an even smaller cut, but it probably depends on the retail location to a large degree.
What percentage of the sales price do you suppose goes towards the outside companies that print the disks and make the packaging?