PC Gaming

It's kinda funny to read through this thread ngl.

Everyone claiming: "OH WOW PRICES WILL BE LOWER" or "OH MAN DEVS WILL PROFIT SO MUCH MORE!!!!!"

You know who profits? Publishers. The ones already taking 80 - 90% of a games revenue. Devs don't see shit of that. And for indie devs that don't have a publisher, the 30% cut is a godsend considering that steam is handling everything in the distribution chain.

You guys are fighting for corpos that want to buy their 5th luxury yacht.

Didn't the Epic lawsuits against Apple and Google end up showing Valves Steam cut ended up working out to something closer to 20% after all the key sales and whatever other factors. Plus EGS already does less than 20% cut and it's been like 6+ years and that client is still bare bones and they don't even do gift cards or price lower. Same for Microsofts store which I believe is lower on PC while still 30% on console.

Regardless at best this lawsuit would just mean an end to 3rd party steam key sales or Valve taking a 30% cut on those too. At best a victory against Valve would mean more expensive games with the loss of keysite stores pricing advantage

Also games used to MSRP $10 cheaper on Steam when there was an argument that going digital was a major cost savings compared to physical products/packaging, shipping, and retailler cut. Eventually publishers stopped caring and made physical and digital prices the same while adding an assortment of DLC and subscriptions

This seems like such a nothing case. Steam is optional. It's optional for publishers to use, it's optional for users to install. Steam provides many many benefits for even free games or games not purchased on the Steam store.

Any publisher can publish their game on their own site, on other stores, on physical media. Even though Steam is dominant, you can buy games somewhere else as easily as you can download and install Steam itself.

I hope this case gets thrown out.

Steam singlehandedly stopped piracy overnight for me.

Developers were getting $0 from me before steam, and thousands of $$$ from me after steam.

The 30% cut is well worth it for developers, plus all the other services steam provides. Kids have no idea how buying, installing, modding, patching games used to be like.

You cant compare this to the apple app store

Name another platform that has gone 20 years without completely enshittifying itself.

We can start shitting on steam when they turn evil

free market mfs when consumers choose the option that doesn't shit on them:

30% is the industry standard across the board, with the exception of Epic which takes 12%. However, Epic has already shown that it's ready to dump loads of money into store exclusivity deals and tons of free games, so I will argue it's for the sake of growing the number of users and developers using their platform.

But do they, or any other competitor or similar store, offer the same functionality as Steam? rtxn already mentioned some. And there's more. And then there's the fact that Valve is using all that money not only to stuff the pockets of alread rich people (not that Gabe isn't a multi-millionaire if not billionaire, idk), but actually puts it back into the industry: Their own store, Linux/Proton (you may not care, but Microsoft becoming a monopoly in PC gaming is no good), and hardware (with their Steam Deck handheld, and VR stuffs).

Steam might be the biggest player when it comes to storefronts, but it's because they've actually earned it. And they're not actively preventing other competitors from entering the scene (other than existing). In fact, they keep trying, and keep failing, and then going back to Steam.

I'm not opposed to more money going to developers, but let's not single out Steam, who (perhaps besides GOG? I am not familiar enough with it) is doing the most for users and develpers.