Paradox Interactive Calls Steam’s 70/30 Revenue Split “Outrageous”

[Tsing]

Is Valve profiting too much from Steam? Cities: Skylines and Vampire: The Masquerade developer Paradox Interactive believes the answer to that is a definite "yes." Executive Chairman Fredrik Wester didn't mince words at a recent panel when he called the 70/30 revenue split "outrageous."

"I think the platform holders are taking too much money. Everyone in the press here, just quote me on that."

Wester claims the split is derived from Warner Bros.' old model for boxed VHS tapes in the '70s, but that no longer makes sense, being that games are digital and not physical.

"That was physical. It cost a lot of money," he said. "This doesn't cost anything. So Epic has done a great job for the whole industry, because you get 88%. Fantastic move. Thank you very much."

 

[northrop]

Is Steam holding their games hostage? Pull the game if you're so unhappy, host it yourself (since it doesn't cost anything, apparently) or move to Epic, and be done with it already.

 

[Zarathustra]

Disagree. Valve provides a lot of services for those 30%. Eternal lifetime hosting, bandwidth, managing payment services, assuming all the risk involved in running an online service (read, potential hacking) etc. etc.

Yet, they are taking WAY less of the pie compared to the old fashioned brick and mortar model. Lets not forget that the fact that Valve was only charging 30% was why game developers and studios were falling over themselves to move to Steam 15 years ago. It was a tremendous deal.

I suspect these other stores that are charging much less, are intentionally doing so at a loss in the short term to gain more market share, because I believe it is pretty impressive that Valve can pull it off at that small of a cut of the total price. Distribution and customer service is surprisingly expensive.

 

[Brian_B]

This Paradox?

Looks like they do have their own downloader, and their own online store.

Why they would worry about what Steam charges.... oh, you know, unless Steam actually provides them with some service that they just don't want to pay as much for.

I'd love to get gasoline at $1/gal as well. Darn those refineries and taxes and everything else that make it much more expensive than it needs to be. You know oil just comes up out of the ground, right? There's no reason it should cost that much. You can quote me on that.

Agree with northrop and Zarathustra entirely here.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

It's possible that Steam might be taking a bigger slice of the pie than they need to but it's not remotely accurate to state that since there's no physical copies that the overhead isn't there. As most have already stated that from customer support to servers, bandwidth, and the plethora of steam account related features, there's quite a bit more involved than a simple basement server the whole planet happens to have access to.

I don't believe it to be outrageous at all. Could it be better? Maybe. Outrageous? Not at all.

Maybe I just get lucky with it but I have to say that Steam also happens to be the only provider that consistently saturates my full bandwidth for game downloads or big updates. I'm not saying that others never do just that Steam is the most consistent and I use Steam, Origin, Gog, and Epic.

 

[Grimlakin]

That's a bit of rhetoric if you ask me. Just betting for Steam to take less of the pie.

Don't get me wrong competition is good.

But Steam had something that Epic/Origin/Uplay and others simply don't. Eyeballs. Customer aquistion is cheaper through steam than any other. You find the right metrics to get on Steam's front page when people log in that = more sales. Sure Stem takes 30%. But that 70% you get is nice when you don't need to spend nearly as much to Acquire customers.

There are many people who 'game on steam' and simply don't on the other platforms. And Steam makes things simple and is a proven trusted digital marketplace.

I think developers NOT selling on steam are doing themselves a disservice currently.

 

[Zarathustra]

There are many people who 'game on steam' and simply don't on the other platforms. And Steam makes things simple and is a proven trusted digital marketplace.

I'm one of them. Nothing could make me create an account with yet another service. I have a GoG account but I've actually never bought anything on it.

I actually bought Far Cry 3 on Steam and then requested an immediate refund because it wouldn't let me play it without creating a Uplay account.

For me it's less of a store loyalty thing, and more of an "I don't need any more clients and accounts spying on me than I already have".

If a title requires me to sign up for, or sign in to anything other than just buying it on Steam and playing it, I'll just pass.

I believe in paying for the games I play, but if I get pissed off enough I may even pirate it just to drive home the point, as a form of protest.

I respect developers and want them to be paid, but companies wanting to mine me for even more data than I've already been mined of, deserve whatever they get.

 

[Brian_B]

I have accounts all over the place, that doesn't bother me so much. Probably my addiction to MMOs has made me apathetic toward it. I don't neseccarily have any allegiance to any of the platforms.

I will admit though, all things being equal, I will chose Steam over anything else. Most of my games are on that platform, it works, it isn't terribly annoying (although it's starting to get awfully bloated), and I'm pretty comfortable with it.

 

[alxlwson]

Steam, Uplay, Origin, Battle.net, and here soon whatever it is that Destiny 2 will be moving to. It is getting rediculous.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

I have accounts all over the place, that doesn't bother me so much. Probably my addiction to MMOs has made me apathetic toward it. I don't neseccarily have any allegiance to any of the platforms.

Steam, Uplay, Origin, Battle.net, and here soon whatever it is that Destiny 2 will be moving to. It is getting rediculous.

I agree with you both. No major allegiances. I do favor Steam but that's because it works and I'm used to it. From gaming to streaming services things are getting out of control with so many providers for each of their niche offerings.

 

[Strelok]

Only launcher I will never touch is Epic Store. I'll rather wait a year to play a game than install that junk. I also don't really see Steam caving in and changing their model, most still prefer Steam. Hopefully more developers use GoG though, that's definitely the best consumer friendly platform.

 

[kin]

I use steam, origin, uplay, battle.net, epic. It's alot and annoying. The launchers don't coordinate so they can be updating while you are playing a game on another service. Or all updating together or whatever. Steam annoys me with their seemingly endless client updates. Any more than one client update per month is too much. At this point once per quarter should be enough. Origin doesn't have anything I want to play right now. uplay is because steam uses uplay, so I bought it on steam and ended up with uplay as well. Battle.net of course for blizzard stuff, and epic for fortnite...

Two worst games ever for updates (in my experience). Ark Survival Evolved and Fortnite. Take forever, work your disk really hard, lag everything out.

uplay sucks on non-administrative accounts. Asks for a password constantly to do anything.

 

[Strelok]

I don't allow any of the launchers to open at startup and close them whenever I am done with gaming on that specific launcher. Never worry about rogue updates!