Steam's 30% Cut Isn't Outrageous: It's Actually the Industry Standard

[Tsing]

Is Valve profiting too much from every game sold through Steam? Maybe not. Despite all the criticism the company gets for its 30% cut, that percentage appears to be the norm. IGN reached out to multiple sources and retailers within the industry and found that most of them ask for the same amount.

This includes competitors such as GOG and the Microsoft Store. All of the console stores (e.g., PlayStation Store, Xbox Games Store, Nintendo eShop) demand 30%, too. And it's the same story for Apple and Google's mobile stores, as well as retail giants such as Amazon, Best Buy, GameStop, and Walmart.

The only real outliers are Epic Games's 12% and the Humble Store, which asks for 25%. (The latter only keeps 15%; the rest goes either to charity or back to the buyer as store credit.)

Valve even adjusted Steam’s rates late last year in what seemed to be a response to the pressure from Epic, but this change is likely only impactful to major developers. After $10 million in sales through Steam, Valve’s cut drops to 25% on all new sales, and drops again to 20% on sales after $50 million.

 

[Maddness]

30% is to much. No wonder a lot of game developers have gone under And others have struggled. I’m sure that if valve wasn’t making so much from steam sales, then we might have actually had Half-life 3 by now. I might be in the minority, but steam should start at 20% and then after $10 million sales drop it to 15% and then 10% after $50 million.

 

[Brian_B]

No wonder a lot of game developers have gone under

I think that has less to do with a distributors cut and more to do with making bad games

 

[David_Schroth]

30% is to much. No wonder a lot of game developers have gone under And others have struggled. I’m sure that if valve wasn’t making so much from steam sales, then we might have actually had Half-life 3 by now. I might be in the minority, but steam should start at 20% and then after $10 million sales drop it to 15% and then 10% after $50 million.

It all depends on the relative value provided by the service. Think back 20 years when there was no digital distribution. You would then have to pay to print CDs, manuals, boxes and do packaging, then ship them to stores would would want to take a cut as well - I'd see these costs to be at least 50% of the MSRP of a game. Steam comes along and offers to do distribution and sales of your game for 30% with the added bonus of not having to outlay cash for the inventory would be quite the value prop to a game maker. When you think of it that way, the 30% price isn't all that outrageous. Of course, times change and competitors will enter the market which will hopefully drive some more innovation and cost cuts - Steam will always command a premium because some people just don't want another explicative game launcher.