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Comment by Mahn | Hacker News Reader

> PC worldwide core games market is estimated to be around $27B in 2015 (Newzoo). So, including Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 revenue, Valve is controlling around 15% of it. Pretty impressive!

Is anyone else under the impression this number is too low? I mean, sure, it's still impressive, but at this point I would honestly expect them to control 30-40% of the PC core games market at least. I'd find it easier to believe that the NewZoo estimate is inaccurate.

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I'm guessing asian markets have to do with this. PC gaming is way more popular than console gaming in China, mostly due to the long ban.

League of Legends is also incomprehensibly huge. And Blizzard is nothing to scoff at.

*EDIT: Found the article an article from Newzoo. Looks like China alone is almost triples USA PC game sales.

http://www.newzoo.com/insights/us-and-china-take-half-of-113...

The "long ban"? On XBox/PS/etc?

Yeah -

Why are consoles banned in China (2010): http://kotaku.com/5587577/why-are-consoles-banned-in-china

China lifts the ban (2013): http://kotaku.com/china-lifts-their-console-ban-but-theres-s...

It's important to note thought that there was always a fairly significant grey market for consoles and games in China.

Some big department stores even sold major consoles and games, including Friendship Stores[1] which are state run.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_store

I would myself have guessed at least 50%, but that would be just based on anecdotal experience. I've bought the occasional Humble Bundle outside of Steam, but that's the only one for several years now. The same applies for all of my friends as far as I know.

What is the revenue split for non-Valve games on Steam? While I certainly wouldn't have any problem believing that 50% of game sales happen through Steam, that is not the same as Valve getting 50% of the game sales revenue.

They take 30%.

I imagine large publishers negotiate a much smaller cut.

I wouldn't be so sure. It's not like most publishers have much of a choice. Unless you have your own Steam-like service (and sometimes, even if you do) you almost don't even have a choice. I'm pretty sure Valve knows this, and takes advantage of it.

In other words, Valve holds all the cards in the majority of negotiations.

My understanding is it's much worse with big publishers. IIRC more like 60% publisher / 40% developer.

Do note though that Valve/Steam isn't a publisher, it's just the distributor even if a major one. Quite many games still have separate developer and publisher, neither of which is Valve.

I would have thought they would have had a commanding majority as well. Occasionally I'll buy something on GoG - but it's usually an oldy-but-goody for $5 or less. Almost every single game I have gotten through Humble Bundle has just been a Steam key.

I guess there's Origin, but I've only ever bought Mass Effect 3 from them.

Good luck even finding PC games in a box in a retail store...

EDIT: Derp, completely spaced Blizzard... that's where most of the missing money must be going.

Probably also forgetting about League of Legends. It's free, so no actual game sales are happening, but people spend a tremendous amount of money in-game.

The article also mentions that DLC and free-to-play games (along with in-game purchases, I'd assume) weren't counted in the Steam sales numbers, so the Steam marketshare shown could be a low estimate.

Walmart is still a gigantic part of some games PC sales. It's the reason why Valve is careful not to ask anything of the big publishers that would endanger their agreements with Walmart. That's why even though the cost to get a game through Steam is 10% of what it is to get it at Walmart, you still pay full price and often more than what you pay at retail. The big Steam discounts are only possible after the game has been removed from retail, since the retail agreements require not offering the game anywhere else for a lower price (though retail outlets are able to offer discounts from the MSRP which is why you might find a game that is $60 on Steam for $55 at Walmart). It's also why the stupid "preloading" system exists where you download a game you paid for, but aren't allowed to run it until retailers have a chance to put it on their shelf.

> Good luck even finding PC games in a box in a retail store...

Really? The most popular retail PC games are easy to find at a variety of stores in the south-eastern US. I've seen them at WalMart, GameStop, Best Buy, Fry's Electronics, and MicroCenter.

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