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Comment by jacklbk | Hacker News Reader

Steam (and every other storefronts) has been taking 30% since its beginning. When did it become "greedy"?

Is EGS offering the same quality of service as Steam? Is EGS making profits? Is 12% really sustainable?

EGS never gave us proton, steam deck, steam workshop, early access, steam link or controllers, big picture, etc. steam and valve in general has great VR support and lots of r&d in general.

No hate nor shade towards epic but man valve kills it. Best video game company (studio or platform) by far for several decades now imo.

Steam is undeniably the best platform for PC gamers, but I can't help but feel bad for game devs who get squeezed and don't have good alternatives.

Are they getting "squeezed" by Steam? That would imply there is pressure coming from Valve, but the pressure to use Steam is coming from customers.

I'd say that Steam is a great service that customers love and demand that game developers provide, and the 30% fee is the price of that service.

I know that in my own case I've bought games on Steam that were available cheaper elsewhere, or even given away for free on EGS.

And the attempts at creating alternatives have all been unable to create a good alternative. (Except perhaps Good Old Games, which stands out by being DRM-free.)

Well they're getting squeezed by the 30%, but also that the act of participating in the Steam market means they cannot sell their game for less money (to incentivize a better cut for themselves) off platform, since Steam doesn't allow you to do that, at least to the best of my current understanding. I've posted this elsewhere and had one user pretty upset that I had posted false statements, but I haven't seen evidence to the contrary yet (context is at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38624916)

Do you have any evidence of that?

I know I've seen games given away for free on EGS while they were also for sale on Steam, and seen lower prices on IsThereAnyDeal, but those might all be temporary.

According to Ars, "Sources close to Valve suggested to Ars that this "parity" rule only applies to the "free" Steam keys publishers can sell on other storefronts and not to Steam-free versions of those games sold on competing platforms."

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2021/05/why-lower-platform-fe...

Thank you for a source. I do link to my source in the thread in question, and while that law firm was working with Wolfire Games who presumably saw agreements directly from Valve, it's not exactly going to be an unbiased account since they were, you know, suing Valve.

After reviewing the article, it's still a second hand unidentified source, but definitely clear the facts are contested.

I updated that thread with these details.

Payment-processing companies for credit-cards typically take less than 2% of the paid amount, also capped with a maximum fees in the low single digit $ for larger payment amounts. That is "not greedy" in my reckoning, and it pays for all of the hardware and software to make your credit card effective and secure. Taking 30% as gate-keeping lordship rent is greedy, it treats customers and merchants as serfs of the Apple/Google kingdom. Just sayin'

Why are you comparing Steam to a payment processing gateway? Payment processing is just one small part of the services Steam offers. Of course a platform that offers a lot more is going to charge a lot more.

Steam and EGS don't just offer payment processing. Bandwidth isn't free, neither is patching, distributaion and "curation" (albeit this one is definitely more debatable).

Even then, payment processing isn't just about taking a $10 transaction. A single dispute on Stripe will cost you $25 whether you are succesful or not. Handling payments in non-local currencies is 3.5% + 20p on stripe, plus currency conversion fees.

I don't think 30% is the right cut, but 2% isn't a fair comparison for the service.

You really have to explain how you can even begin to compare a payment processer with steam.

Steam provides a ton of value add on top of payment processing. Advertisement, distribution, a storefront, a boatload of users.

Thanks for asking. - Advertisement: the free internet has lots of places for adds - Distribution: there are several very good protocols for transferring files, even ones with DRM! - Storefront: ...stores don't take a 30% cut of what they sell, and as we all know inventory costs are pretty low when it's all just bits on NAS storage. - Users: again, this is called the internet, they are there and what they need is curation. I would much rather a proper gatekeeper, say for example Polygon magazine, was able to pay real game testers and journalists to surface the really good game, and make a cut off of this, instead of the wasteland that's on display at whatsonsteam.com

You are not answering my question. You are simply enumerating ways how to do what steam does in other ways. My question is why are you comparing it to a payment processor.

I am comparing the greedy fee it charges...

Why build dropbox, you can easily do it yourself just by using (...)

>When did it become "greedy"?

This is a rhetorical question I don't know how to answer.

>Is EGS offering the same quality of service as Steam?

In my opinion, no.

>Is EGS making profits?

No. Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/6/23949372/the-epic-games-s...

>Is 12% really sustainable?

I don't know.

> No

Needs some qualification.

EGS is not profitable as they are spending like crazy to try and gain users. But the EGS is not where Epic makes its money, that’s Fortnite for now.

The 12% is still more then enough to profitably be a platform middleman because it costs very very little and is basically pure profit to stay the course.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com