Despite facing increased competition in the space, not least from the Epic Games Store, Valve’s platform is synonymous with PC gaming. The service is estimated to have made $10.8 billion in revenue during 2024, a new record for the Half-Life giant. Since it entered the PC distribution space back in 2018, the rival Epic Games Store has been making headway – and $1.09 billion last year – but Steam is still undeniably dominant within the space.
Valve earns a large part of its money from taking a 20-30% cut of sales revenue from developers and publishers. Despite other storefronts opening with lower overheads, Steam has stuck with taking this slice of sales revenue, and in doing so, it has been argued that Valve is unfairly taking a decent chunk of the profits of developers and publishers.
This might change, depending on how an ongoing class-action lawsuit initiated by Wolfire Games goes, but for the time being, Valve is making money hand over fist selling games on Steam. The platform boasts over 132 million users, so it’s perfectly reasonable that developers and publishers feel they have to use Steam – and give away a slice of their revenue – in order to reach the largest audience possible.
Question from the back?
How would Valve be broken up?
Would it be game developer and store front separated?
How would that aid or assist in the purchasers?
Like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling
Valve gets split into Valve backend (most rudimentary but common stuff so that owned games across storefronts in that backend carry over) and Valve store/developer/publisher. Other stores get access to backend, regulator stays at Valve backend to check if they don’t give preferential treatment to Valve store. Same rules for everyone. Then stores can decide how they utilise that infra, what features they provide and consumers make a decision on cost and benefits of those stores. You can make some transfer fee if needed because downloads are a variable cost.
Oh so like how I can buy my steam keys on fanatical but still download and play them via the steam backend while using a different frontend like LaunchBox?
And Steam could take a 30% fee on transactions while using their service?
Something like that?
No. GOG, EGS, Humble and anyone else who wants to join in and offer a store that connects to Valve backend. That store calls backend to check who owns what, pays them for downloads (base/updates/dlc) and that’s it. It would make Steam monopoly crumble in an instant, prices go down because stores compete on things that matter to consumers. Stores need to compete for developers too. Win win win.
Wait but you can link Humble to steam and it checks what games you already own.
GOG wants you to just have the local game files and an installer so they don’t need this and don’t need Valve’s backend. Why pay valve for each download when you can host it yourself and not worry about the fee? Itch seems to agree with that.
And then wouldn’t everyone still be using Valve as a backend and they would have a monopoly on the infrastructure of all game downloads then? And could charge high rates to download?
Humble still has to charge you entire Valve’s cut this way. 30% is way more than the real infra cost.
Valve backend is effectively a public utility in this scenario. This thing has been proven to work and bring prices down fast. Actual free market.
It wouldn’t be a public utility they would be a company that needs to make a profit still and would find a way to do so with fees on downloads.
And humble does not pay the 30% if you buy in their storefront currently.
So your complaint is that prices are high and getting rid of Steam would alter that?
Monopolies that were broken down this way were private companies. You’re making an argument against something that’s proven to work. You don’t really support it well (or at all).
How do you know Humble gets any discount?
Consider me not in your head to understand your perspective and try to get it across clearly to me. No sarcasm or condescending tone.
I do not see how these are comparable and don’t think of steam as a utility that owns the singular option for infrastructure as it’s a digital service that others can and will spin up to avoid using Steams backend.
They literally don’t have to.
And sure I am welcome to information if it is accurate and you have it.