Takes what chance? The useless 1GB that it would need to waste to keep the game on the service?

There's no such thing as taking chances with digital distribution. You aim to offer as much value to your customers as possible, not actively deny them that (which is done by denying a game every time).

It is from what you hear across the net what Steam takes from indies. And Steam is the industry standard. Every client is emulating it and every service has to match what Steam brought to the table.

Many benefits we take for granted were established by Steam. Eg, the unlimited downloads or "library option". If the industry would have its say, we would have to pay for "extended download service". Or the massive sales and "daily deals". Steam started them, the industry followed.


Oh, there is. I no longer buy any indies on GG because of their shitty "everybody welcome catalogue". If GOG would have its service flooded with shitty games, revenue would drop.

It's a good thing GOG doesn't follow the industry standard then..

Weird, I would love for the devs to get a bigger cut.

I imagine GOG's fixed price points are the root issue for some developers more so than a 70/30 split.

In any case it's not really our concern imo.

GOG provides a great service to the user base, and appear to be quite uncompromising in the way they provide that service. A developer can always go elsewhere. I wouldn't expect GOG to be the best place for all new games. GOG seems to have originally built itself upon giving gamers what they want, more so than developers. They'll always struggle to cater to a new market without breaking their own mould a little. Just my take.

I wasn't referring to the cut percentage - I'm not privy to that information - but how Steam operate on the whole. But, ok, let's speculate a little and guess that GOG offers 60/40 and Steam 70/30. With an asking price of say $10 that means $6 and $7 respectively to the devs. Of course, users of Steam know that most games will eventually be on sale, often with 70-80% off. GOG on the other hand rarely offer more than 50% off, and - I believe - not as frequent. The same game would then, with 50% (GOG) and 75% (Steam) off, mean $3 and $1.75 respectively to the developer. That is, if the cut is from the asking price - if it's from the net profit, it'll be even lower as the DD's cost is more or less fixed. Steam as a digital distributor doesn't really care about what money goes where as long as their bottom line is as good as they can make it. The developers on the other hand, need the actual money, not the market penetration or whatever. This obviously goes for GOG as well, but they don't utilize the same tactics.

Then you have all the 'client needed', 'internet connection stuff' etc etc that has been discussed to death - personally, I don't care for it, and am happy GOG isn't taking that path (at least not yet) etc etc.

Honestly, how much are you trying to change reality to make Steam look bad.

This is ridiculous. Live in your little bubble if you like. I get my indies on the Humble Store. As long as GOG is giving me sub-standard service, I only buy old games here.

Are people actually still believing this? Incredible...

(For the record, it's actually about the same share. Retailers make around 30-35% at best on units they receive at cost price. There is an additional cost incurred for the manufacture of the physical media, as it's usually outsourced to a third-party company, but as far I as know this and shipping account for only a very small proportion. Physical units are usually acquired on a sale-or-return basis).

I think you underestimate how much time (and therefore money) is involved in simply checking things out, performing due diligence, creating legal contracts etc. Additionally, as discussed in another recent thread, by offering a game that gives them poor margins, they may be diverting a potential sale away from another product that they get a better deal out of. As none of us have seen their various agreements, it's simply not our place to be telling them to make changes.

No need to take my word for it:

http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/opinion-retail-vs-steam
1C's view of it:

1C. Why doesn't that surprise me? Darryl Still has been pushing this misinformation for years in an effort to boost digital.

When you've been dealing with retail, you realise that the margins on games in retail are very, very low indeed. The store I work with (an independent one, not a major chain, which I quote by way of example) makes around €10 off every sold €50-60 game.

That €10 needs to cover the costs of staff, utilities and rent. Although this store in question sells far more games than it does hardware in terms of units, it actually makes more money on hardware and used out-of-print games than it does on new games, which is not a viable source of income in its own right.

I'm yet to find a retailer that only pays 40 per cent. I find it interesting that every time he mentions figures, he feels the need to qualify it with phrases such as "as a generalisation", "let's say". This article means absolutely nothing.

How this works at major online physical retailers such as Amazon and if it is any different to brick-and-mortar I cannot say, but I say with certainty that brick-and-mortar retailers are not oozing in money from games sales and have never been as publishers like 1C would have us believe. There is a reason that many of them are dying out despite being console-centric.

I'm not trying to change anything, but please tell me where I went wrong with my reasoning - I can't "escape my little bubble" as long as I'm blind to the world outside of it.

Very simple. To make Steam look bad on a non issue (really, better dev cut can't be worse) you are bringing a whole new different set of valuable into it. The range of sales.

This is ridicoulus because of (not limited to) three reasons:

1. GOG also make huge sales occasionally. The Gem promos started of with 75% off.

2. Publisher set the prices for discounts, not Steam or GOG. If the dev (how is also publisher in indies) doesn't want to have a game at a lower discount then say 50%, the game won't see a bigger discount.

3. And the biggest flaw, you make it sound like there is a finite number of games being sold no matter the price and because evil dewevil Steam is making a discount for their overhead, pubs suffer (Which is also pointless, because good Steam overhead is a good pub overhead). But the reality is that most game are sold that much, because of the low discount. In the end, a high discount is extremely good for a game because the added sales are bigger than the lost discount amount. And after the discount phase a renewed interest in the game is sparked for people willing to pay full price.

Therefore your example is not only contrived, but beyond ridiculous.

it's not very important, I think, as indie games, while a welcome occasionnal bonus, should not be the main focus of the site. I don't think they should change their policies for this.

What Darryl said was confirmed by Fred Wester from Paradox - he said that they made almost no money from last retail release (while digital release was success).

These are reasons why retail offer much worse deals to devs:
1. Manufacturing and distribution is dependant on economy of scale - and if you go to retail worldwide withrelatively small number of copies, prices paid for this will be much higher(per copy of game).
2. Whole manufacturing/distribution/retail process require many companies to be involved and each of them need to add some % to cover their expenses and some profit
3. Retail most of the time demad publisher/dev to pay for in-store promotion, stocking fees, returns etc.
4. It takes 90 or 120 days before publisher/dav get their money after game is sold.

So, while shop itself might take only around 10€ from 50€, others involved in whole process will take even more than that.