Posted December 04, 2018
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/30/18120577/valve-steam-game-marketplace-revenue-split-new-rules-competition
Previously, Valve took an "App Store Tax"-like 30% flat rate cut of most sales.
Under the new rules, that portion goes down to 20% for games that generate over large amounts of revenue.
Obviously, this won't benefit indie developers. Most indies never get the enough popularity to make even $10 million required to see the first tier of decreased "app store tax", and even if they did, indie games are generally priced so cheap that this becomes doubly difficult.
Over the last 6-7 years, the big-budget megapublishers have been rolling out their own distribution services to save money and cut out the middleman. I remember it started with EA in 2010-2011 when they got into trouble with Valve over their DLC distribution schemes. In short, they would release the base game on Steam, and then sell DLC on a separate site to avoid giving Valve a 30% cut. Mass Effect 2 is the best example of this, where only the digital deluxe edition is available on Steam, then you need to register for a (probably defunct) Cerberus Network account to activate your DLCs. By now, if you want DLCs for Mass Effect 2 you might as well buy from EA's Origin store.
Valve didn't appreciate EA's DLC end-run. Soon after this, EA launched its competing Origin service and started making its new games Origin-exclusive.
Next megapublisher to do this was Ubisoft. Instead of officially declaring war and cutting Steam out, Ubisoft requires every new release for PC link into their uPlay platform. This provides a soft incentive against buying new Ubisoft products on Steam since you will have to go through 2 distribution frameworks (both Steam and uPlay) when you could simply buy straight from Ubisoft uPlay.
A few years later, Activision joined the trend. Even now they are continuing to switch distribution of flagship products over to the Activision Blizzard online store and the unified Battle.net launcher.
Bethesda seems to be following, launching their own Bethesda.net distribution service that increasingly looks like it will be mandatory for their games moving forward. Their recent Fallout 76 game appears to be exclusive to Bethesda.net. This also lets them collect a better cut from paid mods then they would ever get from Steam Workshop's disastrous experiment with paid mods.
Even more recently, Epic Games jumped on the build-your-own-bandwagon, launching their own independent storefront (see https://www.gog.com/forum/general/epic_games_is_opening_a_store_front)
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Likely too little too late. Steam has largely lost big-budget megapublishers in the West, who have made their own frameworks and have little incentive to release on Steam again.
Previously, Valve took an "App Store Tax"-like 30% flat rate cut of most sales.
Under the new rules, that portion goes down to 20% for games that generate over large amounts of revenue.
Obviously, this won't benefit indie developers. Most indies never get the enough popularity to make even $10 million required to see the first tier of decreased "app store tax", and even if they did, indie games are generally priced so cheap that this becomes doubly difficult.
Over the last 6-7 years, the big-budget megapublishers have been rolling out their own distribution services to save money and cut out the middleman. I remember it started with EA in 2010-2011 when they got into trouble with Valve over their DLC distribution schemes. In short, they would release the base game on Steam, and then sell DLC on a separate site to avoid giving Valve a 30% cut. Mass Effect 2 is the best example of this, where only the digital deluxe edition is available on Steam, then you need to register for a (probably defunct) Cerberus Network account to activate your DLCs. By now, if you want DLCs for Mass Effect 2 you might as well buy from EA's Origin store.
Valve didn't appreciate EA's DLC end-run. Soon after this, EA launched its competing Origin service and started making its new games Origin-exclusive.
Next megapublisher to do this was Ubisoft. Instead of officially declaring war and cutting Steam out, Ubisoft requires every new release for PC link into their uPlay platform. This provides a soft incentive against buying new Ubisoft products on Steam since you will have to go through 2 distribution frameworks (both Steam and uPlay) when you could simply buy straight from Ubisoft uPlay.
A few years later, Activision joined the trend. Even now they are continuing to switch distribution of flagship products over to the Activision Blizzard online store and the unified Battle.net launcher.
Bethesda seems to be following, launching their own Bethesda.net distribution service that increasingly looks like it will be mandatory for their games moving forward. Their recent Fallout 76 game appears to be exclusive to Bethesda.net. This also lets them collect a better cut from paid mods then they would ever get from Steam Workshop's disastrous experiment with paid mods.
Even more recently, Epic Games jumped on the build-your-own-bandwagon, launching their own independent storefront (see https://www.gog.com/forum/general/epic_games_is_opening_a_store_front)
---------
Likely too little too late. Steam has largely lost big-budget megapublishers in the West, who have made their own frameworks and have little incentive to release on Steam again.