Steam takes a large cut of the revenue from game sales. This should change in the future – at least the developers think so.
In recent years, there have been many good RPGs, and one of the best has likely been Disco Elysium, which currently has a 93% positive rating on Steam. However, the developer behind it, ZA/UM, has since broken apart – many new studios have emerged from it. One of them is Summer Eternal, and they have a clear idea of what is going wrong in gaming right now: One-third of the revenue from sales goes to “digital lords,” such as Steam.
What is the problem with Steam? In an interview with VG247, Dora Klindzic and Aleksandar Gavrilovic from Summer Eternal discussed the current state of affairs in the gaming industry.
The last few years have been particularly bad, as many companies have seen numerous layoffs, affecting mainly developers who often have a poorly paid job under harsh conditions. Klindzic puts it somewhat more dramatically:
I believe the industry is at an end. But fortunately for everyone, video games are not.
Gavrilovic picks up on this thought:
Now, after tens of thousands of layoffs, the right time has come for developers to rise, fight for their rights, and take action against systemic greed.
However, it will still take some time before it comes to that. Gavrilovic even expects that “there will be a second crisis that highlights the biggest structural problem in game development – the fact that one-third of all PC revenue from developers, from indie studios to AAA, goes to digital loans.”
This primarily refers to Steam from Valve. Because when a developer sells something on the Steam platform, 30% of the sale price goes to Steam.
Gavrilovic hopes that there will be alternatives in the future, especially in the hands of the developers, but says he “does not have the imagination to envision a community-operated replacement for Steam. This ‘winter castle’ will not fall easily, but we should at least start talking openly about alternatives.”
Is Steam really that bad? The 30% that Steam takes from every sale has been a topic of heated discussion for years. Back then, the Epic Games Store made a significant announcement that it wanted to take a significantly smaller share compared to Steam – the criticism has been around for a while.
Also, the 30% “on everything” is not entirely accurate, as Pirate Software explains in a stream:
For example, if you buy a game key from another platform or from a merchant and redeem it on Steam, Steam receives nothing from that – and still provides the service.
However, there are also many developers who are satisfied with the 30%. Because Steam generates a tremendous amount of reach for this 30%, meaning games are generally sold many times more than if they were not sold on Steam. The additional revenue from Steam sales would more than compensate for the 30%. Moreover, Steam offers a comfortable platform not only for the players but also for the developers with additional features.
What is clear, however, is that Steam has a quasi-monopoly in the gaming community. Those who want to play on PC generally use Steam from Valve – most competing providers like the Epic Games Store or GOG are relatively niche by comparison. Some developers even say: Only Steam is worth it, Epic Games Store brings nothing.
