A counterpoint to consider: Tim Sweeney says his Unreal (studio) customers that use Steam (which is nearly all of them) are worse off than the retail era:
>Generally, the economics of these 30% platform fees are no longer justifiable. There was a good case for them in the
early days, but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases
is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee.
>If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the
developer themselves made. These guys are our engine customers and we talk to them all the time. Valve takes 30%
for distribution; they have to spend 30% on Facebook/Google/Twitter UA or traditional marketing, 10% on server, 5% on
engine. So, the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution
economics of the 1990's.
>We know the economics of running this kind of service because we're doing it now with Fortnite and Paragon. The fully
loaded cost of distributing a >$25 game in North America and Western Europe is under 7% of gross.
I just don't get how what Steam does is parasitic or bad in any way. They are expensive, but they don't engage in the predatory practices of most of their competitors. They just kinda sell games.
>Generally, the economics of these 30% platform fees are no longer justifiable. There was a good case for them in the early days, but the scale is now high and operating costs have been driven down, while the churn of new game releases is so fast that the brief marketing or UA value the storefront provides is far disproportionate to the fee.
>If you subtract out the top 25 games on Steam, I bet Valve made more profit from most of the next 1000 than the developer themselves made. These guys are our engine customers and we talk to them all the time. Valve takes 30% for distribution; they have to spend 30% on Facebook/Google/Twitter UA or traditional marketing, 10% on server, 5% on engine. So, the system takes 75% and that leaves 25% for actually creating the game, worse than the retail distribution economics of the 1990's.
>We know the economics of running this kind of service because we're doing it now with Fortnite and Paragon. The fully loaded cost of distributing a >$25 game in North America and Western Europe is under 7% of gross.
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