As an indie dev this is great news for me. Hoping Valve may come around and just drop the share to 20% for everyone eventually and then I won't have to forgo a salary to keep my 4 person studio alive.
Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
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Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#12I feel uncomfortable that smaller developers will be less profitable because they... don't have as much negotiating power? Valve is being very Walmart-esque with this move. Already game developers are the lowest paid workers in the IT industry - and a lot of it has to do with the huge revenue shares ('platform taxes') charged by the monopoly platform holders. I'm not arguing against any change, it just seems spiteful…
On the other hand - the big publishers need Valve less, so from a purely business perspective it makes a ton of sense to keep them on the platform, which is the biggest storefront for purchasing games. Yes, smaller developers have to pay more, but they're getting a heck of a lot of exposure for that take, without having to spend big on traditional advertising like the large publishers have to.
developers can get more exposure on Twitch by paying a decently sized streamer to play their game. Showing people your game in play is far more important than placement on a shopping platform
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#13Some of the big publishers have been requiring user accounts on all their AAA games sold through steam, so I think Valve knows it won't take much for these guys to switch to exclusive sales through their own platforms if Steam becomes too costly.
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#14As an indie dev this is great news for me. Hoping Valve may come around and just drop the share to 20% for everyone eventually and then I won't have to forgo a salary to keep my 4 person studio alive.
Valve have shown that they will do nothing unless their hand is forced.
Your best bet is an Epic Store, which will hopefully charge commissions of 8-12%.
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/tim-sweeney-not-sure-why-stea...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/29/app_store_duopoly_3...
Valve and the other large platform holders know that if they abandon 30%, there is no going back. Over time that 'platform tax' will get pushed lower and lower, until it basically reaches the marginal cost of transacting the sale and bandwidth. They are trying to hold that off as long, long as possible. At this rate it could be 100 years though.
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#15This is definitely going for big AAA publishers. As Activision moved their latest Call of Duty from Steam to Battle.net, there are only Take-Two and Square Enix who haven't rolled their PC store.
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#16This is definitely going for big AAA publishers. As Activision moved their latest Call of Duty from Steam to Battle.net, there are only Take-Two and Square Enix who haven't rolled their PC store.
Take-Two do have their own store iirc or at least rockstar does. What they don’t have is an app where you can easily and simply download and install any game tied to your account.
I have GTAV from them directly and it can be a chore remembering where the actual download button is for the installer on their site.
EDIT: For the shits and giggles of it I tried to stumble across the installer for gtav on rockstargames.com - This isn't my first time But I always forget because I don't actually install the game that often (once its installed it normally stays installed until I nuke my system).
First I thought, I'll make sure I'm logged in so I did that, There is a hover menu over my avatar now So I check that and follow profile and settings as none of the others seem to be linked to "let me download my game". But nothing in there links to to downloads.
OK return to rockstargames.com because there was a downloads button on the header banner. Click... click on gtav and it prompts me for who I want to by the game from. so I select rockstar warehouse because that's who I brought the game from.
It now prompts me to buy the game. Oh but I am no longer signed in. Arrr differnt domain name, that will be why. So I sign in, atleast this time I don't have to do a recaptcha to sign in as it did manage to figure out i'm signed in from rockstargames.com. Ok, it bounces me back to the warehouse home page instead of the page I was just at.
I can not click on my username, So I try clicking Digital Downloads, Select "Grand Theft Auto V" as I'm sure that the one of the 6 SKU's they have for the digital copy of the game. And its prompting me to purchase the same.
So I scroll all the way to the bottom and select "Digital Downloads" under shopping support.
> How do I download my purchase? > You can download by either clicking the Download button on the Order Details page or by right-clicking on the Download button and clicking Save Target As in Microsoft Internet Explorer or Save Link As in Mozilla Firefox. Do not rename the download file as this can cause installation problems.
Ok so I do that, There is my order but no download buitton. Ok... Lets check that support doc again.
>I want to re-download my purchase, but the Download button is gone. >There are a couple reasons why you wouldn't see a button (where there previously was one) to download your purchase. If the order is older than 30 days, then the download period has expired.
Well that's frustrating, BUT I know it can be done but I've done it a few times in the past.
Fuck it, I'll do what I should of done in the first place (apart from "should of brought it on stream) I'll ask Google. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+to+I+redownload+gtav+on+pc
1st link is quora, 2nd is rockstar support, Well I'll give rockstar a final chance before relying on 3rd parties to help me and click the support.rockstargames.com link.
>...or download from the GTAV PC Social Club Activation page.
Clicks the link, BOOM there is my download. But wait, I thought I clicked the social club before. Clicks my avatar, OH NOW THERES A BIG BUTTON SAYING "Game Downloads" which isn't present when you click on your avatar from rockstargames.com
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#17Some of the big publishers have been requiring user accounts on all their AAA games sold through steam, so I think Valve knows it won't take much for these guys to switch to exclusive sales through their own platforms if Steam becomes too costly.
Is that what's behind that crap? Too many games require some fucking account I don't care about, when it should be linked to steam.
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Already game developers are the lowest paid workers in the IT industry That is not true if you factor out all the people developing games independently on their own dime, against better financial advice. To counteract that, there just aren't enough developers working on enterprise Java architecture for no money, out of passion. It's also only fair that people who get to work on "fun" things like games are paid less…
See for yourself: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2018/#salary > The little guys can go to itch.io, which charges as low as 0% commission. They may even have more visibility on there than on Steam, given that it's a smaller pond. There's also the Humble Store, which leaves commission up to the buyer. Steam has a monopoly. There is no alternative for anyone with revenue below $10 million (hence this change).…
> (since visibility is based on sales).
This is a point I don't see mentioned often enough. I've wondered in the past if it's actually better to forego every other platform in order to increase visibility through Steam. Higher sales means that Valve will promote you more, which may offset whatever revenue you'd be generating from sources like itch.io. Would be interested to hear if anyone has any opinions or idea about this.
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#19This makes sense. the share drops to 25% after 10 million in sales. and more after. One would imagine that there is some fixed cost for adding new titles and maintaining steam store. After a certain amount of sales the cost per title is just bandwidth so steam is making more per game anyway.
Its also a hedge to prevent every large game seller from setting up their own store. Even if you are large its cheaper to use steam.
Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break
#20As an indie dev this is great news for me. Hoping Valve may come around and just drop the share to 20% for everyone eventually and then I won't have to forgo a salary to keep my 4 person studio alive.
Valve have shown that they will do nothing unless their hand is forced. Your best bet is an Epic Store, which will hopefully charge commissions of 8-12%. https://www.neogaf.com/threads/tim-sweeney-not-sure-why-stea... https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/08/29/app_store_duopoly_3... Valve and the other large platform holders know that if they abandon 30%, there is no going back. Over time that 'platform tax' will get p…
1 decade down and iTunes hasn't budged. I suspect your 100yr timeframe is close