Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

gamasutra.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 190 posts

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#21

Post by jsheard »

acomjean wrote: post #19

This 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 s…

> Its also a hedge to prevent every large game seller from setting up their own store.

That ship has already sailed - EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net, Microsoft has the Windows store, and Bethesda and Epic have their own launchers.

Nearly every major publisher has already made the investment to develop their own store and digital distribution infrastructure, so they have little reason to pay the Steam tax now.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#22

Post by ksec »

jsheard wrote: post #21
acomjean wrote: post #19

This 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 s…

> Its also a hedge to prevent every large game seller from setting up their own store. That ship has already sailed - EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net, Microsoft has the Windows store, and Bethesda and Epic have their own launchers. Nearly every major publisher has already made the investment to develop their own store and digital distribution infrastructure, so they have little re…

Are any of those you mentioned popular with Gamers though? I only ever hear Steam in gaming.

What do you mean by own launchers? Surely not a Store right?

Is Battle.Net a "Store"?

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#23

Post by cma »

acomjean wrote: post #19

This 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 s…

I'd say it is almost 100% the latter and the former barely plays into it. Their announcement even essentially says they are compensating the big players for the "network effect" their games provide to Steam.

Big publishers and games have been going on their own and doing ok. This is a move to keep them around, while using the players that they bring to sell other games at the old Steam margin.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#24

Post by slfnflctd »

zeroname wrote: post #8
beerlord wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is unfortunately not correct. A large amount of advertising and PR is very necessary to receive any attention for a launch on Steam. Unfortunately a mere 'launch' on Steam has been devalued, by Valve allowing anyone with $100 to launch on the platform (and the majority of the launches on Steam are very low quality as a result). If you want to make a middle class income from launching games on Steam, you will nee…

It's not just lack of marketing, it's the fact that there are now far more games, but gamers have neither more money nor time to compensate. There are too many game developers, it's as simple as that. Too many millennials don't want the regular old "grown up" jobs anymore, they want to be creatives or artists and the market just can't soak them all up. If you think it's hard as a game developer, try living off painti…

I don't know how they do it, honestly. Back in the day, when things were simpler, being a game dev sounded pretty cool. Now? No thank you. Lower wages, longer hours, much more difficult work, and 'fans' who continuously insult you in the worst possible ways no matter what you do... sounds like a nightmare. If I'm going to go the creative route I think I'd be happier on the sidewalk with a guitar.

Career-wise, I would much rather help a middle manager figure out how to best crunch the data on their quarterly reports. It can actually be more interesting than it sounds on the surface, and if you're competent everyone's happy at the end.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#25

Post by fromthestart »

ksec wrote: post #22
jsheard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its also a hedge to prevent every large game seller from setting up their own store. That ship has already sailed - EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net, Microsoft has the Windows store, and Bethesda and Epic have their own launchers. Nearly every major publisher has already made the investment to develop their own store and digital distribution infrastructure, so they have little re…

Are any of those you mentioned popular with Gamers though? I only ever hear Steam in gaming. What do you mean by own launchers? Surely not a Store right? Is Battle.Net a "Store"?

At least some of these games are only available through non steam launchers. E.g. Overwatch only launches from battle.net.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#26

Post by mysterydip »

beerlord wrote: post #5
philjohn wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is unfortunately not correct. A large amount of advertising and PR is very necessary to receive any attention for a launch on Steam. Unfortunately a mere 'launch' on Steam has been devalued, by Valve allowing anyone with $100 to launch on the platform (and the majority of the launches on Steam are very low quality as a result). If you want to make a middle class income from launching games on Steam, you will nee…

To add some statistics to this, there were 7600 games released on steam in 2017, almost double the 4200 the year before, and 13 times more than the 500 released in 2013. It used to be the case that getting on steam was "guaranteed exposure", but no longer.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#27

Post by lbotos »

ksec wrote: post #22
jsheard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its also a hedge to prevent every large game seller from setting up their own store. That ship has already sailed - EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net, Microsoft has the Windows store, and Bethesda and Epic have their own launchers. Nearly every major publisher has already made the investment to develop their own store and digital distribution infrastructure, so they have little re…

Are any of those you mentioned popular with Gamers though? I only ever hear Steam in gaming. What do you mean by own launchers? Surely not a Store right? Is Battle.Net a "Store"?

Launchers are 1 step away from a "store".

I was playing fortnite, and via that launcher they can easily upsell/cross-sell me to their other titles.

I might consider it a "distribution channel" which could serve as a store for sure.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#28

Post by skinnyarms »

jsheard wrote: post #21
acomjean wrote: post #19

This 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 s…

> Its also a hedge to prevent every large game seller from setting up their own store. That ship has already sailed - EA has Origin, Ubisoft has Uplay, Activision/Blizzard has Battle.net, Microsoft has the Windows store, and Bethesda and Epic have their own launchers. Nearly every major publisher has already made the investment to develop their own store and digital distribution infrastructure, so they have little re…

Most stores keep their numbers private, but I'd wager that Steam has most (if not all of them) beat by a large margin.

Presumably these companies believe that the higher margins and control they get from running their own stores are worth the customers they lose by not being in Steam.

As the Steam Tax lightens however, the results of that equation could change.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#29

Post by jsheard »

fromthestart wrote: post #25
ksec wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are any of those you mentioned popular with Gamers though? I only ever hear Steam in gaming. What do you mean by own launchers? Surely not a Store right? Is Battle.Net a "Store"?

At least some of these games are only available through non steam launchers. E.g. Overwatch only launches from battle.net.

It's pretty common for AAA games to not be available on Steam now. Blizzard never used it, and EA, Activision, Microsoft and Epic have pivoted to releasing exclusively on their own platforms.

Ubisoft still releases on Steam but requires Steam buyers to install and log into Uplay regardless, which feels like preparation for abandoning Steam once enough users have Uplay installed.

Re: Valve creates new revenue sharing tiers to give big sellers a break

#30

Post by jamp897 »

Many larger studios are working on self publishing and have projects in the works. The percent that Valve takes even at 20% is still too high, but the bigger issues is that Valve locks up your users so when you make your next game you have to reacquire them, ownership of ones users is the key due to this issue. We’ll see how they fair over the coming years but this does look like they’re starting to wake up a bit to how unhappy execs have been with Steam stagnating and reaping 30% still.
Post reply on HN