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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

#171

Post by michaelmrose »

user5994461 wrote: post #125
kbwt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam certainly won't internationalize your game for you.

Steam is translated and comes with support for many languages. It takes all currency and it has region settings for pricing, currency and release dates. For the anecdote, it's maybe the only US service that sells well in Russia. It certainly won't translate the game for you, not that translating a bunch of text files is the hardest part, but it will help with everything else. Ask international users what they think o…

How will that give your game an international user base? Woudn't the first step being making the game actually playable by users in a given language before worrying about being able to sell to them.

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

#172

Post by jjeaff »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137
whatshisface wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not hire a customer representative whose main qualification would be diligent attention to detail? You shouldn't have specialized engineers spend their time dealing with issues that are not only one-off, but that also don't require any advanced qualifications. There aren't eight hours a day of check shredding to do, but there is a level of capability between "can only shred checks for eight hours a day," and "spe…

> * a customer representative whose main qualification would be diligent attention to detail?* Flexible problem solvers with attention to detail and solid communications skills are about as expensive as engineers.

I don't know many customer service reps making 150-250k a year.

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

#173

Post by nostalgiac »

baroffoos wrote: post #167
reitzensteinm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've sold 7 figures worth of game copies over my career, through Steam, the App store and my websites in roughly equal quantities. This completely misses the value proposition of Steam. Collecting a million dollars of game sales through Stripe or PayPal is not hard, nor is dealing with payment issues a large overhead, even if you're paying the people replying to the emails programmer salaries. Supporting the game its…

Essentially steam has created an almost walled garden. You already have all of your games on the steam client so if a game is sold on another store its inconvenient. Another part is steam has a lot of eyes looking at their store. Everyone checks steam for new games so if you are not on that store then people wont see you. Its an unfortunate system because steam isn't actually providing that much value but they have j…

> Its an unfortunate system because steam isn't actually providing that much value

I have to heavily disagree with that.

Other than as you mentioned, the huge amount of eyeballs on all of their library content which you just won't get anywhere near close to. Along with people already having credit on their steam account so they can instantly buy a product without entering payment info.

There's also the distribution and update mechanisms which are such a huge win for the customer as well as developers.

I can also guarantee you, if Steam didn't exist, there would be other 'central store/repo's' that would absolutely be trying to enter this space. Providing an easy location for gamers looking to find new content. It's a win/win/win for all of Valve, Developers & Customers.

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

#174

Post by chupasaurus »

nimish wrote: post #118
chupasaurus wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they're just trying to release their games without paying the Steam Tax. By not paying the Steam Tax, publishers are paying Engineering Tax and risks for fails in their distribution platforms. I have Vietnam flashbacks from Origin and Uplay. EA fixed their's in 2015, but latter is still a bughole and the reason I don't even look at Ubi's games. Latest Bethesda release is a clear example of that problem.

RDR2 sold ~800MM. 25% of that is 200MM, which is far more than it takes to set up a basic digital storefront. I doubt Valve bothers with a fraction of that for ongoing operations given how terrible the steam UX really is.

And we don't know about the cut Sony and MS have from that.

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

#175

Post by JumpCrisscross »

jjeaff wrote: post #172
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * a customer representative whose main qualification would be diligent attention to detail?* Flexible problem solvers with attention to detail and solid communications skills are about as expensive as engineers.

I don't know many customer service reps making 150-250k a year.

They aren’t called customer service reps. They’re account executives, investment bankers and CEOs. That skillset—socially-aware problem solvers—is ridiculously rare.

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

#176

Post by mango7283 »

michaelmrose wrote: post #171
user5994461 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Steam is translated and comes with support for many languages. It takes all currency and it has region settings for pricing, currency and release dates. For the anecdote, it's maybe the only US service that sells well in Russia. It certainly won't translate the game for you, not that translating a bunch of text files is the hardest part, but it will help with everything else. Ask international users what they think o…

How will that give your game an international user base? Woudn't the first step being making the game actually playable by users in a given language before worrying about being able to sell to them.

Not necessarily, assuming the game is in English, the payment barrier is higher than the language barrier.

OTOH if the game is in Japanese and only sold on a Japanese internet platform then you have two barriers - language and payment

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

#177

Post by chii »

maxsilver wrote: post #34
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"?

> Is Battle.Net a "Store"? Yes? I don't see how anyone could claim otherwise. Battle.net is a store, because it sells games you can purchase, including expansion pack sales, microtransaction sales, etc.

At best you can classify it as a specialty "store" where you can get only 1 brand of item.

Steam is a store in the true sense - it stocks stuff from multiple devs. And anyone can post their own game to the shelves.

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

#178

Post by Dextro »

adanto6840 wrote: post #64
michaelmrose wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's not like each game creators could run a worldwide distribution and payment operation" You mean like a website? I think it's more fruitful to imagine multiple merchants competing to sell devs wares and lessor commissions as a result of competition.

Payment processing is a big part of it, but it's not just that. The deployment framework, testing branches, the workshop/user content/mods support, etc. That stuff could certainly be replicated, but the exposure to the existing user base of active customers is the tough one. Admittedly it is supposedly lower value now, with Steam Direct replacing Greenlight, but it shouldn't be overlooked -- it's the same reason that…

I just created an account to thank you for making this game. I have been looking for a game just like this after reaching all the limits in Airport Tycoon ages ago.

And I mean literal limits. That game had a bug where flights were limited by an internal variable that was smaller than the capacity you could build so after a while the game would just stop and you would be unable to get any more use out of your airport. You could easily test this by cancelling one contract which would immediately make a new offer pop up.

Anyway your game looks just the thing I've been looking for since that old early 2000s game. I'll be throwing some money your way for sure.

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

#179

Post by e12e »

sbuttgereit wrote: post #147
e12e wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Brick and mortar stores pay about $45 for a $60 dollar game Really? I thought anything less than a 100% mark-up generally meant retail wasn't profitable? (ie 30 for a 60 dollar game)?

Back when I was in the retail industry, we saw nowhere near those kinds of gross margins (100% that is) on average (I worked in corporate management with ~4 chains and consulted to a few dozen others of varying size over a little more than a decade). More typical gross margins were in the ~40% ballpark. Some higher/some lower; the entertainment retailer I worked with was averaging around 35%. That's not to say it cou…

Just to be clear, when you say 35% you mean you bought inventory at 10 dollars and sold at 13.5? And everything covering rent, pay other costs and profit you made off those 35%?

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

#180

Post by kkarakk »

MattRix wrote: post #152
AmVess wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

25% is a steal. They handle all the financial transactions and host and distribute the game files on the most popular client on the planet. They also handle the security. Handling your own billing is expensive and time consuming. Setting up your own distribution and hosting is also expensive and time consuming, and then there's the bandwidth cost. All this adds up rather quickly. Having someone else do the business e…

It's not a steal at all. Those things (especially stuff like hosting and bandwidth) cost a small fraction of the price. You can argue that it's worth it because of how popular Steam is, but it's getting harder and harder for smaller devs to even get seen by that large audience in the first place.

As a layman gamer who has only used steam as a consumer - This comment ignores the ground realities of Steam having a seemingly endless amount of trash. i logged on and wanted to play a game with wallrunning and a cyberpunk aesthetic and i only found ONE that was worth playing out of the seemingly thousands of options.

Game developers on steam seem to release what they want to not what the audience wants in the vast majority of cases. Couple that with amateurish quality and it's actually easy to be seen if you choose to cater to the non oversaturated categories imo.

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