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72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

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Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#51

Post by orwin »

mzhaase wrote: post #29
yxhuvud wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A third difference is that I've seen no signs of steam actually abusing their standing in the market. If anything they seem to be nicer than they have to be.

They absolutely keep a larger cut than others. With Epic the first million you make is free. After much deliberation, steam changed it so that their 30% cut is reduced if you make more than 10M. For a lot of indie devs, its pretty much a death sentence.

Indie games pay for discoverabiliy (don't know if that's a word). To be clear, I mostly use GoG when I can, unless it's a multiplayer game with bad lobby/MP support (Firaxis/paradox basically)

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#52

Post by gruez »

fakedang wrote: post #6
mrzool wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No question about it! Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.

How much do you think they should take? Steam is the most dominant because of their extremely customer friendly policies, their insane price crashes and the ease of publishing and installing games from the platform. If other platforms are able to provide all of that, with a commission below 30%, I'm sure they could easily take over. But turns out, neither Epic nor EA are interested in serving the customer.

>Steam is the most dominant because of their ... insane price crashes

Are steam deals really better than on other platforms? They might have better deals compared to brick and mortar retailers but publishers generally have price parity across various digital storefronts (eg. epic vs steam), so attributing low prices to steam doesn't really make much sense. If anything steam is actually more expensive if you factor in authorized keystores (eg. greenmangaming), which are occasionally cheaper.

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#53

Post by jorvi »

galagawinkle489 wrote: post #42
jorvi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has market power though, which is a key part of a monopoly. If tomorrow Steam decided to charge 30% extra to developers with the stipulation that sticker price must equal that of outside Steam, developers wouldn't have much of a choice but to eat the cost, because PC gamers are extremely reluctant to leave their Steam library and features. A good example of market power is Apple vs Spotify. When Apple launched…

"Monopoly" is a distraction. The issue is abuse of market power. Having market power is fine. You can't punish people for being successful. Steam doesn't abuse being successful to lock out competitors. You can sell products sold through Steam via other platforms too. You can sell outside of Steam and give your customers Steam keys for the game. You can install Steam on different platforms alongside other stores and p…

To be clear, I don't think Valve has abused their position at all. I was merely musing on how they could. Which would operate on a similar concept as Apple did: "my users will stay in my ecosystem almost regardless of what I do."

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#54

Post by Retric »

TheDong wrote: post #47
jorvi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Valve has market power though, which is a key part of a monopoly. If tomorrow Steam decided to charge 30% extra to developers with the stipulation that sticker price must equal that of outside Steam, developers wouldn't have much of a choice but to eat the cost, because PC gamers are extremely reluctant to leave their Steam library and features. A good example of market power is Apple vs Spotify. When Apple launched…

The even more anti-competitive thing Apple does vs Spotify and all competitors is avoiding app store fees, while forcing all competitors to pay them. To have the same profit, Spotify has to charge $13/mo when apple music charges $10/mo with all else being the same. That's very obviously the App Store monopoly being used to give Apple Music a massive unfair advantage that is practically impossible to break through. St…

> To have the same profit, Spotify has to charge $13/mo when apple music charges $10/mo

Last I checked as long as an App Store is not handling subscriptions Apple doesn’t take a cut. Did that change?

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#55

Post by msabalau »

carlos_rpn wrote: post #5
mrzool wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No question about it! Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.

Anytime I see the complaint about the 30% fee, I wonder what people feel would be fair for the service, because it also includes storage, distribution for new instalations and patching for older ones, along with generating keys to be sold at other stores. Would people feel better with a lower fee, but no distribution network, for example?

Steam getting a 30% cut is certainly less objectional that Apple getting 30% because they've locked other people out of selling on iPhones.

On the other hand, that Steam taking as big a cut as Apple can claim because of their unfortunate practices isn't great.

Generally, the smallest indie creators, who aren't really likely to benefit from organic discovery on Steam, seem to priority selling on itch, which, by default, only takes a 10%, despite doing all the work you mention.

That Steam seems to have a marketplace monopoly based on network effects, and this allows them to claw money from all but the largest and smallest game developers is not something they have a strong right to claim to morally, and something society would benefit from doing away with. It appears that 72% of game devs feel that way too.

So, to answer your question, for me, two thirds of Steam's revenue seem unfair.

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#56

Post by TheDong »

Retric wrote: post #54
TheDong wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The even more anti-competitive thing Apple does vs Spotify and all competitors is avoiding app store fees, while forcing all competitors to pay them. To have the same profit, Spotify has to charge $13/mo when apple music charges $10/mo with all else being the same. That's very obviously the App Store monopoly being used to give Apple Music a massive unfair advantage that is practically impossible to break through. St…

> To have the same profit, Spotify has to charge $13/mo when apple music charges $10/mo Last I checked as long as an App Store is not handling subscriptions Apple doesn’t take a cut. Did that change?

Yes, subscribing outside the app does avoid the cut. Which is why you can't subscribe to spotify in the iOS app, you have to open a browser: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/cant-subscribe-to-pre...

Until this year, Spotify couldn't even tell you in the iOS app that you could pay for premium: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-05-01/following-landmark-c...

This meant in apple music, the user could open the app and it would work including paid features.

In spotify, you could open the app and it would tell you "You can't subscribe here, sorry" and couldn't even link you to a webpage you could subscribe at.

I'm certain a non-zero number of users couldn't understand what to do with that apple-approved error and gave up.

Maybe there's a reason that apple lost in court for that one.

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#57

Post by plumthreads »

galagawinkle489 wrote: post #36
mzhaase wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely keep a larger cut than others. With Epic the first million you make is free. After much deliberation, steam changed it so that their 30% cut is reduced if you make more than 10M. For a lot of indie devs, its pretty much a death sentence.

Indie game development largely owes its existence to Steam. I know I would spend a lot less on indie games if I had to buy them from their own websites or, god forbid, through an awful laggy "app store" run by Ubisoft or Microsoft.

If competitors offer passable services for selling indie game developers, then indie game developers would be able to earn more money (due to competition).

This is why developers are hopeful for alternative services.

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#58

Post by ExpertAdvisor01 »

RealStickman_ wrote: post #10
Pooge wrote: post #4

I've never understood this point. Other developers can just make their own platform or distribute games themselves individually. Nobody wants to do that for obvious reasons. There's clearly a network effect similar to Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and the likes. But apart from regulating for service interoperability, there's nothing you can do. It's like claiming that Skype had a monopoly between 2008 and 2014. Just.…

You're even allowed to sell your game cheaper on other platforms (not Steam keys, separate keys for those platforms) so by all means charge the 30% more on Steam if you need to.

you are not allowed to sell cd keys cheaper than on steam

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#59

Post by Retric »

TheDong wrote: post #56
Retric wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To have the same profit, Spotify has to charge $13/mo when apple music charges $10/mo Last I checked as long as an App Store is not handling subscriptions Apple doesn’t take a cut. Did that change?

Yes, subscribing outside the app does avoid the cut. Which is why you can't subscribe to spotify in the iOS app, you have to open a browser: https://support.spotify.com/us/article/cant-subscribe-to-pre... Until this year, Spotify couldn't even tell you in the iOS app that you could pay for premium: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2025-05-01/following-landmark-c... This meant in apple music, the user could open the app a…

> subscribing outside the app does avoid the cut. > Maybe there’s a reason Apple lost in court for that one.

The App Store as a sales channel isn’t a monopoly. The App Store as an installation method is.

It’s an interesting separation, but Apple really didn’t want to make that clear to customers which is probably why they lost.

Re: 72% of devs believe Steam has a monopoly on PC games, according to study

#60

Post by gruez »

galagawinkle489 wrote: post #43
gruez wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It take more than simply being the best or most successful business in a sector to be a monopoly. Being a monopoly is an active choice you make as a business by intentionally engaging in anticompetitive behaviors. By that logic are Amazon and Whatsapp also not "monopolies"? Are they simply just the best e-commerce company and chat app respectively? What competitive behaviors are they employing against their competit…

Amazon sold products at a loss for years in order to capture market share, then raised prices. That is blatant abuse of market power

>Amazon sold products at a loss for years in order to capture market share

Selling at a loss on a cost of goods sold basis, or the entire business as a whole? I'm aware of the latter but not the former. The latter also isn't obvious "abuse", because it would include all sorts of market entrants, including eg. intel trying to enter the GPU space and making a loss because of R&D.

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