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Comment by BoorishBears | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the fact Epic isn't little, but I also agree it's crazy Steam is still taking 30% post the Greenlight deluge.

When they launched, afaik they were being pretty selective. A game being on Steam meant it was a good game, and in a way they were actually a publisher providing you with high converting distribution channels. It was like marketing and PR were almost baked in.

Now being on Steam means nothing. In fact they happily declared it means nothing: https://www.pcgamer.com/valve-says-it-will-no-longer-police-...

Steam even normalized a class of game (Early Access) that actually means negative things in general.

Once they transitioned from publisher to glorified CDN + Forum Hosting, I think they should have reworked the pricing to reflect that.

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Steamworks, the APIs available to all games on Steam, is packed with tons of features and services that aren't a CDN + forum. Anyone making games for Steam should make use of those to get the most out of their 30% in fees.

The following page lists some high level features but there's a lot more if you dig in: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features

Worth noting that Epic's store does not provide most of this. You get what you pay for.

Or, Steam should have a lower rate for developers that don't care about 80% of those features.

If they don't like it, they could use a different platform.

The reason Steam gets my money is because the 10ft UX is by far better. It's not just a CDN, it's an experience to play games.

Wrong?

> Worth noting that Epic's store does not provide most of this. You get what you pay for.

Epic has EOS: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-online-services

And unlike Steam's solution, they're cross-platform aren't tied to being on EGS, meaning it's actually free, not costing you 30%.

> Anyone making games for Steam should make use of those to get the most out of their 30% in fees.

Not necessarily, because that will lock them into Steam. They should be using something like EGS or a 3rd party solution, because currently they end up needing to roll multiple versions of the game.

I'm very well aware of Steamworks, but Steamwork's time has passed except for integrating directly with Steam. The features it offered have been completely and utterly commoditized. You've got stuff like PlayFab, Rivet, Photon, Normcore, etc, all taking a hell of a lot less than 30% of your revenue, even at massive scale.

There's nothing like Steam Input, Steam Networking, the inventory service, etc. Not to mention all of the additional functionality provided in the Steam website/client itself like proper reviews, remote play, trading/marketplace, etc.

Yes, making games depend on Steam-specific APIs will obviously make it more difficult to publish on other stores. But many games only publish to one store anyway.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think the 30% cut Steam takes is justified, but they take it because the competition isn't there yet.

- Steam Input: Steam can already do XInput and DirectInput, so just support those.

- A Steam Networking equivalent is part of EOS: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/game-services/p-2-p

- Epic offers a Steam Inventory equivalent: https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/epic-games-store/services/eco...

> But many games only publish to one store anyway.

Exactly the problem. Why exacerbate it?

> Don't get me wrong, I don't think the 30% cut Steam takes is justified

So then your original comment was just you being contrarian as you said "You get what you pay for." implying Steam is in fact offering what the game creators are paying for :/

Steam Input is an abstraction layer on top of controllers. It helps you support any type of controller in your game. It also provides remapping support from within the Steam UI. Players can browse for and share their controller configurations too.

Steam Networking is not P2P. It's client-server. Steam also has P2P networking but using P2P networking is a big risk these days when it exposes your players' IP addresses to others. Steam Networking has a sub-feature called Steam Datagram Relay which deals with routing issues and hides player IP addresses.

Steam's inventory service takes this to another level. It's not just microtransactions. Items can be traded with others, can be bought/sold on the marketplace for store credit, etc. The marketplace alone is a significant additional source of revenue for some Steam games because the game gets a cut out of each sale.

I simply meant that you get more out of Steam with it's bigger cut.

> Steam Input is an abstraction layer on top of controllers. It helps you support any type of controller in your game. It also provides remapping support from within the Steam UI. Players can browse for and share their controller configurations too.

And it does this by integrating with XInput and DirectInput. So players who have Steam can use it, and players who don't have Steam can't use it anyways so it's not a loss.

> Peer connections will only ever use relay servers. This will add latency to all connections, but will hide IP Addresses from peers.

https://dev.epicgames.com/docs/en-US/api-ref/enums/eos-e-rel...

You can't have modern P2P without relay servers of some kind for NAT reasons anyways

It feels like you don't really know the tech you're talking about tbh. Steam's inventory system is not something that I'd call a net positive. An unregulated black market that's been tied to gambling and theft is not something most game developers are clamoring for (and that's reflected in how many games actually use the inventory system for anything of note)

Why should they voluntarily reduce a price their actual customers seem all too happy to pay?

A dev's game being on Steam and having access to that massive customer base is much more valuable to that dev than Generic Looter Shooter #8589 is to Steam.

That's essentially the issue. Market effects competition failing.

Compared to nothing, yes there is 30% value is CDN hosting and a forum. Compared to a competitor there isn't - it's mainly network effects.

Or put differently, if you changed the name steam and launched them today along with a competitor that charges 15% is there enough more value to use Steam to downlad at that higher fee?

The answer is very likely not; however, that competition can't happen because of past network effects.

You want markets to compete on who has the better product, not on who got their first.

If that was true, the competitors with lower fees would be flourishing while Valve struggles.

Game buyers don't care about the cut. They pay the same price. They're absolutely going to use a more polished more reliable service that actually offers refunds for defective games.

This is falling for the better mousetrap... trap: https://www.monash.edu/business/marketing/marketing-dictiona...

Game buyers are going to use the thing that's sitting on their desktop. Every other aspect of either store is tertiary.

EGS has been shoveling money in a furnace, solely to also be sitting on some desktops, but Steam has a decade+ head start and it's going to be an absolute slog.

Yea, what I totally want is going back to 10 years ago when my gaming PC was loaded down with a gazillion craptacular "launchers". Every publisher seemingly had one. I'll take Steam tyvm.

What I want is healthy competition for marketplaces so that one company can't massively diminish the value they were offering over the course of a decade and still command the same prices.

Their customers aren't willing to pay it, Valve prevents you from selling your game for less elsewhere. So it's Steam and Valve gets the 30% cut, or another store that charges the same but they only take 12%.

So some developers only sell on that other store, and then people boycott them for not being on Steam.

That's called choice and the free market.

Don't like the deal, don't take the deal.

I'm sure everyone would love to pay their suppliers less. Doesn't mean that they should.

He didn't take the deal and created EGS, and we have more and more Unreal Engine games launch exclusively there. Sweeney didn't sue Valve or anything, he just complained about it.

I have understood that price parity is only if you provide keys that Valve gives some number for free. If you do not provide them you can set price that isn't same as on Steam.

The pricing restriction is only for selling steam keys on external services. So if your game is priced at $15 on steam, you can’t sell steam keys on the Humble Bundle store for $12. You can match sales within 30 days, they don’t need to be concurrent - so if your game is on sale on Steam for $10, you can offer the same discount on the Humble Store any time within 30 days before/after the sale.

If you sell your game on other platforms and don’t use steam keys (e.g. distribute it DRM-free on GOG), you aren’t bound to the pricing clause. It only applies if you’re generating the keys on steam to sell elsewhere. You’re welcome to give your game away on GOG and still charge $50 on Steam, as long as you’re not giving away steam keys for your game on GOG.

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