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.
I've never seen any platform go that low on price except for Humble Bundle maybe. And even then, Steam has an EXTREMELY generous refund policy compared to any other platform.
IME they're matched by other platforms. If Cyberpunk is discounted for a steam summer sale, it's similarly discounted on Epic or GOG as well. It's not a Steam exclusive, and therefore can't be cited as an advantage.
A 15–20% fee would be much fairer in my opinion. They’d still be making plenty of money while letting developers keep more of what they earn through their hard work. At the very least, they should differentiate between big players and smaller indie developers.
Taking a larger cut from big players would incentivise them to make them create their own marketplace, where they exclusively publish their own games. Then we're back to square one.
Honestly, I think 15-20% is doable, if they make money in other ways. CS skins, new game releases from inhouse, etc.
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?
Agreed. The Steam platform has so much value for developers and yet they still complain about the 30%.
To put into perspective, when Epic only takes 15%. They themselves admitted that is not a sustainable thing. EGS is constantly losing money.
So now I invite everyone to gauge just how "big" the EGS is. How many "features" they offer etc. This platform in so much smaller than Steam and even they state that a 15% cut is not sustainable to keep the light on.
Judging just how big the Steam platform is, do people honestly think Valve could be forced into reducing their cut to this proposed 15%? When this little hobbyshop that is EGS cannot make it work. Why would it work for a much much larger and therefore more expensive platform?
I am furthermore given to understand when you distribute on Steam you are free to run your own store front. You are free to create your own Steam keys for your games and sell them in your shop which is supposedly have a 0% cut for Valve.
Of course then you would have to run your own store with all the effort and cost that go along with it.
Or you simply put it on Steam. A storefront visited by millions of paying customers. Which handles everything. From purchase/refund/CDN for Downloading and updating the game binaries/communityhub to directly engage with the customers if you wish
In the end, the only way they are forced to use steam is because that is where the customers are. and since there are alternatives around, these customers could very well shop some place else. but they dont. they shop where they get the best experience. and if that is on steam, thats where they go.
If "developers" were really honest they would all disclose just how much they sold on Steam vs any other digital store front in case they distribute their offerings to any store that will let them.
Just because you get 4 sales on Epic vs 4 million sales on Steam does mean Steam is a monopoly. It just means Epic is a steaming pile and given the chance the customer goes to the better option.
30% on mobile platforms if generally frowned upon as source of massive overcharging compared to actual costs (since its a massive revenue & income stream for their owners), but somehow for Steam its fine because... they also generate keys? Or what should be the magical justfication.
No its not fine, its a cash cow milking customers. Valve may be better than their competition but they are not saints (same company basically inventing addictive lootboxes mechanism, albeit not in its worst possible form), its a for-profit company that has tons of profit. I am not saying 15% is OK or X% is OK, but 30% is too much in 2025.
Maybe they should have tiers ie 0-10% for first 5k sales, 20% above 100k etc. There are many options to be nicer to customers & developers.
The difference is that a game with its own market power is free to distribute directly on their website and keep that 30% for themselves, whereas an IOS app is not.
If Microsoft charged every program you download 30% of gross Windows proceeds, that would be inappropriate. If Apple allowed a free tier where you get 0 marketing power but you can link from your website to the ios store for a downloadable app, and charge what you want, it would be another matter.
It isn't overcharging on Mobile either IMO but the difference is pretty obvious: there is only one way to get your app onto an iPhone or an Android and that's through those stores.
PCs are an open platform. It is very different.
>its a for-profit company that has tons of profit. I am not saying 15% is OK or X% is OK, but 30% is too much in 2025.
And you base this on what? Nothing. It is a privately held company and you don't have access to its books.
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.
Maybe Steam and Apple deserved to obtain a partial monopoly but now they can just sit and relax and take 30% to copy/paste games/apps to each user that wants them.
So yes, 30% is high and unjust to the games creators who are doing the 2025 work.
I would love for steam to offer even the complement:
Only distribution & SSO services, so I can have fast downloads and quick non-replayable-auth for games I buy/subscribe elsewhere (not subject to steam peculiarities about squeezing out maximum price for each region by purchasing power).
Of course, that would need to have a wildly different fee schedule than when they carry major legal & reputational risks plus more significant customer support volume.
No other service actually saturates my download speed. That's probably an expensive luxury that could be cut. Even netflix with their CDNs in every city tries to minimize bandwith and it results in terrible video quality-if it can even deliver it at all.
You are free to install an alternative store, that probably has all the games that you are buying from Steam.
I can't do that with my iPhone.
They charge it because people use it voluntarily for the better customer and user experience. If Apple didn't provide their store installed by default, allowed alternative stores without manipulating their content and yet people still used it, it would be a closer analogy.
Edit: that said, the 30% fee is pretty greedy (Apple-level greedy) and they could be doing better at least in that regard.