this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025

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Debunking the grey market beyond Steam (www.gamesindustry.biz)

submitted 10 hours ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/games@sh.itjust.works

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Despite facing increased competition in the space, not least from the Epic Games Store, Valve's platform is synonymous with PC gaming. The service is estimated to have made $10.8 billion in revenue during 2024, a new record for the Half-Life giant. Since it entered the PC distribution space back in 2018, the rival Epic Games Store has been making headway – and $1.09 billion last year – but Steam is still undeniably dominant within the space.

Valve earns a large part of its money from taking a 20-30% cut of sales revenue from developers and publishers. Despite other storefronts opening with lower overheads, Steam has stuck with taking this slice of sales revenue, and in doing so, it has been argued that Valve is unfairly taking a decent chunk of the profits of developers and publishers.

This might change, depending on how an ongoing class-action lawsuit initiated by Wolfire Games goes, but for the time being, Valve is making money hand over fist selling games on Steam. The platform boasts over 132 million users, so it's perfectly reasonable that developers and publishers feel they have to use Steam – and give away a slice of their revenue – in order to reach the largest audience possible.

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[–] Toga65@lemmy.world 20 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

The wolfire games lawsuit is so damn cringe.

No company is your friend, but there's a reason Steam is number 1. The reinvestment in the platform and breadth of features steam has is unrivaled.

Epic has been trying for nearly a decade now and their store doesn't even have 1/4 the features of steam.

I love GoG though. For me they offer something steam can't, installers for my games.

[–] dan1101@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

My view is if you don't like a distribution platform taking 20-30% of the sale then don't use that distribution platform. It's a free market and a free internet. Use Epic, GOG, or host it yourself

If I don't like what Comcast charges I don't do a class action lawsuit.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 3 points 5 hours ago

If you lose access to a vast majority of the market if you don‘t use a service, it’s a monopoly. Don’t defend monopolists.

[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago

if you don't like a distribution platform taking 20-30% of the sale then don't use that distribution platform

Excuse my frank speech but that's absolute bollocks and lacks any understanding at all of how a monopoly works.

[+] misk@sopuli.xyz -8 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

The reason Steam is #1 is because they were first to the market and everyone’s so invested into it.

That’s why today’s business model is „dump VC money until you’re ubiquitous, once monopolised drive the prices up”. We see that with things like Just Eat / Glovo, Steam or YouTube.

[–] Sheepy@sh.itjust.works 13 points 7 hours ago (2 children)

Nah mate, Steam is just the best game platform on PC. A game has access to so many features like cloud saves, community, workshop, matchmaking when it comes out on Steam, while the users have access to user reviews, curators, guides, sales, bundles etc etc. Epic doesn't have most of those features. And yes, a game dev can go out of their way to create those features for their game, on Steam they don't have to. Epic had all the time in the world to implement even half of them, but they still haven't. GOG is an alternative because it offers something Steam won't, and it's been going great for them. Epic is just a bootleg version of Steam. Their only claim to fame is their free game giveaways, but even then you're stuck playing the game without the features Steam users have.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 0 points 5 hours ago

I dunno about those lame features, I use Steam because AAA mostly gets exclusively released there on PC. It kinda sucks.

[+] misk@sopuli.xyz -7 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 7 hours ago) (2 children)

It’s easy to do that when you employ couple of hundred people while taking 30% cut of 90% of PC game sales.

Steam should be broken up as a monopoly that it is. Decouple infrastructure from the store, allow others to pay fair price for access to it and game prices would go down in an instant. That’s how telecom monopolies were broken up where I live with wonderful results. Console makers should allow alternative stores too now that they don’t subsidise hardware.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Sorry, they didn't gobble up existing infrastructure. Comparing them to telcos is just a bad argument.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz -1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

Why? They lucked their way to owning the infrastructure and got paid handsomely for that already. What are the negative aspects of breaking up Steam that way? I can’t think of any. I provided plenty of benefits both to consumers and developers.

[–] Sheepy@sh.itjust.works 6 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

Oh come on, comparing Steam to telecoms is a bit of a leap. Nobody needs access to video games on a day-to-day basis. Video games are a luxury item at the end of the day.

Their breaking up also assumes that hosting video games for downloads is a thing only Steam can do. Steam hosting the game files and Steam as a service for the customer have little to no relation to each other. Steam, or anyone else for that matter, could just as easily use AWS. Breaking up Steam into many, smaller Steams might lead to lower prices, or devs will choose one, that one will become the dominant one, and we're back to square one.

The best way to drive prices down is competition. It's economics 101. Do not blame Steam for being successful, blame their competition (Epic in this case) for being inept. Epic was the VC baby everybody was banking on going toe-to-toe with Steam, but they couldn't even get basic shit like a cart or a wishlist working for far too long.

Steam's 30% cut is a different problem altogether. Yeah, it's probably excessive, and would ideally be tiered by sales. However, all the games (that I have seen) that released on Epic first, with their paid exclusivity, eventually came out on Steam. So what does that tell us about how impactful that 30% cut is. Steam's pre-existing userbase is a factor. Userbase they have, and maintain, due to their wide array of features. And, all those features Steam provides aren't free to maintain. They host the game on their own servers, they host all the user generated content on their servers, Steamworks matchmaking is ran by Steam. Game devs aren't just getting their game sold through Steam, Steam does much much more than that.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz -5 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago) (1 children)

And this is how people will explain why upcoming technofeudalism is a good thing. Our new masters have earned it :)

Lots of new EU regulations specifically target scenarios like this because that’s in the interest of consumers. Governments should work for the people, not winners with the most money.

[edit] You’d think you’d get more people against big tech on Lemmy lol.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe it's just a bad take. Just a hurdurr big tech bad sticker on an argument doesn't win it for you if your argument is crap.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

A monopoly isn‘t good if the product is good. It‘s still bad.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Now we're just making things up to justify a bad take?

[–] duchess@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

What‘s made up?

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Calling it a monopoly. They didn't lobby to have the market share. They have competitors who can't make a product as good. Just calling it a monopoly because you think it's an easy win in an argument doesn't just make it a monopoly.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz -1 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

This is not how a monopoly is defined in any civilised country.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 3 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

You are straight up just using your opinion to justify a point and i won't have any further part of the conversation.

[–] misk@sopuli.xyz 1 points 3 hours ago

What he’s saying is so blatantly wrong and easily verifiable that now you’re the contrarian.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 2 points 4 hours ago

If a dev loses substantial access to the market if they don‘t use a service, this service is a quasi monopoly. They are forced to use Steam, customers are then forced to use Steam if they want the game. Steam charges astronomical fees, that is their monopoly exploit.

[–] Toga65@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

Steam has so many more features than any other platform.

First to market or not, that's why steam is number one.

None of its competitors offer the community, market, discussion boards, rating system, friend system functionality and overall reliability that steam does.

It has competition, just not on PC.

Epic is atrociously bad. From hampering system performance to a total lack of any of the above features, using epic sucks.

The Xbox app is somehow seemongly always broken despite literally being developed by the platform holders and with a shit load of cash behind it.

I don't love the idea of a steam monopoly but you gotta also give them their flowers, it's a fantastic storefront, arguably the best when considering all gaming platforms that exist even outside of PC.