- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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It won’t change the fact that no one wants to use your product, Tim.
It’s not about the epic store being a success. It’s about getting fortnite on steam with little to no fees being paid to steam. Just like the lawsuit against apple.
Wait…
People still play Fortnite?
Right this minute, if Fortnite players were all on Steam it’d be the #2 most popular game there, with a 24hr peak easily hitting #1. I’m not a fan of Tim either, but the game is still massively popular.
Like gangbusters.
But it isn’t the same scenario. Apple is a closed system, im steams case there are many alternatives. You don’t have to put your game on steam. Alan Wake 1 is on steam and Alan Wake 2 isn’t for example. You can also buy keys separately and then activate on steam, you are not forced to use steam like apple.
It’s still the steam ecosystem when you sell steam keys. Why should a game be able to use steam to distribute their game that they sell for a free or reduced price then sell micro transactions without paying steam? If you don’t want to pay steam a cut don’t use their store or distribution.
As far as I know you can sell keys outside of steam, it is allowed and steam doesn’t take the 30% if sold outside of steam.
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys
It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.
You can sell keys, but it’s still part of the steam ecosystem, so you can’t sell in game purchases without using steam as the processor.
Yea, but the argument is you have to pay the 30% fee. You can sell keys outside and not pay it. Also you can also sell your game on GOG, but the customer will have to stick with were he bought the game from for the DLC.
https://www.gog.com/en/game/clair_obscur_expedition_33
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1903340/Clair_Obscur_Expedition_33/
In apple’s case you can’t even buy it outside of apple you have to use apple payment system. Steam doesn’t block you from buying the game from other store like GOG, meanwhile apple does.
https://prospect.org/2025/05/02/2025-05-02-apples-monopoly-finally-held-accountable/
The case before the court concerned Apple’s monopoly power over its iOS App Store. Apple has built a tollbooth whereby apps that offer items for purchase must pay a 30 percent tax to Apple. (A few select apps have a smaller 15 percent tax.) Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite, wanted to offer game purchases off the app through a link at a cheaper price point, but Apple barred Fortnite from the App Store for such circumvention, and denied any developer the ability to steer people to off-app purchasing. This discouraged app developers, since they would not be able to load on iPhones and would therefore lose access to a huge number of potential customers. (Google has a similar 30 percent tax for its Android phones.)
If you don’t like it, you don’t have to use it. You got your own store, Timmy.
It isn’t fair that their store is vastly superior to mine and don’t pay developers to use it exclusively like we do! - little timmy wah wah boo hoo
Well Timmy that should make it pretty easy to make a platform that both users and content producers like more. If you actually try to compete you might accomplish something.
This is about micro-transactions specifically. Tim Fortnite is arguing that games sold on Steam should be able to offer in-game purchases with payment options outside of Steam.
It’s very similar to Epic Games v. Apple, where Apple had required in-app purchases for iOS apps, notably Fortnite, to be handled through their app-store so they get a cut.
One big difference that I see here: On PC, a developer isn’t required to use Steam to distribute software. Players often prefer Steam because Valve has made Steam a great option and has lots of good-will with players. Still, Steam does dominate a massive portion of the PC market.
And a 30% cut is high. Especially for smaller games with less financial resources. As a developer, that’s a trade-off you’d have to choose. I think it’d be best to offer the game on multiple platforms.
For Steam-bought games, I think having an option to pay off-platform would be fair, but I think the option needs to remain available through Steam too. For many games, I don’t want to give my payment details to yet another developer, company or third-party.
Still, Steam does dominate a massive portion of the PC market.
Steam revenue in 2023: USD 8.5 bn.
Overall PC gaming revenue that year: 45 bn.
Steam is big but the biggest cash cows are Fortnite, Roblox, and Minecraft. Neither is on Steam.
Also, Microsoft uses their Windows monopoly to ship the Xbox Games store to almost every PC user.
If Steam had a dominating market position, the EU would have classified it as a gate keeper under the Digital Markets Act.
Microsoft also owns Battlenet now
By what definition is the 30% cut high? It’s the same percentage for Apple, Google, and Steam. Brick and mortar is generally around 50%. Amazon is a large range, but 30% is roughly average or even low. eBay charges less, but doesn’t do anything other than facilitate the transaction. Epic charges less to small developers, but that’s also mostly marketing.
It’s not about the “cut” you’re thinking; it refer to in-app purchases.
Once you bought a game, Valve keep demand a 30% cuts on anything you sell once the customer launch your executable (.exe, binary file/game engine).
hypothetical scenario to help visualize (it won’t go like that most of the time, but useful to understand the concept):
- customer Install and Launch Steam
- customer buy (Valve earn 30% cutshare) and install game on Steam
- customer uninstall Steam, keep installed game
- customer launch game (if is made in a way don’t need Steam dependencies).
- Anything sold while game engine is running must give 30%,of further earning, to Valve.
If a developer doesn’t like those terms, can’t they just remove their game from Steam or never release it there to begin with?
If a user doesn’t like those terms, they don’t have to buy the game.
Developers and users are voting with their wallets every day and the votes say Steam is worth the cost.
And a 30% cut is high.
Is it? It’s my understanding that it’s comparable to what brick and mortar stores would charge to have a game on their shelves.
Also, anyone who thinks EGS will keep developer fees low if they had a higher marketshare is incredibly naive.
Hmm, so is Tim Fortnite willing to let me purchase DLC from a third party store to go with that free game that I got on Epic?
That’s a funny way of asking people to uninstall Epic’s game launcher & boycott their games.
You don’t need to even have the launcher installed to claim the free EGS games. I usually claim them to support the developers.
Yeah being against Valve is just evil. I love giving money to Gaben. It gives me the sense of pride and accomplishment. I would never hurt him.
one day he will take me with him onto a yacht voyage
Tim, something, something about preventing games from being released on other storefronts…
TIL that Tim Fortnite does not consider Sony or Nintendo to be ‘major stores’.
TIL that the video game industry has never had nor currently has titles that are priced exclusively on certain platforms.
(Where ‘its only available for purchase on one platform’ is an effective price of infinity on other platforms)
Just… from the article:
“Steam’s rules do explicitly prohibit games from steering players to competing purchase methods, forcing everyone to pay 30% to Valve,” he [Sweeney] recently tweeted. “Apple and Google did the same until the court explicitly found this practice to be unlawful. Now they don’t!”
It’s not clear exactly what rule Sweeney’s referring to here, but Steam’s own guidelines state that “it’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.” Though Valve would also prefer that developers “don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam key purchasers.”
It’s almost like this guy is malding, crashing out even, and has just… departed from the realm of even trying to make sense.
What is happening here is that Tim is losing his mind because Unreal Engine 5 only runs on GPUs (mostly from Nvidia) that cost as much as an entire PC did 2 or 3 years ago, and so many AAA studios that used UE 5 to make a pretty but hollow and buggy game are now collapsing or seeing a dramatic consumer pullback.
See how this is all connected, and these idiots did this to themselves?
Nvidia decides that Real Time Ray Tracing is the new paradigm for gaming graphics, and Unreal is the primary way people will experience this, by having all the lighting be done ‘auto-magically’ by UE 5, from the perspective of game devs.
Fastforward 5 or so years, half of everything computer hardware is too expensive now, hugely funded AAA games are routinely failing and causing financial disasters for publishers, Unreal Engine 5 is a hugely stigmatized joke because its not any kind of optimized for hardware people actually have, and outside of AAA games, is notorious for low quality UE asset store flips and actual scam games…
…this paradigm doesn’t work.
Compare that to Valve pretty close to singlehandedly developing its own VR hardware, and showcase AAA tier game for it… and well hey shucks, yeah, its too expensive for wide adoption, but that didn’t ruin their entire business’s financials.
They just actually properly accounted for the costs of trying that paradigm shift, and are today still iterating on and improving it, ala the upcoming SteamFrame and new software layer for translating ARM to x86 calls.
Right, because managing, securing, updating, and operating steam is all black magic that costs valve nothing.
Listen, they need that revenue for their R&D for the steam deck 2 and steam machines and shit. Fuck off ya hoser, eh?
Listen, they need that revenue for their R&D for the steam deck 2 and steam machines and shit. Fuck off ya hoser, eh?
And also for Gabe’s fleet of billionaire yachts
I’m no Epic Games fan, but this is an overcorrection. Valve makes money hand over fist and they aren’t making those products simply out of passion. They’re doing it to make even more money. The company are pioneers in micro transactions and loot boxes. The other large game companies (and especially alternative storefronts) have just been so shit that gamers feel a weird attachment to this company.
How about you fuck off defending the mafioso vig that Apple, Google, and Valve have extorted from game developers for years, you monopoly bootlicker?
Nobody is forced to use any of those platforms.
You’re the one licking the boot of developers who just want to profit off of your stupidity.
Aw, those poor hardworking app stores with their razor-thin ::checks notes:: 78% profit margins
You’re a useful idiot.
Says the wanker defending billionaires’ profit margins
I’m not defending anyone.
I’m calling stupidity out for what it is.
FYI: Games like Ready or not have started the early access outside of Steam.
So if you advertise your game properly, you can make it as well. Just need to work on your discoverability.
But Steam makes it way easier.
So either go with Steam, Epic, GOG, Itch.io or any other store.
No need to fixate on only steam
Timmy, if even charging a lower fee, devs prefer steam over your shithole, I’m gonna go ahead and say that maybe there is a reason: your store sucks. Big time.
Steam is different from the Google or Apple stores, because they aren’t the gatekeeper of a platform.
But yeah maybe 30% is a bit high for games that don’t use any of the steam features, just the payment processing, review section and download servers.
Devs are also paying for the Steam recommendation algorithm. It’s not just a store that puts games on a shelf and just forgets about it. The store actively promotes games to the right audience. The algorithm is how small indie games from a team without an advertising budget can blow up into millions of dollars in revenue. No other digital games store has a recommendation algorithm that is as good (for the buyer and the seller) as Steam.
Yeah people consistently forget this, and will say things like ‘Valve isn’t even doing any marketing for me!’
No, they are.
Its just that its on their platform.
Via their categorization and recommendation snd review systems.
As opposed to… other pay to win ad platforms that shove ads in peoples faces depending on how much money you throw at them.
Also, while this is more of a minor point, Valve’s cut drops to 25% for games sales past $10 million, 20% for game sales past $50 million.
Been that way for 7 or 8 years.
There are other platforms devs can release games. GOG, microsoft, epic store, or you can release physical CD copies to sell at retailers. Steam isn’t gate keeping anything.
The price cut is the only thing Tim cares about.
that seems like an issue that the makers of games can decide. they are not under any gun to choose steam. if the devs don’t see value in steam then they can go elsewhere. for me as a buyer it’s steam, or it’s the developers own website. i will not buy from another store front
The only Epic Games Store games I have, I play through Heroic Launcher. In part due to lack of Linux support, but primarily because the Epic Games launcher fucking sucks.
I miss old Epic games from 20 years ago. This greedy prick is an aggressive blight on PC gaming. Maybe he’ll die soon.
Hilarious. Didn’t Epic just introduce microtransactions for user-created content in Fortnite with intention of taking 63% fee on that? All the while, trying to turn the said Fortnite in Roblox-like major store for games?
Losers are gonna rage.
Valve please cut epic loose.
