How do you feel about the 70/30 split?

[the-pi-guy]

The Epic Game Store has been pushing on the 30% cut, so it's been coming up quite a bit.  

I think the picture is more complicated than some are saying.  
Valve clearly makes good money, but they help out the ecosystem way more than they are sometimes given credit for.  

What percentage do you think they should be getting?

[Legend]

The valve 30% cut makes little sense coming from a console perspective. Beyond it being their store so they deserve something and server costs, they don't really do anything special from a dev's point of view. I can't mention specifically how much Sony takes but it feels like a lot more bang for your buck. Plus there is just the human element. I've talked with countless people from Sony during development and release while Steam is just buttons and forms 99% of the time. It's not realistic for Steam to put as much effort into individual devs since they have a lot more and the average game makes a lot less, but the Epic split feels like a better solution from that perspective.

[Legend]

Paradox Interactive: "The 70/30 revenue split is outrageous" | GamesIndustry.biz

[Xevross]

Seems like robbery to me considering Valve do next to nothing and pretty much anyone can put a game on steam, without any curation.

[the-pi-guy]

Seems like robbery to me considering Valve do next to nothing and pretty much anyone can put a game on steam, without any curation.

It's fair to say that they don't do enough to help developers out, but it's not like they do nothing.  
They develop a lot of API's for VR, leaderboards, etc.
They also do stuff indirectly helping devs.  They pushed Proton so games can be played on Linux.

They definitely make big money though. Their VR work proves that.

[nnodley]

yeah it's a pretty outrageous split to me.  Now with epic games store i'm going to definitely be pushing my game(if/when it gets finished) to be published on there.  I'll likely do both, but i'll market more for epic games store than steam, unless if i get more sales on steam i might still make more profit there than on epic store just simply because steam is massive.

Developers are doing all the work so they should get as large of a split as possible.   Not to mention its now just a $100 fee to put your game on steam so anyone can do it which takes all of valves work out of it.

Also 70/30 is a horrible for small indie developers who won't get as many sales as a bigger, more well known studio.

[kitler53]

The valve 30% cut makes little sense coming from a console perspective. Beyond it being their store so they deserve something and server costs, they don't really do anything special from a dev's point of view. I can't mention specifically how much Sony takes but it feels like a lot more bang for your buck. Plus there is just the human element. I've talked with countless people from Sony during development and release while Steam is just buttons and forms 99% of the time. It's not realistic for Steam to put as much effort into individual devs since they have a lot more and the average game makes a lot less, but the Epic split feels like a better solution from that perspective.

as a "not a developer" my opinion is pretty much meaningless but...

...apple also takes a 30% cut and I feel like they do even less than steam.  so to that end i guess they are "competitive".   but in truth i think the apple 30% is also ridiculous.  

[Legend]

as a "not a developer" my opinion is pretty much meaningless but...

...apple also takes a 30% cut and I feel like they do even less than steam.  so to that end i guess they are "competitive".   but in truth i think the apple 30% is also ridiculous.  

Apple and the google play store with 30% cuts feel like jokes compared to this but I don't follow that market. I wonder if there is growing pressure to improve the split over there too.