Thousands of developers think that Steam does not deserve to take so much commission per sale

Thirty percent per sale on Steam is too much for more than two thousand developers. The appearance of the Epic Games Store could lead to an improvement in the conditions and services of the Valve store.

With the appearance of the Epic Games Store, it is beginning to think that Valve may have a strong competitor in the field of digital PC game stores. The launcher necessary to play Fortnite is offering games to its users. For developers, it means a less crowded game store and a better percentage of game sales.

While Valve charges 30% of each final sale, the Epic Games Store only takes 12%. Add to that that he does not charge royalties for the use of the Unreal Engine if a game that uses the engine is sold in his store. Even with the recent bonuses if a game generates a lot of revenue, the best option for many developers is the Epic store.

Steam add-on services don't make up for your high commissions

Steam has a few services for users and developers built into the platform that the Epic Games Store does not have. Support for mods is much more widespread on Steam, while sales of stickers and dedicated forums allow for a larger community of users. But that does not justify for many developers that they take almost a third of the sales as commission.

The organizers of the Games Developers Conference conducted a survey of their nearly four thousand registered developers about Steam fees. The final result says that more than half do not believe that Valve deserves that much money. 32% firmly say “No” to the question, and 27% say “probably not.” They also say that 47% sell their games through Steam and 73% earned more than 51% of their revenue thanks to Valve.

From these numbers we can conclude that until now, Steam has been crucial for many developers and has many years and users advantage. It remains to be seen if, thanks to Epic Games and other digital stores, a real competition is generated that forces Valve to improve its store in several aspects.

Source: Polygon