Why is Valve being sued for almost $900 million, but Epic Games wasn't sued when they bought Rocket League and Fall Guys to remove them from steam?
-
Seems like buying games to remove them from your competitor is a scummier thing to do.
Im just a caveman, but wouldnt keeping the same price as steam mean the developers get more money from Epic Games Store at the same price point because of the lower fees?
-
Ya, I misread it and I'm way off. It's 4bn. Epic also made a lot less, my stats are not for gross revenue but generated revenue before they split it with the devs. Amateur hour over here (me, not you).
I went off in my other comment and was a bit of a dick throughout the convo. It just feels like someone is being robbed here. 4bn is a lot of money and, from the wolffire lawsuit leak, they have less than 100 people working on steam full time.
From what I read, that $4BN number could be taken two ways. I don't know if that analyst excluded the games Valve developed, and that $4BN is games sales of everything else, or if that's what they made from their own titles. I didn't want to go through the rigamarole of Xitter to see the direct quote and I haven't had a chance to find it in the internet archive.
I also kind of want a good run down of what steam offers to developers that makes their platform so attractive because my understanding is it's more than just e-shop services and that's one of the reasons I have seen touted as why people feel the service fee is reasonable.
I didn't want to leave you on read, but I also am still looking up all kinds of random information to put together.
Also, my confusion is because there are two different lawsuits involving the 30% cut of game sales.
There's a class action lawsuit in the UK involving all of steams consumers there, predicated on the idea that the 30% service fee makes games more expensive to the detriment if those consumers.
And there's a different class action lawsuit brought by developers Wolfire and Dark Catt representing every developer who uses Steam as an E-Shop platform, also over the 30% service fee and alleged anti-competitve practices (Wolfire say that Steam told them they couldn't sell their game anywhere else for less than it was available on Steam (even if they didn't use steams license keys)).
I know I can come off as really terse, and tone is hard via text anyway. But thank you for addressing it.
Sorry about yet another wall of text.
-
You're not being annoying. It's probably because I lost track and for what it's worth I am sorry, I'll try to fix it but probably won't catch all of them.
No worries, I still knew where you meant to end them, it just took me a second pass.
-
Seems like buying games to remove them from your competitor is a scummier thing to do.
I am still playing Fall Guys via Steam
-
Depends if you're a big developer or some indie one. Big developers commonly don't pay fees or have special deals (Uber, etc.). Smaller ones pay 15% up to 1 million downloads, then it's 30%. So if you want to pay less, get really rich first.
That being said, this is on top of the VAT, not part of it. Still charging 30% in 2026 feels criminal and greedy. This applies to nearly all big corporations, including Valve Corporation with Gabe's fleet of yachts and company making more money per employee than any other company. It made more sense to take 30% cut when 100Gb of HDD costed thousand dollars, internet was metered in megabytes and the whole infrastructure was just not there yet, but this "industry standart" tax never changed even tho for them distributing apps has become far, far cheaper than it used to.
-
Seems like buying games to remove them from your competitor is a scummier thing to do.
because of the anti-competitive price restrictions that Valve often imposes on game developers and producers (the Price Parity Obligations). This means a publisher or developer would not be able to list a game on another platform as well as Steam, unless the prices offered on Steam is the same or lower. This applies to games on all other distribution stores (including online and physical stores) not just those distributed by Steam Keys
Textbook anti-trust lawsuit. Different from what Epic does, I doubt they impose such rules on developers.
-
Seems like buying games to remove them from your competitor is a scummier thing to do.
It is a scummy thing to do but the leaders of the gaming industry, Gabe aside, have always been psychopaths.
-
I haven't really looked deeply into this issue but what caught my eye was the claim that a 30% fee was excessive. I'm no insider into video game publishing but 30% is the standard retail markup for many things. If you bought a candy bar today, it probably cost the mini mart you bought it from 70% of what they're charging.
For brick and mortar, which has significantly more costs to make up than digital. Which is the entire point of this suit. And steam's policy requires that no game can be regularly priced cheaper than on their platform - artificially raising prices across the board.
It's bizarre seeing everyone here defend steam here just because they don't like who's saying it.
-
For brick and mortar, which has significantly more costs to make up than digital. Which is the entire point of this suit. And steam's policy requires that no game can be regularly priced cheaper than on their platform - artificially raising prices across the board.
It's bizarre seeing everyone here defend steam here just because they don't like who's saying it.
Steam provides more than just a one time exchange of download for money, so I wouldn't exactly compare it to a store where you walk out the door and your exchange is completed. As a leftists, I think Steam makes too much money and should charge less and pay more but in a capitalist nation i don't see Epic having a successful case
-
30% is the standard retail markup for many things
It most certainly is not standard in retail. Most retail stores have a margin of a couple percentage points. Walmart, for example, is ~3% net margin most years
Unless you're trying to compare wholesale price to final consumer price. In which case I would say that's a silly and pointless thing to compare, but even then it's far smaller than 30% across retail and varies wildly based on the individual item being sold
A 30% cut is only really common in the tech sector where the underlying economics make it feasible
I just did a cursory search online and the only markup I could fine below 30% was cellphones at about 8-10% and groceries at 5-25%. Now, I wouldn't make a wager on the precise accuracy of a cursory glance but it's telling that even in a Capitalist society, no ones denying their huge markups. Most sources list the markup on cloths to be 50-400%
