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.
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.
thats what apple forces and imposes on any developer that uses the app store, which is most of them since on ios alt stores are only a thing on eu and japan afaik
Retail needs a location to store and sell their product. They need employees as well. One small Walmart has as many employees as steam does. Retails also buys the product in bulk, there is a bigger risk involved if it doesn’t sell or even sells slowly.
and steam needs data centers and servers and power and all the stuff to keep those running. ultimately though it didn’t matter. if steam thinks that their ecosystem is worth charging that much, then it’s up to the dev to decide if what steam provides is worth it to them
We don’t know how much it costs for their servers but I doubt it’s anywhere near what they charge devs. Gaben having an 11bn dollar net worth kind of points to that.
The biggest problem is that it isn’t up to devs since steam has market dominance. Not putting your game on steam is basically suicide, they have close to 90% of the PC market…
market dominance is not a monopoly. market dominance is a label given to the most successful product. and the product is successful because they offer a service that none else seems to be able to or wish to fulfill.
devs can choose to sell their game on steam, or windows live, or gog, epic game store, playstation, nintendo online, android app store, ios app store, on their own site, eb games, or the back of their car, what ever.
are all of these equally effective? nope. when you put your game on steam you get, the vast user base cultivated by valve, server space to host your game, massive server upload speeds, a built in store front, the discussion boards, steam game cloud, the stream overlays and stream input, steam workshop, community hubs, steam achievements, global money processing, themed sales, two special discovery windows. blah blah blah.
again, it’s up to the dev to decide if they want to pay 30% for these things.
to put it in perspective, when epic game store has a sale, steam makes a profit.
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.
That’s what Apple charges devs in their “ecosystem” correct?
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.
thats what apple forces and imposes on any developer that uses the app store, which is most of them since on ios alt stores are only a thing on eu and japan afaik
Just letting you know that you commented the same thing twice.
Retail needs a location to store and sell their product. They need employees as well. One small Walmart has as many employees as steam does. Retails also buys the product in bulk, there is a bigger risk involved if it doesn’t sell or even sells slowly.
Huge difference imo.
and steam needs data centers and servers and power and all the stuff to keep those running. ultimately though it didn’t matter. if steam thinks that their ecosystem is worth charging that much, then it’s up to the dev to decide if what steam provides is worth it to them
We don’t know how much it costs for their servers but I doubt it’s anywhere near what they charge devs. Gaben having an 11bn dollar net worth kind of points to that.
The biggest problem is that it isn’t up to devs since steam has market dominance. Not putting your game on steam is basically suicide, they have close to 90% of the PC market…
market dominance is not a monopoly. market dominance is a label given to the most successful product. and the product is successful because they offer a service that none else seems to be able to or wish to fulfill.
devs can choose to sell their game on steam, or windows live, or gog, epic game store, playstation, nintendo online, android app store, ios app store, on their own site, eb games, or the back of their car, what ever.
are all of these equally effective? nope. when you put your game on steam you get, the vast user base cultivated by valve, server space to host your game, massive server upload speeds, a built in store front, the discussion boards, steam game cloud, the stream overlays and stream input, steam workshop, community hubs, steam achievements, global money processing, themed sales, two special discovery windows. blah blah blah.
again, it’s up to the dev to decide if they want to pay 30% for these things.
to put it in perspective, when epic game store has a sale, steam makes a profit.