Your friends can just request Steam keys and sell them outside of the Steam Store. Then there’s no 30% cut. That cut only applies to games and software sold on the Steam store.
Valve does offer the best features on their storefront by far, thus the 30% cut. And honestly comparable storefronts (Sony also 30%, Microsoft also 30% up until August 2021, and Nintendo also 30%) all take comparable cuts. This isn’t anything new or unique to Valve.
As an indie dev myself: Indie devs forget during the brick and mortar days up to 80% or more of revenue is consumed by middlemen before reaching the consumer. Steam absolutely makes indie dev sales easier.
Only restriction I know for this scheme is you can’t sell the keys outside steam for less than you sell on Steam. Otherwise you can just undercut them while still using their services
But easy to get around by discounting it for less than the listed price. Isthereanydeals and gg.deals is a great source for historical price trends across multiple storefronts from official to approved key selling stores.
The real crime is that Valve requires price parity when you independently (no Steam keys) sell your game on a different store, as well as the Steam store. (“Most Favored Nation” clause.) It means that developers are allowed to pocket the profits if a game is sold on a store that has a lower percentage cut, but they aren’t allowed to share the lower cost with the customer, because that could encourage people to not use the Steam Store when buying games.
I’ve looked through court documents for this. They’re sneaky about it, but they implicitly threaten you with your game’s sales being crippled by being taken out of their recommendation algorithm. With Steam being the biggest store, that’s a death sentence for most indie developers.
The real crime is that Valve requires price parity when you independently (no Steam keys) sell your game on a different store, as well as the Steam store.
They don’t. Only if you are selling steam keys do they require price parity and only for steam key sales. You cannot sell a Steam key for less than you sell your game on Steam for. You can sell a non-Steam game key on other store fronts for any price you want.
This is what is being alleged in court by only a handful of developers but there are countless examples of the exact opposite thing being true.
They must’ve changed their tone recently, because I’ve read an actual leaked court document, and the Valve representative / employee states (very defensively) that this is what they did. There’s accounts of developers confirming this as well, including apparently in the (secret?) contract you sign when you sign up as a developer with Steam.
So, I take issue with the bit where you said “requires” because it implies that they will refuse to sell your game if you don’t list it for the same price on other store fronts. I have seen it phrased this way before, mostly in complaints from the dev Wolfire who made it sound like Valve threatened to completely kick the game off the Steam platform for selling digital copies of the game un-related to Steam at a cheaper price.
What you’re alleging is different but you were unclear about that because you used the phrasing “price parity” and “most favored nation”.
From Wolfire’s own mouth:
But when I asked Valve about this plan, they replied that they would remove Overgrowth from Steam if I allowed it to be sold at a lower price anywhere, even from my own website without Steam keys and without Steam’s DRM.
What this leak shows is not the same thing and even then the alleged Valve employee’s statement is that this is not their normal process. That’s not the same as them claiming definitively that this is a standard practice, or part of any agreement but I haven’t had a chance to read the full document you provided so I’ll have the read that before I make any other statements.
edit: Wait, lemme go ahead and quote the quotes from a previous post of mine:
If we get to a situation – again, this is
rare. If we get to a situation where a partner is
telling us that the price needs to be lower on other
platforms than it is on Steam, then we will typically
choose not to run curated marketing during times where
that game is being discounted, if that is where the
price is lower, or around a launch if it’s a around –
if it’s a price at launch time.
and
Q. Okay. And part of these conversations is
saying, hey, we’re not going to offer you curated
promotions if you keep doing that, right?
A. Part of our approach, if we get to a situation
where we can’t have pricing that is fair for Steam
customers is not to amplify marketing with curated
markets.
Q. But these conversations, as you know, also
involve the threat not to keep the game on the Steam
store at all; is that right?
But those can still make or break a game’s commercial success, especially during release. It comes down to the same thing: Discouraging developers from making their game available for cheaper on other stores. I’m also not entirely sure that they would stop here, considering they said they do this, they did not say “no” to threatening the removal of a game from the store, and there are accounts of developers saying concerning things.
Your friends can just request Steam keys and sell them outside of the Steam Store. Then there’s no 30% cut. That cut only applies to games and software sold on the Steam store.
Valve does offer the best features on their storefront by far, thus the 30% cut. And honestly comparable storefronts (Sony also 30%, Microsoft also 30% up until August 2021, and Nintendo also 30%) all take comparable cuts. This isn’t anything new or unique to Valve.
As an indie dev myself: Indie devs forget during the brick and mortar days up to 80% or more of revenue is consumed by middlemen before reaching the consumer. Steam absolutely makes indie dev sales easier.
Is that the case? I didn’t really ask much about it since it becomes a heated discussion.
YES
Also your friends should figure out how much it costs to host and distribute themselves with infinite scaling in case their game catches on.
Only restriction I know for this scheme is you can’t sell the keys outside steam for less than you sell on Steam. Otherwise you can just undercut them while still using their services
But easy to get around by discounting it for less than the listed price. Isthereanydeals and gg.deals is a great source for historical price trends across multiple storefronts from official to approved key selling stores.
The real crime is that Valve requires price parity when you independently (no Steam keys) sell your game on a different store, as well as the Steam store. (“Most Favored Nation” clause.) It means that developers are allowed to pocket the profits if a game is sold on a store that has a lower percentage cut, but they aren’t allowed to share the lower cost with the customer, because that could encourage people to not use the Steam Store when buying games.
I’ve looked through court documents for this. They’re sneaky about it, but they implicitly threaten you with your game’s sales being crippled by being taken out of their recommendation algorithm. With Steam being the biggest store, that’s a death sentence for most indie developers.
They don’t. Only if you are selling steam keys do they require price parity and only for steam key sales. You cannot sell a Steam key for less than you sell your game on Steam for. You can sell a non-Steam game key on other store fronts for any price you want.
This is what is being alleged in court by only a handful of developers but there are countless examples of the exact opposite thing being true.
They must’ve changed their tone recently, because I’ve read an actual leaked court document, and the Valve representative / employee states (very defensively) that this is what they did. There’s accounts of developers confirming this as well, including apparently in the (secret?) contract you sign when you sign up as a developer with Steam.
So, I take issue with the bit where you said “requires” because it implies that they will refuse to sell your game if you don’t list it for the same price on other store fronts. I have seen it phrased this way before, mostly in complaints from the dev Wolfire who made it sound like Valve threatened to completely kick the game off the Steam platform for selling digital copies of the game un-related to Steam at a cheaper price.
What you’re alleging is different but you were unclear about that because you used the phrasing “price parity” and “most favored nation”.
From Wolfire’s own mouth:
What this leak shows is not the same thing and even then the alleged Valve employee’s statement is that this is not their normal process. That’s not the same as them claiming definitively that this is a standard practice, or part of any agreement but I haven’t had a chance to read the full document you provided so I’ll have the read that before I make any other statements.
https://www.wolfire.com/blog/2021/05/Regarding-the-Valve-class-action/
Link the leaked court document.
Here. And the reddit thread where I found it.
edit: Wait, lemme go ahead and quote the quotes from a previous post of mine:
and
Curated marketing refers to the front page ads and popup steam runs, not the algorithmic suggestions you refer to in your original comment.
But those can still make or break a game’s commercial success, especially during release. It comes down to the same thing: Discouraging developers from making their game available for cheaper on other stores. I’m also not entirely sure that they would stop here, considering they said they do this, they did not say “no” to threatening the removal of a game from the store, and there are accounts of developers saying concerning things.