Jake Birkett of Grey Alien Games had a more apathetic approach - not because he thought Valve's change was a neutral decision, but because he (and a handful of developers he has spoken to) claims that Steam's discovery algorithm underwent a change in October that demolished sales for various indie games, including his. However, I think we should at least be happy revenue share is getting better for developers, even if it doesn't help everyone just yet." "Valve could likely afford a flat 20% for everyone, and that would help indies as well as AAA studios. "Have things really gotten so bad for Valve in the ever-more competitive storefront scene that they now have to subsidize big studios?" She did conclude with a more Valve-friendly stance than other indies, however.
"But the alternative is that the rich get *even richer* off-Steam, not bringing more people to Steam at all, making it a less viable platform for everyone involved, including indies, as well as forcing players to another client that *don't allow indies at all*" "It seems to me like isn't too bad of an idea - but some, including me to some extent, consider this to be a blatant middle finger to smaller developers, or like a reversed tax bracketing meant to make the rich richer, which, I suppose, isn't wholly untrue," she said. Over the weekend, a number of indie developers took to social media to voice their frustrations with the change.įreya Holmér, co-founder of Neat Corporation, tweeted a decent summary of the majority of complaints.
Furthermore, Steam now has a new competitor in the Discord Store to worry about.īut it isn't the fact that Steam has changed its revenue split that's frustrated indie developers - rather, it's the fact that the split primarily favors AAA publishers and developers who are all but guaranteed to reach those revenue thresholds and leaves indies where they were before - still struggling. Fortnite, arguably the most talked-about game of 2018, also avoided the storefront. Ubisoft and EA have been releasing games on their own launchers for some time now (though Ubisoft, for now, still releases on Steam too), and earlier this year both Bethesda and Activision made moves to buck a trend of Steam releases, with Fallout 76 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 staying solidly on the Bethesda Launcher and, respectively.
The change is, in many ways, an unsurprising one as AAA publishers begin to move away from Steam. Specifically, games that earn over $10 million in sales will see a 75/25 split after reaching the milestone from October 1 onward, and games that earn over $50 million will get to keep 80 percent of their earnings, while Valve takes 20 percent. The storefront would be adjusting its revenue share system from a standard 70/30 split to a tiered system, with more revenue going to developers of games that earned over certain thresholds. Last Friday, Valve dropped some news that was likely very exciting for a certain subset of developers on Steam.