this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
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Debunking the grey market beyond Steam (www.gamesindustry.biz)
submitted 4 days ago by misk@sopuli.xyz to c/games@sh.itjust.works
178 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Despite facing increased competition in the space, not least from the Epic Games Store, Valve's platform is synonymous with PC gaming. The service is estimated to have made $10.8 billion in revenue during 2024, a new record for the Half-Life giant. Since it entered the PC distribution space back in 2018, the rival Epic Games Store has been making headway – and $1.09 billion last year – but Steam is still undeniably dominant within the space.

Valve earns a large part of its money from taking a 20-30% cut of sales revenue from developers and publishers. Despite other storefronts opening with lower overheads, Steam has stuck with taking this slice of sales revenue, and in doing so, it has been argued that Valve is unfairly taking a decent chunk of the profits of developers and publishers.

This might change, depending on how an ongoing class-action lawsuit initiated by Wolfire Games goes, but for the time being, Valve is making money hand over fist selling games on Steam. The platform boasts over 132 million users, so it's perfectly reasonable that developers and publishers feel they have to use Steam – and give away a slice of their revenue – in order to reach the largest audience possible.

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[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If I don’t like what Comcast charges I don’t do a class action lawsuit.

That's a poor example, because in many markets, Comcast (or another cable provider) is the only option, or there's only one other option with much lower top-end speeds (e.g. DSL). So a class-action against Comcast may be a reasonable idea, since they're an actual monopoly in many markets.

The games industry is different. Steam does have a commanding share of the market, but there's no real lock-in there, a developer can choose to not publish there and succeed. Minecraft, famously, never released on Steam, and it has been wildly successful. Likewise for Blizzard games, like Starcraft and World of Warcraft.

Maybe a better comparison is grocery store chains? Walmart has something like 60% market share in the US, yet I have successfully been able to completely avoid shopping there.

[–] Pieisawesome@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 days ago

It’s maybe a poor example, but it is what the plaintiff is alleging, so I think it is a good analogy