[Originami]

Gaming revenues across the board are flat or down post-COVID, and especially with Russian consumers taken out.

Gaming is mostly unprofitable given the excessive 30% commissions charged by Valve, Apple, Google, Sony, Microsoft. Only platform owners make consistent profits.

[greenthrow]

The first part may be true but the second part certainly isn't.

Most gaming companies may be unprofitable for the same reason most restaurants end up shuttering quickly; it's a hard thing to make a successful business in a saturated market.

But it's certainly not bexause of the fees that Valve, Apple, Google, etc. charge. Those have been there for over a decade and if you're running or starting a game company now, you would factor those into your business plan just like payroll and taxes.

The fees are pretty high but the free distribution and in the case of Google and Apple, free development kits and usable SDKs have to get paid for somehow. Those things have been subsidized by the platform fees for so long now we have a generation who seem to think they should/have/always will be free. But just two decades ago they weren't. And getting distribution and eyeballs for your indie game was much, much, much more of a barrier and distributors/publishers took more than 30%.

[Ekaros]

30% really isn't that bad when there were many many more players in the chain with physical products. And it is not like the services offered by platforms like Valve are cheap... Global billing and distribution to basically any country allowing games...