Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by hadlock 957 days ago
30% fee is fine? If you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days. That's how Wolfenstein 3D and Duke Nukem were sold for many years.

Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam. They work for that 30% unlike smartphone ecosystems that offer a closed ecosystem and can lock competitors out of their platform.

1 comments

>f you don't want to use steam you can put an ad in the back of 2600 Magazine and mail out CD-R or USB sticks like they did in the olden days.

you're free to. I will offer Itch.io as a modern alternative: https://itch.io/

almost zero restrictions on games you can upload, and they let you set your own share, even down to 0% if you so please. I think the default is 10%, which seems reasonable.

>Valve charges 30% because customers want all the stuff that comes with steam

not really. they charge 30% because they can leverage their 90% market share on small devs. In fact, they already relented and offer a lower share if you sell more than like, 25m copies. That suggests that they do need to work to keep AAA stUDIOS from making their own stores (again).

It's all about market dynamics. And I bet many steam users just use it for network effects.