[mzhaase]

They absolutely keep a larger cut than others. With Epic the first million you make is free. After much deliberation, steam changed it so that their 30% cut is reduced if you make more than 10M. For a lot of indie devs, its pretty much a death sentence.

[masklinn]

> With Epic the first million you make is free.

That's Epic using its money from other markets for loss leader schemes in order to grab market share. It's a very classic move (same as free games), and it's always detrimental to the market and customers in the long run.

It's not a good thing, epic games is a garbage company. That they're actively losing money to prop up their store should tell you how bad of a thing it is if it ever succeeds.

[yxhuvud]

High prices are a sign of their competitors failing to compete. Are they using their standing to make competing with them harder, somehow? For example, they dont do Amazon style prohibitions of selling the product cheaper elsewhere.

[UtopiaPunk]

I'd love for the cut to be smaller, but it is absolutely not a "death sentence." With traditional consoles (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft consoles, and those before them), the barrier to entry is very high. If you are an indie, it is practically necessary to work with a publisher to get on those platforms. The publishers demand their own cut (in addition to Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft), and as they are running a business, they only take on games that they expect will make a profit. In that environment, weird little developers making weird little games will almost always be shut down before they can even see the light of day. I think it is a little easier in the modern day (you don't need a blessed dev kit to make a console game, for example), but I think the barrier is still not trivial.

The PC games space has always been more open. If you had a weird game you wanted to share, you could share a disc with your friends or make it available on your website. But, again, if you wanted to make some decent money, you probably needed a marketing department and to have a boxed copy on store shelves (which, again, means working with a publisher). With a few exceptions, hardly anyone would ever find your game otherwise.

With modern-day Steam, an indie dev needs only to pay $100 to put a game on Steam (and I believe that $100 is refunded if the game crosses a certain threshold of sales). Discoverability is still a challenge, but just by existing on Steam, an indie game has a chance to make a bit of money. Steam itself has some discoverability features that can boost the visibility of even quirky little titles. The indie dev needs to do their own work, of course, to get visibility, but they don't need to have major resources behind them to get that visibility. They don't necessarily even need to host a website anymore - the game has a page on the Internet through Steam after all. The indie dev can direct anyone who will listen to them to go there.

All that said, I do agree that Steam is practically a monopoly. If Steam decided they hate you for some reason, then that's it. You almost certainly do not have a viable path forward for selling your PC game simply because they have such dominance (see the recent controversy where major payment processors suddenly decided they would not facilitate the sale of lewd games, and Steam reacted by pulling any game that seemed to fall into that category. Although, even in that case, the harmful monopoly tactics are coming from different actors in a different industry). For the time being, I just think they are kind of a benevolent dictator.

[orwin]

Indie games pay for discoverabiliy (don't know if that's a word). To be clear, I mostly use GoG when I can, unless it's a multiplayer game with bad lobby/MP support (Firaxis/paradox basically)

[UtopiaPunk]

In what way do indie devs pay for discoverability? There's a $100 fee to be listed on Steam. Is there something else you are thinking of?

[galagawinkle489]

Indie game development largely owes its existence to Steam. I know I would spend a lot less on indie games if I had to buy them from their own websites or, god forbid, through an awful laggy "app store" run by Ubisoft or Microsoft.

[plumthreads]

If competitors offer passable services for selling indie game developers, then indie game developers would be able to earn more money (due to competition).

This is why developers are hopeful for alternative services.

[milch]

There are competitors like itch.io, which are specifically targeted towards indies

[UtopiaPunk]

Itch.io is great