@@PETRIXXXXalot especially in HL 2 they reveal this in the HL2 20 years anniversary. They said WERE SO LOW on money that gabe almost sold his own house to continue development.
Butthurt dev: "Steam is pressuring devs to not sell their games on other platforms" Epic: Literally buys exclusivity so devs aren't allowed to sell their game ANYWHERE else. Butthurt dev: "STEAM IS EVIL!!!!!!!"
Valve isnt even pressuring to not sell on other platforms. It's literally only requiring price parity for steam keys. No steam key? No need for price parity.
There's tons of competition to steam. It just tends to completely bomb because Steam attracts more customers by being more pro-consumer and having a massively superior store experience. The laggy, buggy, labrinthine storefronts of UPlay, Origin, and the Epic store that aggressively push garbage you don't want are floundering because they REFUSE to compete. While GOG is doing fine in their own lane because they actually have a value proposition other than exclusivity agreements with specific games.
Not to mention that to be on UPlay or Origin, you have to climb into bed with Ubisoft or EA as publisher, which is rolling the dice because there's a good chance they'll simply tank your next gae and bankrupt the studio. Or commission you for something which you work on for years, then cancel it and bankrupt the studio. To be a studio tied to a publisher these days is to risk sinking the studio mid- to long-term
Yep. When sociopaths in suits peddle garbage, they get garbage returns. Instead of doing better, they want to cut down their competition to their size. It's like Cane and Abel, but for gaming.
I've collected so many free, quality games from the Epic Games Store. The damn program has never not been laggy, so I can't imagine using it to buy games. Only to play the hundreds I've collected over the last half-decade.
Steam holds the killswitch to your entire games library because you only buy a license and have to have access to Steam to use the games. And Valve is *still* the better option. Might wanna put some ice on that one, Epic.
I agree that steam is just better than the rest, but they do force devs to not sell games cheaper elsewhere. That's blatantly anti-competitive and that's why game devs are getting mad. The alternatives suck. Epic has no real incentive to take a smaller cut other than getting more games on their platform. People have no incentive to switch to other platforms when their stuff is already on steam, and devs aren't allowed to use price as an incentive despite it being cheaper to sell games on other platforms.
@@Fatttsreally though, GoG would be more successful as well if they didn't have such a stringent set of standards for their hosted games which is also what makes them the only good competition for steam. They aren't trying to bully their way into the market, they are just providing a good service
Nope. They hate steam because they are there for us customers and will literally refund us and lose a percentage of their cash to make sure we get what we actually deserve. So in conclusion. There suing valve for being probably the only good company
@@hollyc5417 Who in their right mind would've supported Apple? They don't deserve a cut of an in-game transaction just because they manufacture a device. It's a blatant monopolization of something that Apple has next to nothing to do with, but they still want their cut of the money.
Why don’t you want them to get better compensation? If they fight for 20% and make a whole 10% more of their total earnings then they can make better games. Valve doesn’t deserve 30 whole percent of a developers earnings
"I don't want to pay 30% cut" - then don't sell your game on Steam "But if I don't sell my game on steam I make less money" - Then why is 30% a problem if you make more money on Steam than anywhere else?
They will, the claims are ridiculous. 1. The claim against Valve's 30% revenue share on Steam indeed overlooks that this is a widely accepted standard in the industry. Other platforms, like Sony’s PlayStation Store, Microsoft’s Xbox Store, and Apple’s App Store, also implement a 30% cut. Epic Games Store’s lower fee (12%) is more of an exception rather than the rule. Moreover, game pricing often adheres to industry norms, particularly for AAA games, which typically launch at uniform price points like $79.99, regardless of the platform or revenue-sharing model. 2. Game prices are more influenced by broader market expectations and publishing strategies than by the platform’s revenue model. Developers are typically paid based on prearranged contracts with publishers, meaning the platform fees are more about splitting the post-sale revenue than dictating game development or publishing costs. 3. If Valve indeed threatened to delist a game for breaching its Terms of Service (e.g., offering Steam keys at discounted prices on other platforms), this would generally be enforceable under their rules. However, if the claim is about non-Steam key sales, the publisher or developer would need strong evidence that Valve acted beyond their contractual rights. Without such evidence, Valve's enforcement of its platform policies would likely be seen as legitimate.
to be fair, if another company made a service better than Steam, people still wouldn't use it because 90% of PC games are already on Steam. Idk what the law says about that tho...
@@TheDragonfriday 30% is a small percentage for how much visibility Steam brings to your game or you think Vampire Survivors would be a huge success if not released in Steam?
I’ll never get why they keep piggybacking on the 30% cut when it’s literally industry standard, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo also take 30% games sold on their platforms, if they dislike the cut so much why don’t they also sue them???
@@bonelesschickennuggets1868 and what's crazy is on PC, you DO have other options besides Steam.. no such options exist if your game runs on a closed console platform and people pay without this upheaval.
Isn't curious that these devs who are suing Valve look shady as hell and haven't ever created a real high-quality game but just glorified tech demos?, it's almost like they just want a quick payday from suing Valve for a problem that doesn't exist since nobody is forcing them to sell their "games" on Steam and also I don't see them complaining about the consoles or Apple and Google which also take 30%. This all feels like a scam.
As a game developer myself, I'm just gonna announce now that i won't be joining this childish "give me money" lawsuit. Steam is one of the most user friendly platforms for developers. The amount of free tools they provide for testing, marketing and selling games are invaluable. Besides that, a 30% cut is very much industry standard with the Nintendo eShop, the PlayStation 4/5 Store, the Apple App Store and Google Play Store all taking very similar amounts.
@@White927 I don't work for steam. I'm just releasing a game on their platform. I do however not currently have any plans for micro transactions in my own game if that helps 😅
@mechc9937cognition Valves actual greatest sin within the industry was their (arguable) spearheading of lootboxes and starting up what is essentially an NFT market before anyone knew what an NFT was with game cosmetics, leading to the issues with shit like box/skin gambling sites and stuff. It could be argued that Valve was just going where the industry was headed and all that, but TF2 is the first game I can think of that not only really pushed lootboxes with keys and junk for cosmetic unlocks but leaned fully into it by making the game free to play to fully rely on mtx income over traditional game sales income. I'm sure someone will come at me with some obscure example that came before it, but the influence of TF2 (and counter strike) on the industry, especially having the level of success they've had fiscally from it is undeniable unless you are being intentionally ignorant.
If anything, it's the opposite. Epic is the one that for a long time held an embargo. I've heard devs even say that they were permanently blacklisted from Epic for refusing to go wholly exclusive.
@@shadowslayer205 They've done even scummier things than that. Mechwarrior 5 was Kickstarter funded, and one of the perks you could get was a Steam key on release, until Epic came along and made a deal with Piranha for one year of exclusivity, at which point the Steam key was removed as a perk, *including* for people that had already backed the project. It also seems like Epic had a habit of doing this at the time, based on comments I'm reading in a reddit thread from the time.
Valve can charge whatever price they want, steam is their platform, and if you don’t agree with valve’s rules, then go sell your game on another platform 🤦🏻♂️
i personally don't agree with this, like I don't agree that the 30% cut is too high but I also think this mentality of "go sell it somewhere else" just ignores the problem that is actually presented, instead of challenging it
@@MisterChief711 problem of some individual developer SHOULD be ignored because it's none of our business. You don't like steam's cut - then find alternatives or go and distribute your game yourself. Correct me if I'm wrong but USRR died like 35 years ago and communism is currently exclusive to north korea.
@@MisterChief711 What problem? you said it yourself, 30% is not a problem, the consoles take 30% too and so does Apple and Google so why only single out Valve? also Valve doesn't prohibit anyone from publishing the games on other stores or skipping Steam entirely nobody forced them to use it, this lawsuit is clearly not fair and feels like something made to scam Valve and make some quick money from a nonexistent problem.
lmao why are you treating a lawsuit against a multi billion dollar company like a personal insult? Your beloved Lord GabeN isn't gonna let you kiss his toes bro
It is quite telling that the two main entities that filed this lawsuit have made nothingburger games. Overgrowth, while being a bit of a programming marvel back in the day, had nothing else besides that. The last I've heard of that game was a GDC showcase of the technology behind it. But the game itself is boring at best. And Djinni & Thaco is a VR game, which is inherently a niche market to begin with. So it seems like these two developers tripped over themselves with mediocre products, and expects Valve to pay for their failures. How utterly pathetic.
My thoughts exactly, the moment I heard the overgrowth devs were responsible for this I knew it was a cope lawsuit, game has been in indev hell for at least 10 years, extremely expensive too in its early access state, genuinely glad I never bought into the game
@@crolaa6137 It gets worse too. According to steamdb, Djinn & Thaco has a peak of only 5 players in its 4 years on the Steam platform. A 5 player peak in over 4 years. If that doesn't scream "My game flopped, please compensate for my failures", then I don't know what does. And apparently on metacritic, the developers of that game spent their time making accounts just to boost their review score.
@@crolaa6137 I have no clue. My guess is that this is one huge gamble to compensate for their failure. Buuuut... it could just be sheer idiocy at work.
As someone that bought Overgrowth back in the day... yeah once the physics engine's welcome wore out, the game became boring. I haven't played it in years.
Steam is literally just popular. They have no rules against third party channels, they even let you use their platform integration utilities when you license your game on other platforms. Valve doesn't jealously guard against third party stores either, some of their own games are on GOG...
they have 2 rules about third party channels: 1: you can't sell a steam key for cheaper elsewhere. 2: if you put your steam key on sale elsewhere, you put it on a comparable sale on steam shortly after
@@UnimportantAcc I agree 20% would be ideal, but its hard to argue for when others happily take 30%. If it's the industry standard then all developers need to adapt to account for Valve's cut.. as they already do..
Funny part is that I was looking forward to Overgrowth when I first discovered it. Didn't take too many years to realise that Wolfire games can't make an actual game. Only a tech demo for physics with no actual content. Receiver also looked underwhelming as hell. While 30% is quite a lot of money for a small dev, they also miss the point that they get extra visibility if they are on Steam. They are always free to host their games on other platforms if they think Valve is unfair.
They can even host their game on their own website or even their own platform if they want to make one, Valve is not going to stop them, but we all know that this is about scamming Valve, these devs look shady as hell and haven't even created a real high-quality game, they just want a quick payday from suing Valve for a problem that doesn't exist.
It isn't even quite a lot of money. If they wanted to distribute themselves, the costs could run far beyond that 30%, not to talk about having to pay for marketing and advertising yourself, rather than being ably to mostly rely on Steams internal marketing (that they do for you), and perhaps some TH-cam videos. Releasing a physical Playstation game could cost like 70% of the revenue, easily... 30% is like almost nothing in the end. Even if we compare by Epic, you only get 25% more revenue if you sold an equivalent amount of copies, and you would lose out on a LOT! of benefits that comes from being on Steam, everything from Steam Workshop, Steamworks for multiplayer, the third party reviews, hosting the game itself, hosting multiple revisions of the game if you so desire, being an automatic update platform, showing your game through the friendslist, and FAR!!! FAR!!! more.
I wanna yap about how i actually really like Wf games, both overgrowth and reveiver 2 are really unique and fun experiences, overgrowth in particular still being updated with new campaigns, receiver 2 was supposed to receive a dlc before the lawsuit took center stage. But Wf lost all my respect with this frankly scummy lawsuit...
The irony is that Steam is very indie/small dev friendly. They always market them just as much as big devs, have events just for them. Hell the Portal 2 ARG was literally a bundle of 13 indie games used to tie in and get exposure.
Literally, the fact they claimed we're overpaying angered me so much. Where did they even get such outrageous information. We get our content for way below the actual market price!
They are for 2 hours, thats the window you have to refund or dispute any issues. After that there is no recourse, if the game server goes offline and you've played for 2 hours = no refund and the only response you'll ever get is "you played for more than 2 hours" - yes but the game is no longer available to play, it's gone.. "sorry but you played for more than 2 hours".. Or in my experience with Mortal Online 2, where on launch the servers were broken, you tried to join the server and just sat in queue, there was no indication of how many people were in the queue or how long you'd need to wait to join the game. I sat there for 30 mins and didn't join, gave up. Tried the next day, sat in queue for over an hour, no game, gave up. Eventually contacted Steam for a refund - you guessed it, they said no because i'd played for over two hours. I explained i'd not actually played and had sat in queue attempting to join a game for that amount of time, their response "you played for 2 hours, we won't discuss this anymore, no refund". Yeah, really customer focused and caring huh, lol. Steam has always had shit customer services, they really don't care at all. They do have a good online store though and for the 90% of the time their anti-consumer policies don't matter or effect anyone, so it's natural ppl think like they are great.
Valve and Steam ain't no perfect, but damn, they're surely better than the competition by all means. BUT in the long term, will Valve/Steam survive? I don't think so, the so called enshitiffication is inevitable. The question isn't IF but WHEN their store will turn into s*ht. I hope that when that happens, there'll be proper competitors.
@@tvlkn9130 2 hours of game time, and they should not give you more then that, but even if you have played over those 2 hours they may still grant you an exception, there are just no guarantee, as it's not meant to be used to Demo games
Any judge who knows about steam would dismiss this case. Its objectively incorrect to say that steam is anti-consumer or encourages game developers to not realease on other platforms. The majority of noteworthy games release on gog and epic alongside steam and steam is at least one of the most pro consumer storefronts in the gaming sphere, and likely overall. I can understand people believing that a 30% cut is too high, i disagree, but i can understand, however to start a class action lawsuit over it is just childish, silly and a waste of everyones time and money. Its more of a publicity stunt than anything.
@sinelacico 30% of people's earnings is the price developers contractually agree to give to valve in exchange for being allowed to use their storefront to reach more people. Valve has an overhead, an extremely large overhead, which involves all sorts of server upkeep, research and development costs, employee salaries, game development costs and maintenance costs, which is why they take 30% in the first place. I can understand people wanting that percentage to be lowered, but it is a scumbag move to start a class action lawsuit, outright lying about anti-consumer practices and monopolisation, to have the percentage lowered. And I suspect the developers in question are receiving heavy compensation from epic games for doing so. What do you suggest, that valve lets people sell their games on steam for free?
@@sinelacico bro nothing is free. Since steam is the biggest platform, there is a pay to publish your game there and steam being steam 30% is very good deal you still get majority of the money from your game idk what yall yapping about
@@sinelacico yeah, lets shift the values, devs get 70% of the cut, it is less compared to epic's 88% but the user base and potential buyers are much higher on steam. If you actually make a good game you are going to earn way more on steam than in any other plataform.
This "dev" has only made glorified tech demos, no wonder they want to scam Valve since they can't even make actual games. I'm sure that if Valve goes after them like they should've from the beginning they're going to discover a lot of things about them.
Judge "So Valve forces you to only sell your game on STEAM?" Lawyer "No. We can only sell STEAM keys on STEAM." Judge "Case Dismissed."-- This is dumb.
You can also sell steam keys elsewhere, and valve doesn't take any cut. The only restrictions are that you aren't allowed to sell those keys cheaper than the price on steam, and if you have a sale, you need to have a similar discount on steam within a reasonable timeframe. Those are very reasonable conditions since you are still utilizing valves resources despite steam keys not making them money.
Valve : you can sell steam keys outside our plataform, just dont make the price lower then the one in our storefront. Devs : Thats scummy. Valve : Youre using our ecosystem and our infrastructure Devs : You are monopolizing the market 😡
@@godkekliveshere431 You are literally allowed to post your game on Steam, then generate 500 million Steam Keys, and give them out for free. Or you could post your game on Steam, and then literally leave it on Steam for free. What Steam is complaining about is that you post the game on Steam, then generate Steam Keys (Especially) and then you sell it off site, for 50% less... Or if you have your game on Steam, and then you also have it on Epic, and run a permanent 50% discount on Epic, but not a similar discount on Steam, and essentially ruining it for customers who buy on Steam, because they pay for more.
Honestly I've never seen this enforced as I literally see on a daily basis games on sale using Steam keys on other platforms for way cheaper than what the game goes on Steam and with a deeper discount. And I've been a PC gamer and user of Steam since late 2006.
@@godkekliveshere431 Hey are you a game dev? or just decided to be a ck today? Because i am a gamedev and steam is way better than any other game distribution platforms.
I've read the entire terms of service, both user and developer. They're as fair as a clear sunny day. Their commission fees aren't also exhagerated either, and 30% for the early costs is fine, specially since it goes down depending on how famous the game becomes. Valve also sides with the consumer more often than not, so if you screw up as a developer you'll damn well pay for it. There's no multi-layer shielding from your fuck-ups. I believe they're just afraid of not paying a fixed value, but rather a scaling one.
I mean its fantastic to play mechanically, its just that there's nothing else to the game. Its entirely just user content, and Rabbit kung-fu, bottled up into a rushed and barren experience. Underwhelming Rabbit Kung-fu makes it sound like it didn't even get that right, but really that's the only thing they got right. Its very tight, very fun, it just needs like.... the rest of the damn game. So I'm not surprised they can't sell it if that's all they did for about a decade and on their early access funds.
How is this even a thing? This is like renting a room in a 5 star hotel, and then complaining about that it is more expensive than other 2 star hotels. If businesses think that the benefits of using Steam does not outweigh the 30% cut they take, then they should just not use Steam.
Valve moving to New Zealand soon :3 Not fanboying, but other companies can make a better platform, Valve is a private business, you don't like it? Take your business somewhere else. The workshop alone makes the fee warranted
Amazon is like 70%, and Google is (probably like 99.99%, but they don't tell you how much they made they only tell you how much you get at the end which is usually cents.)
Every Half-Life has a lawsuit with it... Gman wears a blue suit. Lawyers wear blue suits. This is now the 3rd lawsuit. 3+1+1-2=3 Barney appears in 3 half life games. Half-Life: Barney confirmed
I'm a gamedev myself and I think the cut is fair for the platform's resources I get access to. I have a tip; Don't make some garbage slop you dare call a game and poorly market it to boot. You're welcome.
Running a service like what Valve has would take probably 60% of the budget at least in marketing and bandwidth and dev time to code a whole platform and DRM, when put into perspective 30% is fair, if these "devs" didn't want to deal with Valve they could've sold their game own their website or on EGS or GOG but instead they want to scam Valve because their so called game didn't really sell that well.
How about niche games that dont sell that well despite being good? Or indie games that dont become super popular? Steam should make the percentage progressive rather than fixed to help small teams and niche games. That would encourage experimentation.
@@DuckTheFinn With or without a "progressive" percentage, you literally end up with the issue that the VAST!!!! majority of games on any platform don't even recoup the work time spent on it. The 30% doesn't change that. Beyond that, it is not Steam's job to take on the cost of small teams and niche games, or encourage experimentation. The vast majority of games uploaded to Steam will essentially end up costing Steam money, even as is, because additional storage, hosting costs, additional infrastructure, maintenance, etc. because the games simply don't sell. And it doesn't seem like the 30% and 100$ entry price is hurting experimentation much. People that like to experiment are experimenting regardless. Don't see how the 30% will change that? I don't know, this seems more like a "Big guy needs to take the cut for small guy, because big guy is big". I don't see how that's Steam's responsibility. They are already encouraging quite a bit of experimentation, and they allow a LOT! of different monetization models. Steam even has games on there that are free to play, and you can only buy stuff from the ingame store from the ingame store, bypassing Steam, and Steam allows that. Your argument is invalid.
No one is forcing them to sell their game through Steam. They read the legalities when they agreed to put the game on the store and are just looking for ways to make more money after their game underperformed. I'm glad Steam has finally done something about season passes and devs taking advantage of consumers and I hope their next move is to refund gamers that bought games in early access from devs that are releasing DLC while their game is still in development years later; RocketWerkz with Icarus and Hinterland Studios with The Long Dark are two good examples of this. No other industry gets away with fleecing their customers like they do in the games industry.
30% is too expensive? They do realize that Valve covers ALL the distribution costs and hosting costs with that 30% right? It's not even 30% of individual games sold, it's a 30% cut of ALL sales made on Steam. They make 0% off of Steam keys sold on third party sites and there's no cost to generating Steam keys.
This is simple, when you do things right, people come to you... "monopoly" is not a problem, is a factor. Valve did a great job doing Half Life = People bought the game. Valve did a great job doing Half Life 2 = People bought the game. Valve did a great job making the Steam Deck = People bought his console. Valve did a great job making the Steam Controller = People bought that hardware. Valve have a great idea by selling games virtually = People download Steam. ¿Excessive prices? I'm not gonna lie, every game i own in my steam account i bought it at 90% discount, maybe 80% because when i see a game i like i simply add it to my wishlist, and wait for the notification to pop up. Just to give you an example today 03/12/2024 Battlefield V is on 90% discount (you can see many examples at the Steam Store by yourself). And another thing, I don't have a gun pointed at my head either... If I stop liking Steam I'll just buy games from other stores.
imagine getting a lawsuit because your just actually better than the competition, valve just sits there and watches as their own greed consumes and rots game publishers or just have a shitty launching service. honestly it's so pathetic valve is getting hated on by toxic developers or salty gaming corpos because they're just doing their thing and the fans like it.
Those disagreeing with Steam's policies should make their own platform and watch it get taken apart by investors and stock ownership (they are not Gabe)
@@White927 that's the price that the players themselves decided on, valve has no say on the prices of skins. all they do is set a price on the key for opening the case, and the rarity (droprate) of the skins in the case. Everything else is simply the players controlling the market. skins worth 10k+ dollars are worth that much because 1. they're rare. 2. there's demand. 3. people pay that price. a lot of the most expensive skins ever have been sold for literal cents in the past, back when the game wasn't as big and the prices hadn't adjusted. CSGO is not like valorant, league, r6, or any other non-valve game, because players can freely trade and sell their in-game items, creating a real economy / market, unlike every other game where the company (developer) sets the prices as they see fit. The other valve games are exactly the same (Dota2, TF2). And even though Counter-Strike may have some of the most expensive in-game items in all of gaming, it also has the cheapest ones. You could have multiple skins for every single gun in the game with less than 5 dollars, if you dont mind having plain-looking skins. Meanwhile in Valorant you can't even buy a single skin for less than 10 dollars if there isn't some big sale. Even the shit skins nobody wants cost more than that. Also, Steam allows people to freely trade, which makes it possible for an entire third-party market to exist. You can sell your skins for real money, deposited directly in your bank account. I've sold a knife and a pair of gloves myself, made about 200$ profit off of it. Straight into my bank account. Can't do that with any other big company.
I don't see how their argument has any bite to it. Steam TOS literally doesn't ban you from selling anywhere else (just make sure if you do to keep their prices same to steam which is fair)
@@geekmechanic1473 which only makes sense until someone points out that you could sell a non-steam version of the game for 20c and a steam version for $20, and steam'd be fine with it.
"We are filing a lawsuit not because our game sucks ass and doesn't sell but because of Steam being such a superior platform that they have no decent competitors."
Wanting compensation for choosing to spending money on a non-essential luxury product (videogame) is completely ridiculous and is obviously a scheme to sue valve for profit.
Valve fights so hard to keep developers from selling on other sites, so so hard. That's why you, the developer, can generate a steam key for your game for free, and sell it elsewhere for price no less than on Steam, and keep 100% of the money
I can understand wanting Steam taking less than a 30% cut, but everything has a price. And If that's the price to have a platform that isn't shit, so be it.
Valve literally cuts the best deal as far as publishers go. 30% is the best deal you will find. If you dont like having the best deal, go pay more money to be on an inferior platform that potentially owns more of your game than you do as the developer. The entitlement of people, I swear.
Steam sells more copies for your game. Steam takes higher cut. Epic sells less copies for your game. Epic takes smaller cut. It balances out, and for some reason this dev doesn't understand that.
Valve is the only company I’d ever defend in a situation like this. I love valve and I say all the time they are my favorite company. They simply just provide the best platform, make the best games, make good hardware, and innovate.
Really hope Valve doesn't lose this lawsuit.. would set such a bad precedent in the game industry. In a world where anti consumerism is absolutely rampant it is so obnoxious that the only consumer friendly games platform is the one getting sued every other year for being "a monopoly".. Steam is literally proof that respecting the consumer first means consumers will prefer your service. Not that they're a monopoly.
Overgrowth devs suing steam is insane considering they've had overgrowth indev for like 10 years atp, milking it for aloooot of money, weird this is only happening now after their game has run it's life cycle
wait till these people find out the server costs to keep Steam running as well as it does and supporting as many players and developers as it does, like, Valve rarely ever gets greedy for no reason, they always have some fair reasoning to justify what they do and it's been multiple decades now of collaboration and partnership between users and valve to keep up the ecosystem, because they offer us the best game storefront and hosting that's out there, and in turn we give up a cut of our earning to keep the thing running great.
All these lawsuits are wrong. I support Steam. What I get for my purchase of any game is far more than I pay. There's so much stuff wrapped around the game that the Steam platform provides to enrich that games experience. Why would anyone pick a fight where there is none. These Devs are just after payouts so they don't have to actually release a game.
good to publishers can give me 10 names who can confirm your argument considering you don't know how to game dev or do basic business work you valve loyalist are all the same
@@G7ue valve loyalist thinks that everything must be on steam while also sabotaging steam alternatives who have batter deals then steam. but then again there also the same people who wait for over a lifetime for half-life 3. and aw yeah steam / valve don't need to support web3/NFTs because the money you make on CSGO skins stays on steam you cant even use the money outside of steam .
@@godkekliveshere431 Looking through my games library... 505 Games (dev: Artplay) Deck13, WhisperGames, DANGEN Entertainment, Mayflower Entertainment (dev: Radical Fish Games) Wube Software LTD (dev: Wube Software LTD) Project Moon (dev: Project Moon) Mega Crit (dev: Mega Crit) Coredumping (dev: Coredumping) The Hidden Leaves (dev: Veyeral Games) Hempuli Oy (dev: Hempuli Oy) Mythwright (dev: SUN AND SERPENT creations) Clarity Games (dev: Clarity Games) Zapray Games (dev: Johan Grönvall) Hellbent Games (devs: Talia bob Mair and Nicolás Delgado) CRITICAL REFLEX (dev: Mike Klubnika) Red Hook Studios (dev: Red Hook Studios) Maddy Makes Games Inc. (dev: Maddy Makes Games Inc., Extremely OK Games, Ltd.) Noisestorm (dev: Noisestorm) Foreign Gnomes, Surefire.Games (dev: Chris Nordgren, Jordi Roca) The Game Bakers (dev: The Game Bakers) Playism (dev: △○□× (Miwashiba)) OMOCAT, LLC (dev: OMOCAT, LLC) Humble Games, Maple Whispering Limited (dev: Thomas Moon Kang) 2 Left Thumbs (dev: Stepford, Andyland, milkypossum) Gearbox Publishing (dev: Hopoo Games) ConcernedApe (dev: ConcernedApe) poncle (dev: poncle) Ivy Sly (dev: Ivy Sly) I recognize that a number of these games are self published, so I went out of my way to provide 26 examples instead of 10. Now, you can either take this counter at face value, or begin contacting everyone individually to try and counter it. I do know, however, to save you some time, that ConcernedApe has been thankful for the services and publicity steam's deal has offered him, as is Noisestorm, Mega Crit, Thomas Moon King, SUN and SERPENT Creations, Hopoo Games, and I think Wube Software LTD and Red Hook Games. Edited for a correction of some spelling and those I'm less sure about.
I can't understand these developers, they're literally choosing by themselves to sell on Steam, it's not like Steam is forcing them. If you don't like steams rules there's nobody stopping you from leaving.
It's not like Steam is an Apple Store with a monopoly on the platform, you can very well release your game elsewhere, but good luck having the visibility and pro-consumer service that Steam and GOG have compared to the other platforms.
apple store is a bad example because apple products literally lost a lawsuit recently because you could not, in fact, look elsewhere thanks to their locked ecosystem.
Epic store is a joke and they just as greedy as EA or Microsoft’s. At least steam has sales all the time. Epic store bribe devs with money only if they sign up with them. Then they bribe gamers with free games. But epic store does NOT Offer half the features of steam. ms who locking game behind their bloated windows bs. At least Valve is trying make Linux gaming the better option for pc gamers. Steam deck is proof of this and it’s true. Why aren’t more ppl suing ms for having a Monopoly with windows?? Ms has bullied all other OS out of business except Mac OS and Linux. IBM Os/2 Warp was SHUT DOWN by ms Cus was threat to windows. Many other os in mid 90’s to early 2000’s we’re shut down by ms, Cus they were threat to window. Windows has CHOKE hold on pc market but nobody seem care about that. We all bitch about how bad windows 11 is. But nobody want do anything? And they go after valve? Why aren’t more ppl pissed of ms trying kill off windows 10. When we know window 11 is FAR WORST???
I'm pretty sure the the class action lawsuit will just come back to bite them. Immediately they're already lying as if they can't sell their games anywhere else and they act as if 30% revenue is somehow not an industry standard.
Steam is a natural monopoly, which is very good, and these devs are literally just salty and/or being paid off by somebody else to harm valve and steam or to pressure them to do something (go public, change steam's policy, etc).
This 30% cut is not just for selling on platform but everything that you get with it too. Things like exposure, online saves, download servers, skins, key distribution, workshops, forums and everything else. They are the biggest for a reason, because they do things the right way for consumer and developer.
these people have to fight one lawsuit everytime they're going to release a new half life it seems
Stars align and we see the indications
It's what the tradition...demands
@@johnthememer1 History really does repeat itself, doesn’t it?
you got that backwards - if they are finally releasing hl3, they are only releasing it to distract from this and gain positive image
is it really that time again...
So many legal problems. Valve is definitely working on Half-life 3 confirmed.
it took theme over a lifetime to go back on HL3
Did valve have legal problems on the first 2 games?
@@PETRIXXXXalot especially in HL 2 they reveal this in the HL2 20 years anniversary. They said WERE SO LOW on money that gabe almost sold his own house to continue development.
@@PETRIXXXX that's not a excuses lol 😂
Disney has legal problems all the time yet they publish way more stuff then valve
@@godkekliveshere431 no i was just asking a genuine question
Butthurt dev: "Steam is pressuring devs to not sell their games on other platforms"
Epic: Literally buys exclusivity so devs aren't allowed to sell their game ANYWHERE else.
Butthurt dev: "STEAM IS EVIL!!!!!!!"
Valve isnt even pressuring to not sell on other platforms. It's literally only requiring price parity for steam keys. No steam key? No need for price parity.
Again gaben will do nothing and win , light work for king of gaming. 😂
Epic literally sells AAA for free.
@@Immolator772imagine a product so bad you have to give it away for free and still lose the market
@@Immolator772 how desperate can you be
There's tons of competition to steam. It just tends to completely bomb because Steam attracts more customers by being more pro-consumer and having a massively superior store experience. The laggy, buggy, labrinthine storefronts of UPlay, Origin, and the Epic store that aggressively push garbage you don't want are floundering because they REFUSE to compete. While GOG is doing fine in their own lane because they actually have a value proposition other than exclusivity agreements with specific games.
Not to mention that to be on UPlay or Origin, you have to climb into bed with Ubisoft or EA as publisher, which is rolling the dice because there's a good chance they'll simply tank your next gae and bankrupt the studio. Or commission you for something which you work on for years, then cancel it and bankrupt the studio. To be a studio tied to a publisher these days is to risk sinking the studio mid- to long-term
Yep. When sociopaths in suits peddle garbage, they get garbage returns. Instead of doing better, they want to cut down their competition to their size. It's like Cane and Abel, but for gaming.
I've collected so many free, quality games from the Epic Games Store. The damn program has never not been laggy, so I can't imagine using it to buy games. Only to play the hundreds I've collected over the last half-decade.
Steam holds the killswitch to your entire games library because you only buy a license and have to have access to Steam to use the games. And Valve is *still* the better option. Might wanna put some ice on that one, Epic.
I agree that steam is just better than the rest, but they do force devs to not sell games cheaper elsewhere. That's blatantly anti-competitive and that's why game devs are getting mad. The alternatives suck. Epic has no real incentive to take a smaller cut other than getting more games on their platform. People have no incentive to switch to other platforms when their stuff is already on steam, and devs aren't allowed to use price as an incentive despite it being cheaper to sell games on other platforms.
Valve is not anti-competition, their competition is anti-competition.
And their competition sucks, exception being GoG.
@@Fatttsreally though, GoG would be more successful as well if they didn't have such a stringent set of standards for their hosted games which is also what makes them the only good competition for steam. They aren't trying to bully their way into the market, they are just providing a good service
@@Fattts yea gog is cool but everybody else is just epic games
Exactly
One doesn't exclude the other.
They hate Steam because they aren't Steam. Suits being vultures is nothing new
Oh yeah Tim Sweeney wishes he made Half Life instead of "Unreal"
Word
preach!
Nope. They hate steam because they are there for us customers and will literally refund us and lose a percentage of their cash to make sure we get what we actually deserve. So in conclusion. There suing valve for being probably the only good company
@@Aresydatchyou mesn the franchise too Unreal Tournament?
Dude would rather filed a lawsuit rather than make advertisement for their games
That's the advertisement
I bet you supported epic games in suing apple.
@@hollyc5417 Who in their right mind would've supported Apple? They don't deserve a cut of an in-game transaction just because they manufacture a device. It's a blatant monopolization of something that Apple has next to nothing to do with, but they still want their cut of the money.
Whar
@@hollyc5417 I don't really care about epic's other shenanigans but apple deserved that one.
butthurt game devs who don't agree with 30% should move their asses to Epic and see if they do nearly as well there
also selling steam keys outside of steam take 0% cut.
Wait really ?!!
Why don’t you want them to get better compensation? If they fight for 20% and make a whole 10% more of their total earnings then they can make better games. Valve doesn’t deserve 30 whole percent of a developers earnings
Epic Games reportedly only take 12% but the gross sales are much much lower than they make on Steam
"I don't want to pay 30% cut" - then don't sell your game on Steam "But if I don't sell my game on steam I make less money" - Then why is 30% a problem if you make more money on Steam than anywhere else?
I feel sorry for Steam, they're the good guys doing their best and yet they get treated like this.
Its a multi billion company and gaben has armada of 6 mega yaths. They are fine.
@@IV-A You got shot in the leg. Oh, but you’ve eaten well before so you’ll be fine.
@@IV-A Not all multi billion companies are soulless, when they are, it's usually because they're publicly traded stocks, which valve isn't.
@@Dallows65VaLVE will be fine. There's no way their lawyers will lose this.
ehhhh, not good guys, just not bad
Hope Valve win
They will (if they don't well consider me Shocker)
@@Alpha-cabb You'll change your name to Herman and use gloves that shoot vibrating air to rob banks if they don't win?
They will, the claims are ridiculous.
1. The claim against Valve's 30% revenue share on Steam indeed overlooks that this is a widely accepted standard in the industry. Other platforms, like Sony’s PlayStation Store, Microsoft’s Xbox Store, and Apple’s App Store, also implement a 30% cut. Epic Games Store’s lower fee (12%) is more of an exception rather than the rule. Moreover, game pricing often adheres to industry norms, particularly for AAA games, which typically launch at uniform price points like $79.99, regardless of the platform or revenue-sharing model.
2. Game prices are more influenced by broader market expectations and publishing strategies than by the platform’s revenue model. Developers are typically paid based on prearranged contracts with publishers, meaning the platform fees are more about splitting the post-sale revenue than dictating game development or publishing costs.
3. If Valve indeed threatened to delist a game for breaching its Terms of Service (e.g., offering Steam keys at discounted prices on other platforms), this would generally be enforceable under their rules. However, if the claim is about non-Steam key sales, the publisher or developer would need strong evidence that Valve acted beyond their contractual rights. Without such evidence, Valve's enforcement of its platform policies would likely be seen as legitimate.
The Steam always wins
Hope Sony wins.
"We at [company name] believe that because Steam offers the best customer service it removes any competitors and therefore should be taken down."
to be fair, if another company made a service better than Steam, people still wouldn't use it because 90% of PC games are already on Steam. Idk what the law says about that tho...
@@vibaj16 I don't think these lawsuits will achieve anything
Istg why are game devs so against valve when their services are so pro consumer
Yeah I don't get it 30% is not bad. It not effect us consumer6
@@TheDragonfriday 30% is a small percentage for how much visibility Steam brings to your game or you think Vampire Survivors would be a huge success if not released in Steam?
It affects the developers though, so just think about it for a second… why are game devs against things that hurt game devs?
Oy vey… they are starting to notice things…
Most game Devs dont have an issue with it, it's just a small but vocal minority who are totally not getting "compensation" from epic.
Can these devs F-off ? I want valve to make Half-Life 3 in peace…
They just might if they didn’t make so much money from steam!
@@TTSP907Well it is in development for about 4 years now
I am significantly less likely to purchase any products from any company that supports this lawsuit
`which other company's support it? pls dont tell me newblood or landfallll PLSSS
@@retro_founder newblood is cool
Saying 30% is high is crazy...
You're even lucky to get that small of a cut for a big company.
Amazon audible takes 70% cut if they did not go with a publisher, publisher get a lower deal
Also just by selling the game on steam would make up for the 30%.
I’ll never get why they keep piggybacking on the 30% cut when it’s literally industry standard, Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo also take 30% games sold on their platforms, if they dislike the cut so much why don’t they also sue them???
@@bonelesschickennuggets1868 Because Steam is privately owned and cannot be subverted as easily.
@@bonelesschickennuggets1868 and what's crazy is on PC, you DO have other options besides Steam.. no such options exist if your game runs on a closed console platform and people pay without this upheaval.
Isn't curious that these devs who are suing Valve look shady as hell and haven't ever created a real high-quality game but just glorified tech demos?, it's almost like they just want a quick payday from suing Valve for a problem that doesn't exist since nobody is forcing them to sell their "games" on Steam and also I don't see them complaining about the consoles or Apple and Google which also take 30%. This all feels like a scam.
They are government talmudist agents that's why, being an agent doesn't always mean you are in the club it means you are a tool to be used
I don't know anything about dark cat studios but I genuinely enjoy Overgrowth from Wolfire. I'm kinda disappointed to hear that they're doing this. :(
Overgrowth is a really fun tech demo, at least
As a game developer myself, I'm just gonna announce now that i won't be joining this childish "give me money" lawsuit.
Steam is one of the most user friendly platforms for developers. The amount of free tools they provide for testing, marketing and selling games are invaluable.
Besides that, a 30% cut is very much industry standard with the Nintendo eShop, the PlayStation 4/5 Store, the Apple App Store and Google Play Store all taking very similar amounts.
Someone pin this comment!
Can you remove microtransaction from Steam? Thank you.
Remove microtransaction from Steam, please.
@@White927 I don't work for steam. I'm just releasing a game on their platform.
I do however not currently have any plans for micro transactions in my own game if that helps 😅
@White927 Microtransactions are created by the studio behind the games, not Valve/Steam
There is, literally not a single thing in the tos that says you cannot sell on both epic games and steam, and other platforms.
Also arguably, case opening sites actually need to be addressed legally
@mechc9937cognition Valves actual greatest sin within the industry was their (arguable) spearheading of lootboxes and starting up what is essentially an NFT market before anyone knew what an NFT was with game cosmetics, leading to the issues with shit like box/skin gambling sites and stuff.
It could be argued that Valve was just going where the industry was headed and all that, but TF2 is the first game I can think of that not only really pushed lootboxes with keys and junk for cosmetic unlocks but leaned fully into it by making the game free to play to fully rely on mtx income over traditional game sales income. I'm sure someone will come at me with some obscure example that came before it, but the influence of TF2 (and counter strike) on the industry, especially having the level of success they've had fiscally from it is undeniable unless you are being intentionally ignorant.
If anything, it's the opposite. Epic is the one that for a long time held an embargo. I've heard devs even say that they were permanently blacklisted from Epic for refusing to go wholly exclusive.
@@shadowslayer205 They've done even scummier things than that. Mechwarrior 5 was Kickstarter funded, and one of the perks you could get was a Steam key on release, until Epic came along and made a deal with Piranha for one year of exclusivity, at which point the Steam key was removed as a perk, *including* for people that had already backed the project. It also seems like Epic had a habit of doing this at the time, based on comments I'm reading in a reddit thread from the time.
Valve can charge whatever price they want, steam is their platform, and if you don’t agree with valve’s rules, then go sell your game on another platform 🤦🏻♂️
i personally don't agree with this, like I don't agree that the 30% cut is too high but I also think this mentality of "go sell it somewhere else" just ignores the problem that is actually presented, instead of challenging it
@@MisterChief711maybe other platforms should make a better store
@@MisterChief711 problem of some individual developer SHOULD be ignored because it's none of our business. You don't like steam's cut - then find alternatives or go and distribute your game yourself. Correct me if I'm wrong but USRR died like 35 years ago and communism is currently exclusive to north korea.
@@szymon7607 I was about to respond until you brought up the USSR 💀
@@MisterChief711 What problem? you said it yourself, 30% is not a problem, the consoles take 30% too and so does Apple and Google so why only single out Valve? also Valve doesn't prohibit anyone from publishing the games on other stores or skipping Steam entirely nobody forced them to use it, this lawsuit is clearly not fair and feels like something made to scam Valve and make some quick money from a nonexistent problem.
Steam is very pro consumers... other platforms not so much beside ehh i forget the name
thats the reason why they get attacked
GOG is the name
@@dailydoseofvitaminc6565GOG is done
@@dailydoseofvitaminc6565 Good luck advertising your game on GOG then.
@@dailydoseofvitaminc6565No it's called Epic Games
As someone else said: "I am significantly less likely to purchase any products from any company that supports this lawsuit"
Yes.. 1000%
lmao why are you treating a lawsuit against a multi billion dollar company like a personal insult? Your beloved Lord GabeN isn't gonna let you kiss his toes bro
0:47 Roblox developers getting 30% of the revenue out of their games:
Roblox "games" are legally called "experiences", so there's nothing that can be done for them.
10% actually
It is quite telling that the two main entities that filed this lawsuit have made nothingburger games. Overgrowth, while being a bit of a programming marvel back in the day, had nothing else besides that. The last I've heard of that game was a GDC showcase of the technology behind it. But the game itself is boring at best. And Djinni & Thaco is a VR game, which is inherently a niche market to begin with. So it seems like these two developers tripped over themselves with mediocre products, and expects Valve to pay for their failures. How utterly pathetic.
My thoughts exactly, the moment I heard the overgrowth devs were responsible for this I knew it was a cope lawsuit, game has been in indev hell for at least 10 years, extremely expensive too in its early access state, genuinely glad I never bought into the game
@@crolaa6137 It gets worse too. According to steamdb, Djinn & Thaco has a peak of only 5 players in its 4 years on the Steam platform. A 5 player peak in over 4 years. If that doesn't scream "My game flopped, please compensate for my failures", then I don't know what does. And apparently on metacritic, the developers of that game spent their time making accounts just to boost their review score.
@pulsekinesis do you know what they're planning here? They can't actually expect to win something like this right?
@@crolaa6137 I have no clue. My guess is that this is one huge gamble to compensate for their failure. Buuuut... it could just be sheer idiocy at work.
As someone that bought Overgrowth back in the day... yeah once the physics engine's welcome wore out, the game became boring. I haven't played it in years.
Steam is literally just popular. They have no rules against third party channels, they even let you use their platform integration utilities when you license your game on other platforms. Valve doesn't jealously guard against third party stores either, some of their own games are on GOG...
they have 2 rules about third party channels:
1: you can't sell a steam key for cheaper elsewhere.
2: if you put your steam key on sale elsewhere, you put it on a comparable sale on steam shortly after
A steam key being a key to use steam, the thing the fees pay for... @shirothefish9688
@@shirothefish9688makes sense
No court is ever going to create a precedent that a store platform's 30% cut is too high. Google, Apple, Sony etc. will never let it happen.
Imo 20% would be ideal, but as you say it is industry standard
@@UnimportantAcc I agree 20% would be ideal, but its hard to argue for when others happily take 30%. If it's the industry standard then all developers need to adapt to account for Valve's cut.. as they already do..
@@UnimportantAcc 30% for the quality valve offers? I'd say it's worth it. Like high taxes on a wonderfully managed country.
Funny part is that I was looking forward to Overgrowth when I first discovered it. Didn't take too many years to realise that Wolfire games can't make an actual game. Only a tech demo for physics with no actual content. Receiver also looked underwhelming as hell.
While 30% is quite a lot of money for a small dev, they also miss the point that they get extra visibility if they are on Steam. They are always free to host their games on other platforms if they think Valve is unfair.
They can even host their game on their own website or even their own platform if they want to make one, Valve is not going to stop them, but we all know that this is about scamming Valve, these devs look shady as hell and haven't even created a real high-quality game, they just want a quick payday from suing Valve for a problem that doesn't exist.
It isn't even quite a lot of money.
If they wanted to distribute themselves, the costs could run far beyond that 30%, not to talk about having to pay for marketing and advertising yourself, rather than being ably to mostly rely on Steams internal marketing (that they do for you), and perhaps some TH-cam videos.
Releasing a physical Playstation game could cost like 70% of the revenue, easily... 30% is like almost nothing in the end. Even if we compare by Epic, you only get 25% more revenue if you sold an equivalent amount of copies, and you would lose out on a LOT! of benefits that comes from being on Steam, everything from Steam Workshop, Steamworks for multiplayer, the third party reviews, hosting the game itself, hosting multiple revisions of the game if you so desire, being an automatic update platform, showing your game through the friendslist, and FAR!!! FAR!!! more.
I wanna yap about how i actually really like Wf games, both overgrowth and reveiver 2 are really unique and fun experiences, overgrowth in particular still being updated with new campaigns, receiver 2 was supposed to receive a dlc before the lawsuit took center stage. But Wf lost all my respect with this frankly scummy lawsuit...
@@ThisIsGlitch I took an interest into overgrowth to play it recently also, but after this ngl I lost all respect too
The irony is that Steam is very indie/small dev friendly. They always market them just as much as big devs, have events just for them. Hell the Portal 2 ARG was literally a bundle of 13 indie games used to tie in and get exposure.
"overpaying" meanwhile games go on sale all the time for cheap
Literally, the fact they claimed we're overpaying angered me so much. Where did they even get such outrageous information. We get our content for way below the actual market price!
Steam literally doesn't stop you from posting the game elsewhere. These guys are stupid.
hmm I wonder why Valve holds a monopoly on the game industry
maybe its because they actually care about their consumers
Its called a "Natural Monopoly"
They are for 2 hours, thats the window you have to refund or dispute any issues. After that there is no recourse, if the game server goes offline and you've played for 2 hours = no refund and the only response you'll ever get is "you played for more than 2 hours" - yes but the game is no longer available to play, it's gone.. "sorry but you played for more than 2 hours"..
Or in my experience with Mortal Online 2, where on launch the servers were broken, you tried to join the server and just sat in queue, there was no indication of how many people were in the queue or how long you'd need to wait to join the game. I sat there for 30 mins and didn't join, gave up. Tried the next day, sat in queue for over an hour, no game, gave up. Eventually contacted Steam for a refund - you guessed it, they said no because i'd played for over two hours. I explained i'd not actually played and had sat in queue attempting to join a game for that amount of time, their response "you played for 2 hours, we won't discuss this anymore, no refund".
Yeah, really customer focused and caring huh, lol. Steam has always had shit customer services, they really don't care at all. They do have a good online store though and for the 90% of the time their anti-consumer policies don't matter or effect anyone, so it's natural ppl think like they are great.
Valve and Steam ain't no perfect, but damn, they're surely better than the competition by all means.
BUT in the long term, will Valve/Steam survive? I don't think so, the so called enshitiffication is inevitable.
The question isn't IF but WHEN their store will turn into s*ht. I hope that when that happens, there'll be proper competitors.
@@tvlkn9130 2 hours of game time, and they should not give you more then that, but even if you have played over those 2 hours they may still grant you an exception, there are just no guarantee, as it's not meant to be used to Demo games
Any judge who knows about steam would dismiss this case. Its objectively incorrect to say that steam is anti-consumer or encourages game developers to not realease on other platforms. The majority of noteworthy games release on gog and epic alongside steam and steam is at least one of the most pro consumer storefronts in the gaming sphere, and likely overall. I can understand people believing that a 30% cut is too high, i disagree, but i can understand, however to start a class action lawsuit over it is just childish, silly and a waste of everyones time and money. Its more of a publicity stunt than anything.
30% of peoples earnings isn’t child’s play, it’s people’s livelihoods and support for their families
@@sinelacicoyes if not steam, their games would make 85% less money
@sinelacico 30% of people's earnings is the price developers contractually agree to give to valve in exchange for being allowed to use their storefront to reach more people. Valve has an overhead, an extremely large overhead, which involves all sorts of server upkeep, research and development costs, employee salaries, game development costs and maintenance costs, which is why they take 30% in the first place. I can understand people wanting that percentage to be lowered, but it is a scumbag move to start a class action lawsuit, outright lying about anti-consumer practices and monopolisation, to have the percentage lowered. And I suspect the developers in question are receiving heavy compensation from epic games for doing so. What do you suggest, that valve lets people sell their games on steam for free?
@@sinelacico bro nothing is free. Since steam is the biggest platform, there is a pay to publish your game there and steam being steam 30% is very good deal you still get majority of the money from your game idk what yall yapping about
@@sinelacico yeah, lets shift the values, devs get 70% of the cut, it is less compared to epic's 88% but the user base and potential buyers are much higher on steam. If you actually make a good game you are going to earn way more on steam than in any other plataform.
overgrowth i remember that game i also remember idubbbz involvement surely nothing edgy will leak of this developer
ah, idubbbz overgrowth videos, back when he was sane and watchable
@@crylune pretty sure he was directly involved with the developer which used to work for spikeTV/gametrailers.
This "dev" has only made glorified tech demos, no wonder they want to scam Valve since they can't even make actual games. I'm sure that if Valve goes after them like they should've from the beginning they're going to discover a lot of things about them.
@@AJ-po6up Wasn't Overgrowth making basically no sales until it came to Steam?
The developer is salty that no one buys their early 2010 game. This game has been in development for so long. It's basically furry yandere simulator
Judge "So Valve forces you to only sell your game on STEAM?" Lawyer "No. We can only sell STEAM keys on STEAM." Judge "Case Dismissed."-- This is dumb.
You can also sell steam keys elsewhere, and valve doesn't take any cut. The only restrictions are that you aren't allowed to sell those keys cheaper than the price on steam, and if you have a sale, you need to have a similar discount on steam within a reasonable timeframe. Those are very reasonable conditions since you are still utilizing valves resources despite steam keys not making them money.
@@futurehistoryarchaeologist4480 Exactly. But those lawyers cant seem to understand this concept. All they can see is $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
People would rather go to court than actually either release on time or make a playable game
Valve : you can sell steam keys outside our plataform, just dont make the price lower then the one in our storefront.
Devs : Thats scummy.
Valve : Youre using our ecosystem and our infrastructure
Devs : You are monopolizing the market 😡
never post your games on steam
or else valve will act like a Keran if you sell your games with 50% cut
@@godkekliveshere431 You are literally allowed to post your game on Steam, then generate 500 million Steam Keys, and give them out for free.
Or you could post your game on Steam, and then literally leave it on Steam for free.
What Steam is complaining about is that you post the game on Steam, then generate Steam Keys (Especially) and then you sell it off site, for 50% less...
Or if you have your game on Steam, and then you also have it on Epic, and run a permanent 50% discount on Epic, but not a similar discount on Steam, and essentially ruining it for customers who buy on Steam, because they pay for more.
@godkekliveshere431 that is if you are using their keys, otherwise they won't do shit, its in theirs games publishing agreement
Honestly I've never seen this enforced as I literally see on a daily basis games on sale using Steam keys on other platforms for way cheaper than what the game goes on Steam and with a deeper discount. And I've been a PC gamer and user of Steam since late 2006.
@@godkekliveshere431 Hey are you a game dev? or just decided to be a ck today? Because i am a gamedev and steam is way better than any other game distribution platforms.
I've read the entire terms of service, both user and developer. They're as fair as a clear sunny day. Their commission fees aren't also exhagerated either, and 30% for the early costs is fine, specially since it goes down depending on how famous the game becomes.
Valve also sides with the consumer more often than not, so if you screw up as a developer you'll damn well pay for it. There's no multi-layer shielding from your fuck-ups.
I believe they're just afraid of not paying a fixed value, but rather a scaling one.
Lol, Wolfire. You mean the company that spent years and years and years making their underwhelming Rabbit Kung-fu game? Okay..
I was very impressed with the trailers, around 12 years ago...
I mean its fantastic to play mechanically, its just that there's nothing else to the game. Its entirely just user content, and Rabbit kung-fu, bottled up into a rushed and barren experience. Underwhelming Rabbit Kung-fu makes it sound like it didn't even get that right, but really that's the only thing they got right. Its very tight, very fun, it just needs like.... the rest of the damn game. So I'm not surprised they can't sell it if that's all they did for about a decade and on their early access funds.
How is this even a thing? This is like renting a room in a 5 star hotel, and then complaining about that it is more expensive than other 2 star hotels. If businesses think that the benefits of using Steam does not outweigh the 30% cut they take, then they should just not use Steam.
Valve moving to New Zealand soon :3 Not fanboying, but other companies can make a better platform, Valve is a private business, you don't like it? Take your business somewhere else. The workshop alone makes the fee warranted
Why New Zealand specificaly ?
They stopped the plan to move to New Zealand
@@Alpha-cabb gaben likes it very much
@@getonWexford can always be planned again
@ fair enough
I believe Roblox takes 80% from devs, so, 30% is pretty low.
Amazon is like 70%, and Google is (probably like 99.99%, but they don't tell you how much they made they only tell you how much you get at the end which is usually cents.)
Every dev can host and sell their game itself, no need to use or sue valve for literally asking a fee for the use of their services and ressources
Every Half-Life has a lawsuit with it... Gman wears a blue suit. Lawyers wear blue suits. This is now the 3rd lawsuit. 3+1+1-2=3 Barney appears in 3 half life games. Half-Life: Barney confirmed
Blue shift 2?
Half-Life Barny already happened. Its called Blue Shift.
I'm a gamedev myself and I think the cut is fair for the platform's resources I get access to. I have a tip; Don't make some garbage slop you dare call a game and poorly market it to boot. You're welcome.
this didn't stop games like concored , dustborn and dragon age the gay guard did it
to be AAA slops
@@godkekliveshere431 Why would it stop bad games from being made? I don't understand your logic here.
Running a service like what Valve has would take probably 60% of the budget at least in marketing and bandwidth and dev time to code a whole platform and DRM, when put into perspective 30% is fair, if these "devs" didn't want to deal with Valve they could've sold their game own their website or on EGS or GOG but instead they want to scam Valve because their so called game didn't really sell that well.
How about niche games that dont sell that well despite being good? Or indie games that dont become super popular? Steam should make the percentage progressive rather than fixed to help small teams and niche games. That would encourage experimentation.
@@DuckTheFinn With or without a "progressive" percentage, you literally end up with the issue that the VAST!!!! majority of games on any platform don't even recoup the work time spent on it.
The 30% doesn't change that.
Beyond that, it is not Steam's job to take on the cost of small teams and niche games, or encourage experimentation. The vast majority of games uploaded to Steam will essentially end up costing Steam money, even as is, because additional storage, hosting costs, additional infrastructure, maintenance, etc. because the games simply don't sell.
And it doesn't seem like the 30% and 100$ entry price is hurting experimentation much. People that like to experiment are experimenting regardless. Don't see how the 30% will change that?
I don't know, this seems more like a "Big guy needs to take the cut for small guy, because big guy is big". I don't see how that's Steam's responsibility. They are already encouraging quite a bit of experimentation, and they allow a LOT! of different monetization models.
Steam even has games on there that are free to play, and you can only buy stuff from the ingame store from the ingame store, bypassing Steam, and Steam allows that.
Your argument is invalid.
No one is forcing them to sell their game through Steam. They read the legalities when they agreed to put the game on the store and are just looking for ways to make more money after their game underperformed. I'm glad Steam has finally done something about season passes and devs taking advantage of consumers and I hope their next move is to refund gamers that bought games in early access from devs that are releasing DLC while their game is still in development years later; RocketWerkz with Icarus and Hinterland Studios with The Long Dark are two good examples of this. No other industry gets away with fleecing their customers like they do in the games industry.
30% is too expensive? They do realize that Valve covers ALL the distribution costs and hosting costs with that 30% right? It's not even 30% of individual games sold, it's a 30% cut of ALL sales made on Steam. They make 0% off of Steam keys sold on third party sites and there's no cost to generating Steam keys.
This is simple, when you do things right, people come to you... "monopoly" is not a problem, is a factor.
Valve did a great job doing Half Life = People bought the game.
Valve did a great job doing Half Life 2 = People bought the game.
Valve did a great job making the Steam Deck = People bought his console.
Valve did a great job making the Steam Controller = People bought that hardware.
Valve have a great idea by selling games virtually = People download Steam.
¿Excessive prices? I'm not gonna lie, every game i own in my steam account i bought it at 90% discount, maybe 80% because when i see a game i like i simply add it to my wishlist, and wait for the notification to pop up. Just to give you an example today 03/12/2024 Battlefield V is on 90% discount (you can see many examples at the Steam Store by yourself).
And another thing, I don't have a gun pointed at my head either... If I stop liking Steam I'll just buy games from other stores.
imagine getting a lawsuit because your just actually better than the competition, valve just sits there and watches as their own greed consumes and rots game publishers or just have a shitty launching service. honestly it's so pathetic valve is getting hated on by toxic developers or salty gaming corpos because they're just doing their thing and the fans like it.
it's literally the corporate equivalent of winning so hard the enemy says you're cheating.
These devs just asking to be terminally hated by anyone with a brain
A lawsuit from publishers who take over 60% complaining that Steam's 30% cut is "anti competitive"
Those disagreeing with Steam's policies should make their own platform and watch it get taken apart by investors and stock ownership (they are not Gabe)
$1.5 million CSGO knife, what about that?
@@White927 that's the price that the players themselves decided on, valve has no say on the prices of skins. all they do is set a price on the key for opening the case, and the rarity (droprate) of the skins in the case. Everything else is simply the players controlling the market.
skins worth 10k+ dollars are worth that much because
1. they're rare.
2. there's demand.
3. people pay that price.
a lot of the most expensive skins ever have been sold for literal cents in the past, back when the game wasn't as big and the prices hadn't adjusted. CSGO is not like valorant, league, r6, or any other non-valve game, because players can freely trade and sell their in-game items, creating a real economy / market, unlike every other game where the company (developer) sets the prices as they see fit. The other valve games are exactly the same (Dota2, TF2).
And even though Counter-Strike may have some of the most expensive in-game items in all of gaming, it also has the cheapest ones. You could have multiple skins for every single gun in the game with less than 5 dollars, if you dont mind having plain-looking skins. Meanwhile in Valorant you can't even buy a single skin for less than 10 dollars if there isn't some big sale. Even the shit skins nobody wants cost more than that.
Also, Steam allows people to freely trade, which makes it possible for an entire third-party market to exist. You can sell your skins for real money, deposited directly in your bank account. I've sold a knife and a pair of gloves myself, made about 200$ profit off of it. Straight into my bank account. Can't do that with any other big company.
Boycott them, all of Valves enemies. Boycott them all!
You’re a slave, a pawn with no free will
@@sinelacico says you lmao
There's better ways than boycott
@@sinelacico You probably thought in your head that you sounded cool as hell while writing that but in reality is corny and cringe as hell.
@@sinelacico if I am a slave, im getting paid better than those with free will.
And I have more things to buy with that money too
These guys are literally biting their feeding hand, that's both crazy and absurd
Wolfire rather file lawsuits than develop good games. Typical for their kind.
Lawsuit?
* looks inside *
* Fraudulent accusations of 'unfair pricing' *
Oh, they have NOTHING...
The reason valve has the market share they do is because they literally have the best game launcher. Nothing else really compares
I don't see how their argument has any bite to it. Steam TOS literally doesn't ban you from selling anywhere else (just make sure if you do to keep their prices same to steam which is fair)
Not really as that could be seen by the courts as steam trying to illegally maintain their monopoly
@@geekmechanic1473 which only makes sense until someone points out that you could sell a non-steam version of the game for 20c and a steam version for $20, and steam'd be fine with it.
the "our game flopped and we dont want to admit it so we're blaming steam" lawsuit
I'd like to know who these devs are so I can stop buying their games. So greedy
"We are filing a lawsuit not because our game sucks ass and doesn't sell but because of Steam being such a superior platform that they have no decent competitors."
Wanting compensation for choosing to spending money on a non-essential luxury product (videogame) is completely ridiculous and is obviously a scheme to sue valve for profit.
Waiting for the defamation suit to mop the floor with these greedy fools... Leave Valve the hell alone -_-
Valve is the modern example of “in spite of everything you’ve done for them, eventually they will hate you.”
Valve fights so hard to keep developers from selling on other sites, so so hard. That's why you, the developer, can generate a steam key for your game for free, and sell it elsewhere for price no less than on Steam, and keep 100% of the money
Perfect. Write them down .. stop buying their games (pirate them). Have a nice day.
Don't pirate them. Let their popularity fizzle out until their name fades into obscurity
Piracy is just free advertising
Their games aren't even good enough to warrant pirating
I can understand wanting Steam taking less than a 30% cut, but everything has a price. And If that's the price to have a platform that isn't shit, so be it.
Valve literally cuts the best deal as far as publishers go. 30% is the best deal you will find. If you dont like having the best deal, go pay more money to be on an inferior platform that potentially owns more of your game than you do as the developer. The entitlement of people, I swear.
Steam sells more copies for your game. Steam takes higher cut. Epic sells less copies for your game. Epic takes smaller cut. It balances out, and for some reason this dev doesn't understand that.
Valve is the only company I’d ever defend in a situation like this. I love valve and I say all the time they are my favorite company. They simply just provide the best platform, make the best games, make good hardware, and innovate.
Begun, the Corporate War has.
Pepe being "extreamism" is the best part lmao
Can we sue those devs for their BS ?
Really hope Valve doesn't lose this lawsuit.. would set such a bad precedent in the game industry. In a world where anti consumerism is absolutely rampant it is so obnoxious that the only consumer friendly games platform is the one getting sued every other year for being "a monopoly".. Steam is literally proof that respecting the consumer first means consumers will prefer your service. Not that they're a monopoly.
clearly these lawyers don't know that the best attempt at competition for steam is the epic shit launcher.
Overgrowth devs suing steam is insane considering they've had overgrowth indev for like 10 years atp, milking it for aloooot of money, weird this is only happening now after their game has run it's life cycle
I love when Steam gets labeled as only a store and not a developer tool. It clearly shows how bad faith the arguments are in the lawsuit.
This time it’s not a needle in a haystack, but a giant building with a small pile of hay at the front door.
WE WERE JUST ABOUT TO GET A NEW HALF LIFE >:(
CAN YOU FUCKING WAIT A MINUTE
What brand is your microwave? (mine's Toyota)
mine's volvo
valve
mine Spies on me
I don't have one
New Half life 3 documentary section in real time
it feels like everything has been going wrong recently
So valve is so good at making a store they are getting sued because everyone else is bad at it
Hmmm let’s count how many game were released and labeled as exclusive on steam…
And now let’s count all other platforms exclusives
wait till these people find out the server costs to keep Steam running as well as it does and supporting as many players and developers as it does, like, Valve rarely ever gets greedy for no reason, they always have some fair reasoning to justify what they do and it's been multiple decades now of collaboration and partnership between users and valve to keep up the ecosystem, because they offer us the best game storefront and hosting that's out there, and in turn we give up a cut of our earning to keep the thing running great.
All these lawsuits are wrong. I support Steam. What I get for my purchase of any game is far more than I pay. There's so much stuff wrapped around the game that the Steam platform provides to enrich that games experience. Why would anyone pick a fight where there is none. These Devs are just after payouts so they don't have to actually release a game.
so how can we support / show support for valve? Boycotting these devs or reviewbombing their games seems like the only way
Why would you file a lawsuit because someone takes a 30% commission? I haven't seen ROBLOX get a lawsuit for having a 70% commission at some points.
This is like suing for not reading the Terms & Conditions sheet. They knew what they signed up for by selling through Steam.
valve is so good for publishers like if you dont want 30% cut maybe move your ass top epic games or shit like that
good to publishers can give me 10 names who can confirm your argument
considering you don't know how to game dev or do basic business work
you valve loyalist are all the same
@@godkekliveshere431 But do you know how not to disappoint your mother on an hourly basis?
Dev: I don't want to lose 30%! Thats too much!
Steam: Then sell on another platform
Dev: B-but I wont make as much money there!
@@G7ue valve loyalist
thinks that everything must be on steam
while also sabotaging steam alternatives who have batter deals then steam.
but then again there also the same people who wait for over a lifetime for half-life 3.
and aw yeah steam / valve don't need to support web3/NFTs because the money you make on CSGO skins stays on steam
you cant even use the money outside of steam .
@@godkekliveshere431 Looking through my games library...
505 Games (dev: Artplay)
Deck13, WhisperGames, DANGEN Entertainment, Mayflower Entertainment (dev: Radical Fish Games)
Wube Software LTD (dev: Wube Software LTD)
Project Moon (dev: Project Moon)
Mega Crit (dev: Mega Crit)
Coredumping (dev: Coredumping)
The Hidden Leaves (dev: Veyeral Games)
Hempuli Oy (dev: Hempuli Oy)
Mythwright (dev: SUN AND SERPENT creations)
Clarity Games (dev: Clarity Games)
Zapray Games (dev: Johan Grönvall)
Hellbent Games (devs: Talia bob Mair and Nicolás Delgado)
CRITICAL REFLEX (dev: Mike Klubnika)
Red Hook Studios (dev: Red Hook Studios)
Maddy Makes Games Inc. (dev: Maddy Makes Games Inc., Extremely OK Games, Ltd.)
Noisestorm (dev: Noisestorm)
Foreign Gnomes, Surefire.Games (dev: Chris Nordgren, Jordi Roca)
The Game Bakers (dev: The Game Bakers)
Playism (dev: △○□× (Miwashiba))
OMOCAT, LLC (dev: OMOCAT, LLC)
Humble Games, Maple Whispering Limited (dev: Thomas Moon Kang)
2 Left Thumbs (dev: Stepford, Andyland, milkypossum)
Gearbox Publishing (dev: Hopoo Games)
ConcernedApe (dev: ConcernedApe)
poncle (dev: poncle)
Ivy Sly (dev: Ivy Sly)
I recognize that a number of these games are self published, so I went out of my way to provide 26 examples instead of 10.
Now, you can either take this counter at face value, or begin contacting everyone individually to try and counter it.
I do know, however, to save you some time, that ConcernedApe has been thankful for the services and publicity steam's deal has offered him, as is Noisestorm, Mega Crit, Thomas Moon King, SUN and SERPENT Creations, Hopoo Games, and I think Wube Software LTD and Red Hook Games.
Edited for a correction of some spelling and those I'm less sure about.
I can't understand these developers, they're literally choosing by themselves to sell on Steam, it's not like Steam is forcing them. If you don't like steams rules there's nobody stopping you from leaving.
It's not like Steam is an Apple Store with a monopoly on the platform, you can very well release your game elsewhere, but good luck having the visibility and pro-consumer service that Steam and GOG have compared to the other platforms.
apple store is a bad example because apple products literally lost a lawsuit recently because you could not, in fact, look elsewhere thanks to their locked ecosystem.
Those who can't do, sue.
its funny they want to have a crack at Valve but still sell there games on there platform... fucking hypocrasy
this lawsuit gonna get dismissed anyway
Epic store is a joke and they just as greedy as EA or Microsoft’s. At least steam has sales all the time. Epic store bribe devs with money only if they sign up with them. Then they bribe gamers with free games. But epic store does NOT Offer half the features of steam.
ms who locking game behind their bloated windows bs. At least Valve is trying make Linux gaming the better option for pc gamers. Steam deck is proof of this and it’s true.
Why aren’t more ppl suing ms for having a Monopoly with windows?? Ms has bullied all other OS out of business except Mac OS and Linux. IBM Os/2 Warp was SHUT DOWN by ms Cus was threat to windows. Many other os in mid 90’s to early 2000’s we’re shut down by ms, Cus they were threat to window. Windows has CHOKE hold on pc market but nobody seem care about that. We all bitch about how bad windows 11 is. But nobody want do anything? And they go after valve?
Why aren’t more ppl pissed of ms trying kill off windows 10. When we know window 11 is FAR WORST???
Valve and steam are goated. They wont loose
Being the most pro consumer platform available is the peak anticompetitive behavior 👍
I'm pretty sure the the class action lawsuit will just come back to bite them. Immediately they're already lying as if they can't sell their games anywhere else and they act as if 30% revenue is somehow not an industry standard.
Steam is a natural monopoly, which is very good, and these devs are literally just salty and/or being paid off by somebody else to harm valve and steam or to pressure them to do something (go public, change steam's policy, etc).
This 30% cut is not just for selling on platform but everything that you get with it too. Things like exposure, online saves, download servers, skins, key distribution, workshops, forums and everything else. They are the biggest for a reason, because they do things the right way for consumer and developer.
As a Game Dev to every other game dev that has signed up to this class action: You people are pathetic.
>berg >adl
every single time