• xtapa@discuss.tchncs.de
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    8 months ago

    You’re right. Giving 30% for really fucking good platform services is way worse than having to find a publisher that takes in 70 to 90% of revenue and pushes devs to release unfinished games.

    • skulkingaround@sh.itjust.works
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      8 months ago

      Yeah seriously. As a dev, that 30% cut gets you a lot of stuff with absolutely no additional charges. Trying to roll your own distribution for your downloads could exceed that 30% by itself after you:

      • Host the files somewhere that can be downloaded anywhere close to as fast as steam’s servers
      • Handle payment processing fees
      • Develop and maintain a site with high reliability

      And that’s only downloads. With steam you also get:

      • p2p networking tools
      • game server hosting
      • steam community integration
      • analytics
      • cloud saves
      • voip

      And like 50 other things. It’s ridiculously good value unless you’re developing some super low rent single player indie title. Even then, just having it available on steam will get you way more sales to make up for it.

      Sure, epic charges 10% but you basically only get distribution and some super half baked community features.