Despite facing increased competition in the space, not least from the Epic Games Store, Valve’s platform is synonymous with PC gaming. The service is estimated to have made $10.8 billion in revenue during 2024, a new record for the Half-Life giant. Since it entered the PC distribution space back in 2018, the rival Epic Games Store has been making headway – and $1.09 billion last year – but Steam is still undeniably dominant within the space.
Valve earns a large part of its money from taking a 20-30% cut of sales revenue from developers and publishers. Despite other storefronts opening with lower overheads, Steam has stuck with taking this slice of sales revenue, and in doing so, it has been argued that Valve is unfairly taking a decent chunk of the profits of developers and publishers.
This might change, depending on how an ongoing class-action lawsuit initiated by Wolfire Games goes, but for the time being, Valve is making money hand over fist selling games on Steam. The platform boasts over 132 million users, so it’s perfectly reasonable that developers and publishers feel they have to use Steam – and give away a slice of their revenue – in order to reach the largest audience possible.
Wait, not trying to be a “cultist” here, but if Valve requires devs/publishers to “offer Steam Keys on other stores at the same price that you offer the game on Steam”, then why do I keep finding Steam Keys much much cheaper elsewhere? Like, all the time…
G2A and the likes don’t count. I’ve also taken advantage of the poor economy of the 3rd world to buy cheaper games. You wouldn’t ask a watch store why doesn’t Rolex force the shady guy in an alley to offer the same prices they do.
I was actually thinking places like Humble, or often times I just go straight to the publisher or Dev, since they keep 100% of their profit that way and often offer a discount.
I have never used G2A, nor any site that redistributes keys in that manner.
But in the month it took you to respond, I already read up on this, and honestly you exaggerated your claims to the extent that I’m not really interested in asking your opinion anymore anyway. Your hate boner kinda showed through.
So I guess… uh… thanks for following up anyway and have a good one!
👋