Miles | Anime by the Numbers

I'm gonna spell this out because this issue is deceptively subtle: 1. The Steam client and infrastructure is somewhere between "not that hard" and "trivial". It's a download service attached to a payment processor with a smattering of services on the side. Cloud providers handle all the infrastructure these days. 2. Steam takes 30% of gross revenue; ostensibly for the privilege of using these services, but in reality it is purely to get access to the massive Steam userbase. 3. Steam users love Steam and having their whole library in one place. It works. It's dependable. It has sales and cards and achievements, oh my! 4. PC developers have no option but to distribute through Steam or lose the vast majority of sales. Not releasing on Steam destroys the business model. 5. Therefore, no amount of competition will ever unseat Steam. People post-hoc rationalize this with memes about how gracious Gabe is. And how brilliant their services are. But realistically, no avid Steam user wants other stores to succeed. The mere existence of other stores risks splintering their precious collection. They are "all in" on Steam. Invested. Even if an alternative were objectively better, by whatever metric you care about, it would still be of no interest to Steam users. They would in fact find it to be a problem and a threat to their investment. Competition in this space is not only uninteresting to most Steam users, it's actively denigrated! The CONSEQUENCE of this situation, is that 30% of all gross revenue is siphoned out of the PC games industry into a black hole. It doesn't recirculate into studios. It doesn't pay any bonuses. It doesn't fund any sequels or DLC. This is a particularly insidious tax because it's well hidden. It's a second order effect. Most Steams users don't know, and the few that do never consider the aggregate effect this has on their favorite hobby. It's undeniable that, at this point in history, Valve could EASILY lower the distribution fee while maintaining healthy margins. But they don't have to. Users are locked into Steam and therefore developers are stuck paying 30% of gross revenue to Valve. The irony is that Steam users, the very ones maintaining this unbreakable stalemate, would benefit the most from a better financed game development ecosystem. I don't think this is fixable. It's just sad.