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this post was submitted on 12 Aug 2024
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30% is a reasonable cut for the distribution of software for which almost all revenue is marginal profit. When it's a transaction for services that cost money to provide (like Uber or online shopping) or a transfer of money on behalf of someone else (think Venmo or PayPal or just a regular banking app), a 30% cut of the whole transaction doesn't always make sense.
Apple recognizes this and doesn't take a 30% cut for those types of services. But they don't always categorize things correctly. Patreon is something like PayPal, whether the app owner takes a a small cut of each transaction, so paying 30% represents a huge cut, like 10x as much as they make.
Apple (and Google and Steam) are taking a software distribution cut for a service that more closely resembles payment processing, which is usually a 1-3% fee, not a 30% fee.
Exactly what is Steam doing now? AFAIK only charges fees sales of games through the Steam platform, from which developers get a LOT of value.
What value are they getting, other than making use of Steam's market dominance? And having DRM added? And that's worth 30% of their income?
Reminds me of the monty python sketch, "what have the romans ever done for us? except sanitation and roads and canals and public health" lol.
Steam gives devs a huge marketing presence that smaller devs simply wouldn't have otherwise, it gives countless high bandwidth distribution servers that automatically scale to demand, you can integrate the largest PC social community for matchmaking or other multiplayer features, you get a community page where people can post fan content or mods, etc.
That is worth way more than 30% to most devs. The only ones who it's not worth it for are huge companies like Blizzard and Epic who can manage all that themselves, hence why they're pretty much the only ones who don't sell games on Steam.