30% is the industry standard across the board, with the exception of Epic which takes 12%. However, Epic has already shown that it’s ready to dump loads of money into store exclusivity deals and tons of free games, so I will argue it’s for the sake of growing the number of users and developers using their platform.

But do they, or any other competitor or similar store, offer the same functionality as Steam? rtxn already mentioned some. And there’s more. And then there’s the fact that Valve is using all that money not only to stuff the pockets of alread rich people (not that Gabe isn’t a multi-millionaire if not billionaire, idk), but actually puts it back into the industry: Their own store, Linux/Proton (you may not care, but Microsoft becoming a monopoly in PC gaming is no good), and hardware (with their Steam Deck handheld, and VR stuffs).

Steam might be the biggest player when it comes to storefronts, but it’s because they’ve actually earned it. And they’re not actively preventing other competitors from entering the scene (other than existing). In fact, they keep trying, and keep failing, and then going back to Steam.

I’m not opposed to more money going to developers, but let’s not single out Steam, who (perhaps besides GOG? I am not familiar enough with it) is doing the most for users and develpers.

And they’re not actively preventing other competitors from entering the scene

Doesn’t Steam also mandate that a game on Steam that’s also on other platforms MUST have the lowest price on Steam? So if a game goes on sale on another store, the Steam version must also match that sale within a given time period.

That’s a pretty big road block, especially if a developer might be willing to sell for a lower price on another storefront that takes another cut.

THAT is actively blocking competition.

That requirement only exists when you also offer a Steam key for the game that’s being sold. So Valve is actually the good guy here: You can sell on another store, where Steam doesn’t get any money, and give the user a Steam key, provided by Steam for free, and the only thing they ask is to match the price on Steam.

Don’t offer a Steam key, and you can pick any price.

That is my understanding of the issue.

There is a claim by some developers that Valve was pressuring them behind the scenes (“don’t offer your game for cheaper elsewhere or else we’ll take it down from our store”) a while ago, but I’ve never seen appropriate proof of it, and that was part of (an earlier?) lawsuit.

We should regularly be seeing lower All-Time-Lows for most multi-platform games on non-Steam platforms then, right?

I don’t think we do. Why not?

Why should we see that?

How much income per sale a seller is willing to accept is a big part of the equation that goes into pricing

And? If they sell at the same price as Steam but with the store taking a smaller cut they’ll make more money per sale.

A lower price may attract more buyers, leading to more money overall (rather than only seeking to maximize each individual sale)

And which platform has the most potential buyers, by a long shot? Steam. That’s why you’re usually seeing all time lows on the Steam platform, because the sheer amount of buyers outweighs the per sale loss.

If a dev wants to make X per game, they could get X with a lower price point on Epic. To still get X, they could sell the game for a lower price on Epic. That lower price may get some people to buy the game who wouldn’t buy it for anything more.

The game can still be sold on both Steam and Epic, which is the whole point of this discussion, so Steam having a larger userbase is irrelevant.

That’s where your thought process is wrong, when you sell something that you can replicate for free the thought process isn’t “I need to cover my costs of Y and make Z% profit on top of that” the thought process is “What is the maximum amount I can charge without losing too many customers, maybe even make 1 or 2 different collectors editions to get the people what wanna pay even more” > you catch all the people that pay full price at launch and a couple months later you put it on a 20% sale to get everyone else.