![]() That’s due to a combination of the massive noise of dozens of releases each day and discoverability issues that Valve should have seen coming after the iOS App Store fell victim to them years before. That’s down from 39 percent the year before.Įpic is striking when the iron is hottest.Īccording to Mike Rose, founder of indie publisher No More Robots, the average Steam release sells approximately 2,000 units (total) and makes $12,500 in its first month and $30,000 in its first year. Only 11 percent of the 167 respondents believed that Steam had earned its 30 percent cut in the past year. In an annual survey conducted by Lars Doucet, co-founder of Level Up Labs, developers had the chance to chime in on the perceived value of being on the Steam storefront. Put simply: Steam releases still cost developers 30 percent of every copy sold, as it always has, but the platform’s value has decreased as more releases flood the storefront. There’s very little by way of support that Valve is able to offer in terms of visibility. New releases are getting shuffled off the front page rapidly. The Steam library is growing at an enormous rate and Valve hasn’t given stakeholders the necessary discoverability tools. Last year? That number fell, but to only 40 percent. ![]() In 2015, 59 percent of all games on the platform were released in that year. About 43 percent of all Steam games were released in 2014. In 2014, Steam started to develop a problem with discoverability. Sure, it means more revenue and power, but it also requires a level of investment in infrastructure and systems to continue serving stakeholders (both developers and consumers) with the same level of care. While Steam has been the king of the hill for a decade, it wasn’t until 2014 that success became a problem for Valve. In 2017,Ī quick look at the trajectory creates a picture of what started to go wrong: That accounted for 43 percent of the total number of titles available on the service. In 2017, more than 7,600 games were released on Steam. That was enough up until a few years ago. You give us 30 percent, and we’ll put your game on in front of the biggest PC gaming audience in the world. It was an easy selling proposition for Valve. It was worth the 30 percent cut that Valve was taking to be in front of thousands (at the time) and now 125 million registered users. And developers and publishers were eager to play along. It didn’t take long for fans to clamor for all PC releases to arrive on Steam. At the time, the concept was revolutionary: a unified storefront for games with auto-patching to ensure that you were always playing the most up-to-date version. Valve launched Steam just over 15 years ago. To understand why Epic and Discord are making huge waves, you have to look at trends. So… why are indie devs excited about the Epic Games Store? Coffee Stain Studios’ “Satisfactory”? Not only an Epic Games Store release, but the game’s Steam page has been wiped from existence. The Souls-like “Ashen” from A44 and published by Annapurna Interactive? Surprise launched on the Epic Games Store during The Game Awards. Supergiant’s new roguelite “Hades”? Epic Games Store exclusive. Team Meat’s “Super Meat Boy Forever”? Epic Games Store exclusive. While Valve was busy focusing on the drove of AAA titles it was losing to publisher-run distribution (“Call of Duty: Black Ops 4”, “Fallout 76”, and “Battlefield V”, among others), Epic was quietly wooing indie devs with exclusivity deals. In fact, it often takes actual decline rather than the threat of it to move entrenched market leaders. That’s not to say Valve actually is worried about the newly announced Epic Game Store, though. Valve should be scrambling to figure out where it went wrong, especially since Epic’s announcement was perfectly timed to make Steam’s recent AAA-leaning changes to revenue sharing look embarrassing by contrast. ![]() And earlier this month, Discord announced it would be delivering a revenue split of 90/10 in favor of creators. ![]() Discord also has 130 million users as of May 2018, with 19 million logging in on a daily basis. That same 88/12 revenue split is a hallmark of the Epic Games Store’s showy entrance into the competitive digital distribution arena.ĭiscord, which started selling games in October, has the advantage of offering a universal launcher, bringing together most of your game library ( and Epic Games Store don’t seem to be functioning perfectly yet). Oh, and it made that adjustment retroactive for four years. Epic also turned the screws on one of Unreal Engine’s key competitors, Unity, by shifting its revenue share from the traditional 70/30 split to 88/12 in favor of asset creators.
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