• Grimy@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Did you read your own article?

    In 2021, Microsoft estimated Valve’s annual revenue at $6.5 billion, roughly on the same scale as EA’s $7.5 billion in 2024 revenue. But Steam achieved those numbers with around 350 employees, compared to well over 13,000 people employed by EA.

    The disparity highlights just how much money Valve brings in with a relatively small workforce. And a lot of that is thanks to the chunk of revenue Valve takes from every sale on Steam.

    That’s the indie industry getting fucked right there, but sure, drink Gabbens sweat.

    The actual revenue is difficult because it’s all estimation, they clearly don’t want us to know and hide it. One website says 13 billion lol, and they brought it an estimated 1 billion just from Counter-strike crates. I got 8.5 from the article that was posted two days ago. Whatever it is, it’s too fucking high, stop defending multi billionaires.

    • ashok36@lemmy.world
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      5 months ago

      Go ask any indie developer if they think the 30% cut valve takes from sales through steam means they’re “getting fucked”. I can assure you, the vast majority do not.

      Serving files, absorbing the costs of credit card payments and charge backs, and maintaining community forums is worth the 30% alone. Hell, just being able to list your product on the most popular store is worth it for some people.

      In my industry, physical stores won’t even consider stocking your product for less than 40pts of margin and the big guys expect you to absorb the freight costs as well.

      30% on storefront sales and you can sell your own keys for 100% profit on your own site is more than fair.

        • ashok36@lemmy.world
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          5 months ago

          I can’t read the link but if we just gauge the health of the indie game portion of the industry by how many games are released, I think the only conclusion you can make is that it’s quite healthy. In no small part due to steam which provides discoverability for smaller titles and handles a lot of the technical stuff (downloads, multi-player, even drm) so indie devs don’t have to.

          You just seem to have a chip on your shoulder in this department and it’s not clear why other than “billionaires are bad”.