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Matching Epic, Microsoft is slashing what it takes from developers to 12% on their PC store

The_Mike

I cry about SonyGaf from my chair in Redmond, WA
While steam has an 30 percent cut on sales to devs epic has for a while tried to get devs over by having a cut of only 12 percent and now Microsoft follows as well.

From the article here.


Now that they are friendly against developers they only need to be friendly towards the consumers and make some proper stores.

Seems like steam is getting a lot of pressure, but will their dominance on the market be enough to ignore it?

Edit: It is only for the PC store at the moment.
 
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Mr Moose

Member
Is this on PC? Or on the Xbox store?
PC games.
Microsoft is reducing the cut it takes from PC games sold on its store from 30 percent down to 12 percent.
"As part of our commitment to empower every PC game creator to achieve more, starting on August 1 the developer share of Microsoft Store PC games sales net revenue will increase to 88%, from 70%. A clear, no-strings-attached revenue share means developers can bring more games to more players and find greater commercial success from doing so."
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
Another desperate move to try and get some presence on PC that they've failed to do for the last 16 years or so is "pressure" on the competition? How does this make you more likely to use that as you admit basically broken service, considering Epic already proved "trickle down economy" false?

How is making even less money on it, suddenly going to get them to fix everything wrong with it, considering the only other store to pimp its low fees is also barebones with no features for users or developers with the only appeal being getting paid up front by Epic whether you sell or not?

Awesome, a lower fee, why did they return to Steam, this solves everything and makes them competitive, they should get off Steam! Here's what actual devs, with gamer customers and not billionaire CEO customers, or shills pretending to be devs or speak in favor of devs think.


Follow that string, that's The Long Dark's developer discussing it with someone pretending to be a developer or something, Idk, lots of gems in there showing how clueless people calling this some major development that puts pressure on anyone other than Microsoft itself is.

I guarantee if Steam offered a way to self publish your game without even the symbolic $1000 up front, with 10% only fee but then only match 1:1 the services and features of the "competition", separate from the main store, noone would use it as more than a free repository :messenger_poop:

And lol @ all the media praising it and at the same time making up excuses for why it doesn't apply on the console store where MS is making bank and has shit to offer to developers as long as they have a successful platform users engage with. That's not reporting, it's sucking company cock.

Edit: more relevant tweets since people are posting all kinds of bs here.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
Seems like steam is getting a lot of pressure, but will their dominance on the market be enough to ignore it?

Steam will still be around in 10 years.

It's questionable whether these other stores offering lower percentage cuts will be after the same time period. Epic for example are racking up big losses in the process of having lower cuts and throwing money around for "exclusive" games.

So how is the pressure on Steam again?
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
Steam can get away with it because no one buys games on epic or the MS store.

I do find Epics take of "more to the developers" pretty funny when video game companies make record profits these days. Indies I understand. Steam should change their pay scale to they only take 10% until the game makes a million or even 500,000. EA, Ubisoft, etc can pay more.

Steam is the only digital store I feel secure about buying from. My digital PS4 and Switch games will probably be non-existent in 20 years. I'll still be able to play HL1 in 20 years on Steam.
 
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harmny

Banned
Steam will still be around in 10 years.

It's questionable whether these other stores offering lower percentage cuts will be after the same time period. Epic for example are racking up big losses in the process of having lower cuts and throwing money around for "exclusive" games.

So how is the pressure on Steam again?

losing money is part of their strategy. amazon lost money for 20 years how did that worked out for them?
 
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Id say its a smart move not a desperate move.
yeah i agree with you completely. Phil has stated for a while now he is going to make moves to improve windows PC gaming. he started making cross progression/saves/play. now he's working on getting devs to buy into the eco system and they are now allowing normal apps such as games that arent specifically made with the windows store in mind and they are going to be working on the windows store interface. it takes time for these things to fall into place but it's clearly happening. I personally prefer games that are in PC gamepass or windows store for staying in that xbox eco system. all my friends have xbox and i prefer pc gaming. so now with xbox services on pc and crossplatform everything from parties to gaming just works perfectly with them.
 
Steam is going to exist for as long as PC Gamers exist, and it is the preferred gaming platform of all PC gamers - they also have an exponentially larger customer base than both Epic And Microsoft in terms of PC customers installed.

That will change as Microsoft and Gaming as a Service/Gamepass saturates the market - but right now and into the foreseeable future Steam is unrivaled.
 
Steam can get away with it because no one buys games on epic or the MS store.

I do find Epics take of "more to the developers" pretty funny when video game companies make record profits these days. Indies I understand. Steam should change their pay scale to they only take 10% until the game makes a million or even 500,000. EA, Ubisoft, etc can pay more.

Steam is the only digital store I feel secure about buying from. My digital PS4 and Switch games will probably be non-existent in 20 years. I'll still be able to play HL1 in 20 years on Steam.
it's funny you word it that way. xbox is the only digital store on consoles i feel secure buying from. nintendo wipes out digital purchases every generation and sony hasnt been preserving things as much as i would like either. microsoft has shown real interest, love, and care for backwards compatibility in the past and currently. but i do agree with you about steam. i also feel secure with them.
 
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GHG

Gold Member
losing money is part of their strategy. amazon lost money for 20 years how did that worked out for them?

Amazon is one example. I love it when people throw Amazon out there like every company is exactly like them (or has the potential to be exactly like them). There are far more companies that didn't survive which were of similar size (at the time) to Amazon who lost money prior to and after the dot com bubble.

Amazon only survived that long because of luck and fortunate timing - Bezos has admitted as much. You can only burn cash for a certain amount of time before it comes back and bites you in the ass. If you don't convert the cash burn to profit within a certain period of time then you're in trouble. Microsoft have much more leeway than Epic in that regard.
 
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Amazon is one example. I love it when people throw Amazon out there like every company is exactly like them (or has the potential to be exactly like them). There are far more companies that didn't survive which were of similar size (at the time) to Amazon who lost money prior to and after the dot com bubble.

Amazon only survived that long because of luck and fortunate timing - Bezos has admitted as much. You can only burn cash for a certain amount of time before it comes back and bites you in the ass. If you don't convert the cash burn to profit within a certain period of time then you're in trouble. Microsoft have much more leeway than Epic in that regard.
yeah considering microsoft is a trillion dollar company i'd agree they do have much more leeway. however, microsoft (like google and others) has a bad habit of building something and then dropping support quickly. I will say this current microsoft has proven and shown real interest in xbox as a service and gaming moving forward as a core pillar to their company. time will tell.
 

Hendrick's

If only my penis was as big as my GamerScore!
wow, some cut! and yes, Steam is going nowhere, will still be around. Steam is an eternal thought in the mind of God...
If Steam continues to be clunky and does not evolve, I can see it being overtaken. I'm not sure they can even come up with an answer for streaming that can compete with the big boys. Hell I'm old enough to remember when Steam received the same hate you kids throw at these other new stores. It's just a matter of time.
 

FStubbs

Member
Steam will still be around in 10 years.

It's questionable whether these other stores offering lower percentage cuts will be after the same time period. Epic for example are racking up big losses in the process of having lower cuts and throwing money around for "exclusive" games.

So how is the pressure on Steam again?
Epic will be fine as long as Tencent is backing them. Tencent's goal is to starve Steam out of content and that's a long term strategy.
 

Larxia

Member
I don't want to sound like a steam fanboy, and yes I guess the cut on steam could be lower (though that could be said for ton of things, like psn, xbox, nintendo store, apple store etc... all taking 30%, and the steam cut can actually go down to 20% on popular titles), but while Epic and the Windows store do now have lower cuts, their stores are absolutely awful and the experience and service are far from being as good as Steam.

Valve takes more, but it also seems like they invest more into their own platform to keep it the best. I wouldn't want a "more generous" Steam that would lead to a barebone plateform. Yes they take more, but they provide more tools, steamworks with online servers for all the games being published on steam, forums and all kind of things that the devs / publishers don't have to deal with when they go through Steam, I don't think that's negligeable.

Now if a store manage to become as good or even better than Steam, while having a much lower cut, we'll talk about that again for sure, but for now what I notice is that's it's far from being the case yet.

30% is still big and it could probably be lower while offering these services, I don't deny that, but again, so much other platforms also take 30% and aren't as good, so I'm just not sure why there's such a focus on Steam in particular taking 30%.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
I don't want to sound like a steam fanboy, and yes I guess the cut on steam could be lower (though that could be said for ton of things, like psn, xbox, nintendo store, apple store etc... all taking 30%, and the steam cut can actually go down to 20% on popular titles), but while Epic and the Windows store do now have lower cuts, their stores are absolutely awful and the experience and service are far from being as good as Steam.

Valve takes more, but it also seems like they invest more into their own platform to keep it the best. I wouldn't want a "more generous" Steam that would lead to a barebone plateform. Yes they take more, but they provide more tools, steamworks with online servers for all the games being published on steam, forums and all kind of things that the devs / publishers don't have to deal with when they go through Steam, I don't think that's negligeable.

Now if a store manage to become as good or even better than Steam, while having a much lower cut, we'll talk about that again for sure, but for now what I notice is that's it's far from being the case yet.

30% is still big and it could probably be lower while offering these services, I don't deny that, but again, so much other platforms also take 30% and aren't as good, so I'm just not sure why there's such a focus on Steam in particular taking 30%.
And Steam keys to sell anywhere outside Steam without fees, 0%. That's pretty important and not only drives more sales in certain situations and regions, but also keeps a bunch of other stores alive, rather than just some chosen partner like Epic partnered with Humble just to pretend they too can do this (but really don't, they get a cut there too since they changed from the key system to just account linking iirc). Also, it's been said Steam loses more money by cutting the fee on the higher end to 20% than if they did that at the low end. It can be seen as not very indie friendly (though plenty indies sell more than enough to reach at least the 25% tier) but the idea is they've paid enough to keep the service and all it offers going for everyone, not to get away without paying out of charity or kindness under arbitrary conditions of what is and what isn't an indie etc., just facts, $$$.
 
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ZehDon

Member
It's a good move, but the Microsoft Store - or the Xbox App, even - have a long way to go before they're even close to Steam. Epic's store is making baby steps, but in terms of pure user experience, I can fire up Steam, buy a new game, and be downloading it in seconds. That level of instantaneous acquisition is just hard to beat.

With that said, Steam's 30% cut (25% of $10m - $50m sales, 20% for all sales above) is a massive cut for smaller developers considering the pure difficulty of getting traction on Steam. In the time when being on Steam meant you were given a podium and an audience, sure, 30% made sense. But that hasn't been the case in years. Now-a-days, Steam is little more than a file hosting and payment facilities service for the majority of titles. Hopefully Epic and Microsoft can act as real competition.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
If Steam continues to be clunky and does not evolve, I can see it being overtaken. I'm not sure they can even come up with an answer for streaming that can compete with the big boys. Hell I'm old enough to remember when Steam received the same hate you kids throw at these other new stores. It's just a matter of time.
Er, Steam evolves constantly both on what consumers get as far as features are concerned (I mean, you have people adding their free EGS games to Steam just to get controller mapping and use Steam forums for socializing and support etc.) but also on the developer backend (which we see many of the complainers don't even know all the power that's at devs fingertips, from release, early access, private tests, price setting, Linux versions, analytics, and so on and so forth), it's the other clients that don't even seem to try and play catch up at this point and so just reduce fees as a crutch (how did it ever make sense to pay the same % when you get so much less, for anyone to suddenly now think that when you also get much more, the % should be the same as the one that offers the least?). As for streaming, they're clearly experimenting with it a lot, remote play together is basically p2p cloud streaming as a step above what they were doing with the likes of Steam Link features for local networks and devices and so on, all that work will be used and expanded when and if we reach a point where consumers prefer their games on the cloud without even the degree of control and ownership you get as of now (which theoretically is super limited but in practice I can do basically whatever I want, on any device I own, use mods, family share, etc., about the only thing I can't do atm compared to physical copies is resell it, but have other perks instead).
 
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zeorhymer

Member
I'd like to know their PC Store sales number and compare that with the number of GamePass holders. Do people actually buy games or wait till it's on GamePass or play it on GamePass and wait till it's on sale?
 

Dabaus

Banned
I saw where steam was just hit with a lawsuit, same day as this news drop. MS is obviously playing dirty here using lawfare tactics behind the scenes. I wonder if it’s illegal for steam to ban Microsoft game from their platform or If that’s even legal?
All in my opinion of course.
 
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rofif

Can’t Git Gud
This will not lead to cheaper games or more wealthy developers. Just worse servers and client probably.
Servers cost a fortune
 
If Steam continues to be clunky and does not evolve, I can see it being overtaken. I'm not sure they can even come up with an answer for streaming that can compete with the big boys.
the sales are really great, and offline mode is fantastic. you're probably right, but, clunky or not, it just works for pc players. i actually find some nostalgia in it's quirks.
...the same hate you kids throw..
oh you bastard!!!
 
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Reindeer

Member
Can't take them seriously until they do the same for their console store. Their PC store is shambles that nobody uses so it's not a big deal for them to do this, if anything it's just a good PR move.
 
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M1chl

Currently Gif and Meme Champion
So why it isn't like this on Xbox then? Because that would certainly be big move, this is just a gesture to get media attention in my opinion, because everyone is using Xbox PC client as a way to GamePass....
 

ZehDon

Member
I saw where steam was just hit with a lawsuit, same day as this news drop. MS is obviously playing dirty here using lawfare tactics behind the scenes. I wonder if it’s illegal for steam to ban Microsoft game from their platform or If that’s even legal?
All in my opinion of course.
"Microsoft obviously playing dirty... behind the scenes".... what the fuck are you talking about? Do you mean this law suit, that Microsoft aren't involved with? It is painfully clear you don't have the slightest idea about anything you're posting about. Think before you post, friend. Please.
 
gjYwB0B.png
 
So why it isn't like this on Xbox then? Because that would certainly be big move, this is just a gesture to get media attention in my opinion, because everyone is using Xbox PC client as a way to GamePass....
Because that would be throwing money away. On PC, they aren't very competitive. Epic and MS have to do stuff like this to even to be st all competitive with Steam. Even then, it won't really help.

PC gaming IS Steam.
 

Bo_Hazem

Banned
Another desperate move to try and get some presence on PC that they've failed to do for the last 16 years or so is "pressure" on the competition? How does this make you more likely to use that as you admit basically broken service, considering Epic already proved "trickle down economy" false?

How is making even less money on it, suddenly going to get them to fix everything wrong with it, considering the only other store to pimp its low fees is also barebones with no features for users or developers with the only appeal being getting paid up front by Epic whether you sell or not?

Awesome, a lower fee, why did they return to Steam, this solves everything and makes them competitive, they should get off Steam! Here's what actual devs, with gamer customers and not billionaire CEO customers, or shills pretending to be devs or speak in favor of devs think.


Follow that string, that's The Long Dark's developer discussing it with someone pretending to be a developer or something, Idk, lots of gems in there showing how clueless people calling this some major development that puts pressure on anyone other than Microsoft itself is.

I guarantee if Steam offered a way to self publish your game without even the symbolic $1000 up front, with 10% only fee but then only match 1:1 the services and features of the "competition", separate from the main store, noone would use it as more than a free repository :messenger_poop:

And lol @ all the media praising it and at the same time making up excuses for why it doesn't apply on the console store where MS is making bank and has shit to offer to developers as long as they have a successful platform users engage with. That's not reporting, it's sucking company cock.


The inevitable is happening.
 

Mattyp

Gold Member
If Steam continues to be clunky and does not evolve, I can see it being overtaken. I'm not sure they can even come up with an answer for streaming that can compete with the big boys. Hell I'm old enough to remember when Steam received the same hate you kids throw at these other new stores. It's just a matter of time.

Remember when steam first launched and was bundled with Source and we had no option but to use always on DRM to play it? The outcry was unreal. Steam was always a steaming hunk of junk that never worked back then. Some people think it’s been perfect from day one haven’t known the generation before Steam of using clients like gamespyarcade for multiplayer.

That said, 10 years or so Steam will fall to a Microsoft purchase. Or whenever Gaben kicks the bucket and the family sell.
 

A.Romero

Member
Gamepass is getting some good faith (and revenue) from me but I still don't trust Microsoft in the long run. They killed games for windows live and I never saw the few games I had there again.

I have been a Steam customer for about 12 years or so, never had an issue of something being unavailable or even need to return a game. I like to hear that developers get more money but to be honest as a customer that's not a priority. Get me a functional store that has all the features we have grown accustomed to, inspire trust about your position in the market in the long term, give me regionalized pricing for games... I'll be interested then. In the meantime Steam will continue to be my main platform.
 

PhoenixTank

Member
Might make the devs happier, but they really need to do better with the store itself. Hear about a lot of friction with the restricted folders, downloads and general install management. Hopefully they're watching the UX for people with gamepass and working on it, but it is Microsoft. Fuck knows.

That said, 10 years or so Steam will fall to a Microsoft purchase. Or whenever Gaben kicks the bucket and the family sell.
Only the latter is likely. Privately owned and I don't much think Gabe wants to hand it back to his old bosses.
 

Mattyp

Gold Member
Only the latter is likely. Privately owned and I don't much think Gabe wants to hand it back to his old bosses.

The later actually referred to the first part to, just don’t know if he’ll make it another 10 years. Surprised us to date but.

Doubt the Mother & Son will have the same love for it and staying firm and opt for the $10 billion dollar pay day instead.
 

Dream-Knife

Banned
Yeah, millions. Xbox Play Anywhere games on Windows Store and Xbox One/Series count as 1 sale. Unified platform.
Isn't that just Xbox players though? I don't know a single pc player who uses MS. Few use Epic, and that's only to get free games. More use Activisions battle.net, but that's only for warzone. Most COD players are on PS.
 
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PhoenixTank

Member
The later actually referred to the first part to, just don’t know if he’ll make it another 10 years. Surprised us to date but.

Doubt the Mother & Son will have the same love for it and staying firm and opt for the $10 billion dollar pay day instead.
Nah fair then :)
Only 58 atm - he might just upload his consciousness to the web before his death for all we know. Must be doing something with the Valve money vault.

Probably right on his family, though I seem to remember his son being interested but wanting changes.
 

GhostOfTsu

Banned
One of the reasons I bought a Series X is because I couldn't wait to delete my GP versions of Gears 5, The Medium, FH4 and Dragon Quest on my PC. I hate that store and all the hidden files. Like I have to Google everytime I want to access the folders. Everything is hidden. F that.

Their cut should be 0%
 

Juza

Member
EA and Ubi have their platforms that are 10 years old with all their AAA shit and yet they couldn't compete with that mammoth called Steam. Hell, even EA decided to come back and distribute their games on it.

Steam's new competitors either don't understand or unconvinced about how Steam has succeeded, although it's obvious.
 

sn0man

Member
yeah considering microsoft is a trillion dollar company i'd agree they do have much more leeway. however, microsoft (like google and others) has a bad habit of building something and then dropping support quickly. I will say this current microsoft has proven and shown real interest in xbox as a service and gaming moving forward as a core pillar to their company. time will tell.
This sums up a decent bit of it. Amazon has generally just expanded the things they offer while squeezing suppliers to their store and services.

Microsoft in the PC world has been steady for OS and other stuff but game stores specifically have already fumbled. For me at least, every time a tech company fumbles and shutters something I have a mental reset. I think do I want to invest any money into this?

Valve has been pretty consistent on game stores like MS on Office software suites. Just keep doing that thing and being a standard. Sure Valve kinda let some of their accessories fall by the wayside, so it’s not impossible but Steam, nahhh. That’s been consistent as hell.
 
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