It’s not like the value added for that 30% tax isn’t there. Steam has made so many things so easy that it’s easy to forget what things were like decades ago.
If you were an independent game publisher, you had to figure out how to set up a web storefront, a content delivery network hosted in perpetuity, take payments, do multiplayer, add in-game chat, map every weird joystick and gamepad in the universe to your control scheme, achievements, friend lists… And every game developer had to do that independently because there was no public solution, really. The friction to enter the indie dev space was so much higher.
Also, steam does not force you to use their store- you can generate steam keys and sell your game away from the steam platform. The only thing that they enforce is if you sell it for a lower price elsewhere, they’ll de-list your game. Which I think is reasonable.
It’s not like the value added for that 30% tax isn’t there. Steam has made so many things so easy that it’s easy to forget what things were like decades ago.
If you were an independent game publisher, you had to figure out how to set up a web storefront, a content delivery network hosted in perpetuity, take payments, do multiplayer, add in-game chat, map every weird joystick and gamepad in the universe to your control scheme, achievements, friend lists… And every game developer had to do that independently because there was no public solution, really. The friction to enter the indie dev space was so much higher.
Also, steam does not force you to use their store- you can generate steam keys and sell your game away from the steam platform. The only thing that they enforce is if you sell it for a lower price elsewhere, they’ll de-list your game. Which I think is reasonable.