Behold, "the whole story of Steam's economy in one picture": the top 1% of games earn 84.5% of estimated revenue, and most games barely make anything
7 hours ago by ルルㇲ to c/pcgaming
Weirdly, other stores get bashed for this for allowing “shovelware” type games like this. Why does valve get the pass?
These things regularly come up, and people complain about the obvious garbage, that constantly fill their store pages (which doesn't really happen to me).
Probably because the algorithm steam uses to promote games doesn't throw the crap stuff on the front page most of the time. So no one feels like they're paging through tons of spam to find the game they're looking for.
The flip side is that means if you're new, and write a good game, you better advertise it yourself, or it will die in obscurity.
Steam could invest more time curating and promoting indie content instead of the same games over and over and over. I can't remember the last time I opened the Store and saw a new game I hadn't heard of before.
It only shows me hentai games.
Literally a steam next fest promoting indies like every month or two? Idk what else you want?
They never said they pay attention or look around the page a little, they just said they open the store. So they likely see the first ad at the top and then close the store. Then they complain they cant find any games.
Then you haven't been looking at the MANY indie sales, or the Next Fest they put on every quarter where you can play hundreds of demos for indie games and try before you buy.
First off, that comes off as racist. Selling camels invokes the orientalist caricature of the people of the middle east. At best you sound like an edgy Twitch streamer. At worst you sound like a bigot. Neither of those is a good look.
Secondly, sure, I'll admit that it's not a great deal for people in poorer countries. Steam isn't a public utility, though. You can post to itch.io for free, and there is a MASSIVE userbase there. Get that $100 there and then bring it to Steam. That isn't a big ask. Is it another barrier to entry for someone from a poorer country? Yes, and that's unfortunate. However, it's not a high bar to clear. If you get popular on itch.io, Steam is a natural progression. And, again, that $100 is more like a deposit than a cost. It comes back after you make $1000 on the game. After that, it's free to host that game. And with it, you get discussion channels, social channels, the Steam Workshop integration, multiplayer hosting, and a ton of other benefits. Steam isn't the enemy you seem to want to make it out to be.
However, all of this is predicated on something that we haven't talked about. Right now, the US has sanctions against Iran. So, no matter what, Steam is legally barred from servicing Iranian accounts. However, this itch.io to Steam pipeline still does work in other countries without sanctions. Places like Brazil, India, and the Philippines are able to do things like this without an issue. I'll reiterate, it's not great that there's an extra step. Still, the extra step isn't a huge one, and if anything, it can help by growing a base on itch.io for free and then bringing that passion over to Steam. There are plenty of games that have famously made that jump and come out better for it.
That barrier to entry is absurdly low. If a game isn’t making sales, it’s not Steams fault, it’s advertising. ANYONE can list games, which means there is a lot of chaff on the market.
I’ll admit that it’s not a great deal for people in poorer countries. Steam isn’t a public utility, though. You can post to itch.io for free, and there is a MASSIVE userbase there
Glad you admitted your mistake.
Yep. Conceding the weak part of your own argument so it can't be used against you is a basic rhetorical move. You reaching for one liners instead of a rebuttal tells me it worked. I learned that from 8 Mile.
On the other hand, how many USD sales does it take to buy those camels back? The $100 isn't localized, but neither is revenue... If affording the $100 is really an issue, and you have a game that will sell, you could start a Kickstarter for $150 to cover the submission cost and likely have no trouble getting the funds, no?
Itch io is free. If you can't make $100 on itch then don't bother submitting to steam.
"Half of all paid games on Steam have earned less than an estimated $3,622 in their entire lifetime," the report reads. "A game at the 90th percentile has earned about $236,184, and the 99th percentile starts at $15,872,031."
10% making over $235k paints a very different picture tho...
Especially considering how 8/10 games seem to be utter slop lately.
Especially considering how 8/10 games seem to be utter slop lately.
'Platformer', 'roguelike', 'survival', 'base building'
Four horsemen of steam slop.
roguelike is a pretty cool genre with so many good games. Some of the best indie games are roguelikes. I wouldn't call the genre "slop".
Recall, percentages are projections for masses that can only count to 100. It is, as this data demonstrates, a very limiting projection for logarithmic scales. When folks can see the cliff, they truly see the nepotistic curation Valve rerewards. There’s no «Surprise me!» like in spotify or bandcamp. «New indie titles to try!» «Indie of the week!» etc..
Literally like…. 20 indie showcases and steam next fests and such a year which all promote indie games in their own preview/sale/etc?
Edit: literally a bowling and pinball showcase going on right now with plenty of niche indie games?
There's literally a "discover queue"....
What are you even bitching about?
Try these:
Edit: There is also a Categories menu with lots of tags and game genres to click, to see games in that category for inspiration. Such as when you click INDIE, the indie page opens: https://store.steampowered.com/tags/en/Indie
Screenshot
Is ‘games that sell more copies make more money’ supposed to surprise me?
Their analysis comes with the usual Steam research caveat: Valve doesn't publish revenue figures, so they're instead reverse-engineered using user reviews as a base that's then multiplied to estimate sales.
I didn't know how unreliable and bad the usual Steam research was. I always thought there must be a bit more sophisticated method of estimating.
Also, the more controversal and problematic a game is, the more reviews will be posted to inform others or to let out frustrations. Therefore some games or type of games will just get more reviews, which does not reflect the real number of sold games or generated money. So its not just about higher or lower numbers, the method of estimation is deeply flawed.
/sigh
They admit the numbers are estimates.
This doesn’t seem to take into account “paid games” that are mangles of free assets smashed into a scene.
I’m not saying there isn’t going to be disparity, because there absolutely is. But these numbers are just grasping at straws and don’t control for obvious issues.
This is one of the reasons why the narrative is nonsense that renting games is better because you can easily own "too many games" if you keep buying them and then... oh no!!! You own too many digital games!!!
When you buy an indie game you are supporting art whether you get to the game or not, remember that, which isn't to say buy random games but I think this statistic underlines how much it does matter to the smaller game developers to take a leap and buy their indie games. It helps that they usually cost 1/50th the cost of a AAA game lol....
You get access to the largest game distribution platform in the world, but you end up being a single game in a sea of competitors. You gotta distinguish yourself from the lot, on top of being lucky that your stars are aligned.
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It only costs $100 to list your own game on Steam, and that money is refunded if you make $1000. That's all there is. The rest is up to the dev or the publisher. That barrier to entry is absurdly low. If a game isn't making sales, it's not Steams fault, it's advertising. ANYONE can list games, which means there is a lot of chaff on the market. What do you want them to do? Increase the listing price so that trash games don't get listed as often? Then you cut out the good indie dev, too. Game dev is only half the battle. You still have to reach your market once you post your game.
Steam allows you to buy from whomever. Want to support an indie dev on their first title? Go for it. Steam won't stop you. You can be the change you want to see in the world.
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