People talk about the cut as if it's a tax that, if lowered, would benefit consumers because prices for games would fall, but this is just not true.

Steam does not require pricing parity between marketplaces as long as you are not distributing Steam keys through them. I.e. if you sell Steam keys on Humble Bundle, you have to have price parity with Steam and match sales within 30 days before/after the Humble sale. But if you also sell on GOG, which does not provide Steam keys, the GOG price can be whatever you want. (So if you sell on these 3 platforms, if the normal Steam price is $30, then the normal Humble price also has to be $30, but you can price it on GOG at $5 all the time.)

To further illustrate my point, let's take some real-world examples. Ubisoft owns the Ubisoft Store and presumably takes a 0% cut for their own titles. The Ubisoft Store does not sell Steam keys, so it is not required to have pricing parity with Steam. One would therefore expect Ubisoft would attempt to court players into its own store with lower prices so they could get a higher percentage of each sale.

But if we look at Assassin's Creed Valhalla, the regular price is the same on both storefronts. Even more interesting is when we look at historical price data [0], which shows it actually goes on sale on Steam more often than it does on the Ubisoft Store.

Likewise, EA has F1 2024 available for pre-order at $69.99 on both Steam and the EA Store [1]. EA Sports FC 2024 also has the same normal price of $69.99 on both Steam and the EA Store, and it seems to go on sale on both platforms at about the same rate [2].

Cyberpunk 2077, developed by CDPR, owners of GOG, is also priced the same across all storefronts and goes on sale at about the same frequency on each [3].

For lack of a better term, the cut is a cost of doing business - it's a hidden tax that doesn't affect the end price consumers pay, even absent the typical pricing parity agreements that many D2C companies have entered into to get their product on traditional retailers' shelves.

Even in cases where there are no legal obligations to price match, the companies still do it, and when you think about it, the reason is obvious: the only people who benefit from a cut being lowered are executives who see bigger bonuses and shareholders who see larger dividends and increased stock prices. It doesn't actually affect the consumer, nor does it result in better pay for the individual developers.

If the cut were reduced (and back when games were mostly distributed by retailers, the cut was typically 60%+, so we have historical precedent for the effects of it being reduced), very few companies would drop prices - most would be content to enjoy the extra revenue because games are not a standardized commodity thanks to IP laws. (Think about it: Forza and Dirt don't really compete in the same market, despite both being racing sims, so one dropping the price won't be winning many customers from the other.)

I'm sure some small indie devs could meaningfully benefit from a smaller cut by the storefront, but indie devs typically price their games lower, so the ultimate monetary gain is much smaller for them than it is for Ubisoft, EA, etc. and if a decreased cut is what saves them from bankruptcy, they weren't in a very sustainable position to begin with.

I'm not trying to say a 30% cut is right, just that people talk about it as if lowering it would be a win for the consumer and for individual developers (and that Valve is holding the industry back as a result), when historically, the only ones who have really benefited are the AAAs' C-levels and shareholders.

[0]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/assassins-creed-valhalla/his...

[1]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/f1-24/info/

[2]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/ea-sports-fc-24/history/

[3]: https://isthereanydeal.com/game/cyberpunk-2077/history/