Randy Pitchford on Steam: 'Valve is taking a larger share than it should'
by Christopher Grant 
{ Oct 7th 2009 at 8:29PM } 
Of course, the idea that an independent video game developer would perceive one of the most successful digital distribution platforms for PC games in existence being controlled by essentially a competitor as troubling is ... well, it's enormously understandable. The question then is, why haven't more developers spoken out? While Apple's iTunes Music Store regularly gathers plenty of music industry grumping, Steam has coasted by on a wave of industry support.
The solution? Says Pitchford, "It would be much better if Steam was its own business." If Valve spun off the content delivery system, it would also remove the perceived conflict of interest Pitchford takes umbrage with. "Steam helps us as customers, but it's also a money grab, and Valve is exploiting a lot of people in a way that's not totally fair," Pitchford says. "Valve is taking a larger share than it should for the service it's providing. It's exploiting a lot of small guys."
Yeah. We expect to hear more on this all week long.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Alton Brown [ XBL: LordToastington] @ Oct 7th 2009 8:33PM
Hey, look. Penis-Face is back.
The Dark Wayne [Planeteer: Power of the Batusi] @ Oct 7th 2009 8:37PM
http://instantseinfeld.com/
Jose @ Oct 7th 2009 8:40PM
Alton just said "penis-face" and you posted a link. I'm definitely not clicking on it, and I suggest no one else does either. There could be ANYTHING waiting for us on the other side, and what is seen can never be unseen. That's the only warning you'll get!
Alton Brown [ XBL: LordToastington] @ Oct 7th 2009 8:41PM
I fucking love Seinfeld.
Look At This Suit @ Oct 7th 2009 8:43PM
It's The Dark Wayne. And It's "Instant Seinfeld". It's not like it says "Instant Goatse!".
I clicked. I'll click twice for you, Jose.
Tom Kalinske, CEO. (tomkalinske.blogspot.com) @ Oct 7th 2009 8:44PM
If someone says something bad about Seinfeld, I will sew their ass to their face!
[ArchiGamer] [80% ENTERTAINMENT BY VOLUME] @ Oct 7th 2009 9:00PM
Thanks Tom, now I can't get that image out of my head. >:/
sonicspike41 @ Oct 7th 2009 9:04PM
I've only ever known one person to master the art of hiding a link as something else on Joystiq.
It may have been long after the fad had died, but I'll never forget the day Saria The Cat rick roll'd everyone on the 'stiq.
The Dark Wayne [Planeteer: Power of the Batusi] @ Oct 7th 2009 9:06PM
God dammit that was epic
[ArchiGamer] [80% ENTERTAINMENT BY VOLUME] @ Oct 7th 2009 9:07PM
Oh God, I remember that.
Look At This Suit @ Oct 7th 2009 9:10PM
Almost everyone in this thread has fancy brackets and I want fancy brackets and I'm jealous :(
Alton Brown [ XBL: LordToastington] @ Oct 7th 2009 9:41PM
But... Your suit! Look at it!
Sly (Now in Critter Form!) @ Oct 7th 2009 9:47PM
oh my god. i really need to learn how to do that from her.
sonicspike41 @ Oct 7th 2009 10:06PM
I tried a few of the usual suspects:
a href=""
[url]
[url=]
None worked :(
Tom Kalinske, CEO. (tomkalinske.blogspot.com) @ Oct 7th 2009 8:33PM
Oh, this is not going to end well...
lnternetjesus @ Oct 7th 2009 8:33PM
Blog Bait Detected!
Simeon @ Oct 7th 2009 10:37PM
Free marketing ahoy!
The Pie Pieper @ Oct 7th 2009 8:35PM
Whaaannnnn
I don't know about anyone else, but I've never been "Exploited" by Valve.
Look At This Suit @ Oct 7th 2009 8:39PM
Are you a developer?
hobocop @ Oct 7th 2009 8:40PM
Unless you're an independent developer, I don't think Pitchford is talking about you.
Jose @ Oct 7th 2009 8:42PM
Gabe Newell once forced me to turn tricks while promoting Steam, back when no everyone hated it. It's a sad time in my life, suit, thanks.
Tom Kalinske, CEO. (tomkalinske.blogspot.com) @ Oct 7th 2009 8:48PM
In Soviet Russia, You exploit Valve!
Jose @ Oct 7th 2009 8:50PM
I thought that was in Rand McNally...
SEVENim @ Oct 7th 2009 8:36PM
this just reminded me that i was going to reinstall steam the other day.
thanks
PR0F3TA (PSN - PROPHETA) @ Oct 7th 2009 8:38PM
So what? what does this mean for me... nothing. I have steam and it delivers.
Look At This Suit @ Oct 7th 2009 8:42PM
The point is that IF this is true, then it's bad for developers. If developers want to put their content on Steam, then Valve is going to take a cut of the money. Pitchford says that Valve is taking more than they should from those sales. In the long run, if that continues or it grows, then developers are going to stop putting their content on Steam, especially the small guys.
It's a paradox, in a way. Put your content on Steam, get your name out there, but have Valve take a cut, or leave it to its own devices, risk not having that exposure, and getting more of that sales money.
Jose @ Oct 7th 2009 8:44PM
It's a riddle wrapped in a conundrum rolled in a Peach Optimo.
Zac @ Oct 7th 2009 8:58PM
I believe that if Valve notices that devs have a problem with it's cut, they'll relax their ratio a little.
JimboTJones @ Oct 7th 2009 9:52PM
@ Look At This Suit
These are some quotes from an interview with Dylan Fitterer, the creator of Audiosurf which is one of the better selling indie games out there:
Q: Right now you're only on Steam. Do you feel like you missed out, not having a boxed version?
A: No, not at all. We're not exclusive on Steam. I mean, Steam's the only place to buy right now, but that's not the entire story. There's no contractual requirement or anything.
Q: But Steam's treating you well?
A: Oh yeah, I'm really happy with those guys, it couldn't be better.
Source: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2008/03/catching-waveforms-audiosurf-creator-dylan-speaks.ars
Now, unfortunately I can't find a link to confirm it but I remember hearing that Dylan made something like $4 million dollars through sales of Audiosurf. I want to say I saw that on G4 a while back (or possibly MTV). It was during a story about independent developers and I haven't been able to find any proof of that so it is nothing but a rumor.
I just have a hard time believing Pitchford since I hadn't heard anything negative about Steam from any of these small, indie developers before he mentioned it.
alinos @ Oct 8th 2009 3:44AM
Haha steam increases the sales of titles in my view
Games stores around here are unwilling to stock much more that WoW cards and WoW itself and then the blizzard vaults of SC and diablo along with CoD as nothing else sells enough and they cant resell it as it cant be returned
ive bought games from steam because there here when im bored or because i think its sumthing ill get around to playing at some point(entire PoP SoT series the otherday)
i also brought all of the sam and max things and the tales of monkey island because they were there
steam may be taking a Cut but it provides marketing there saving money on the physical components required in a sale to the store and i couldnt see steam logically taking a whole lot more than a games store which in my area tend to buy 10 copies of a new game(NFS:Shift) and then just w8 till there returned and sell the trade ins out and rinse and repeat
Valve may be taking a cut but at least there not cutting the developer out of the loop entirely, and if there taking a bit more than D2D or whateva i dont blame them there service is leagues beyond D2D in my op
Scott @ Oct 8th 2009 10:54PM
@JimboTJones: I think the concern is that once everyone throws their lots in with Steam, that Valve will have too much individual leverage, and may start taking advantage of customers and developers alike. If you want to see what can happen when there is only a single distributor for a platform, look at Sony and the PSPGo. Imagine a world where prices never drop and nothing goes on sale. Sure Steam does that now because it wants you to love it. But once you commit, it will rule you.
As a general policy, I avoid buying any game that requires me to activate online, which includes (but is certainly not limited to) all Steam games.
JimboTJones @ Oct 9th 2009 5:12PM
@ Scott
So, what you are saying is that Pitchford is bitching about something that may or may not ever happen, correct?
In that case, I don't trust anything from Randy Pitchford or Gearbox because they could release a bad game in the future. Since it is possible that they could release a buggy POS, I'm going to boycott all of their games from here on out so that I never have to play a buggy POS from Gearbox. Who's with me?
hobocop @ Oct 7th 2009 8:39PM
"one of the most success digital distribution platform for PC games in existence" am I the only one who thinks that should be "successful?"
R (Planeteers | Power of Penile Pulse) @ Oct 7th 2009 9:00PM
Id call direct2drive successful as well.
Jose @ Oct 7th 2009 8:39PM
Shoulda hear about it last week when it was reported by fucking BigDownload. Jesus guys, seriously, get with it. It feels like family news, where everybody knows what's going on except my brother and me. You guys should text each other more often, and have family dinners every friday; it's helped us!
Courtney @ Oct 7th 2009 10:15PM
So was MaximumPC also scooped...by themselves!!! The story just went up on their site today, even though the print edition came out a couple of weeks ago. It looks like Joystiq waited to run the story until the actual article was up on MaximumPC's site, so that all of their readers could go see these quotes in context if they want. That's pretty reasonable, and I would much rather have access to the source than just see a couple of quotes pulled out of an article I can't otherwise read.
You complain...a lot, about really pointless stuff.
Courtney @ Oct 8th 2009 2:52AM
Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm a dude.
Mogster @ Oct 8th 2009 6:33AM
You're a dude, but your name is Courtney?
Courtney @ Oct 8th 2009 11:22AM
Tell Courtney Brown about how there ain't no guys named Courtney:
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/multimedia/photo_gallery/0804/nfl.no.1.draft.picks.88-07/content.8.html
Jose [Steam & PSN: Assmar] @ Oct 8th 2009 11:26AM
But, the circumference of his neck > than that of his head. He might hurt me...
[Tre (TM), who is forever confused] [blogs at trespeak.tumblr.com] @ Oct 7th 2009 8:40PM
Hoo boy. I'm off to go brace myself for the imminent heat that's gonna get sent to this guy.
AndrewMP @ Oct 7th 2009 8:45PM
I'm still having a hard time grasping his point. Yes, Gearbox is at a competitive disadvantage money-wise when a competing developer has, aside from successful games, a very successful digital distribution service. So first he said that he doesn't trust Valve because of this, which seems to be the incorrect choice of wording. He then states that Valve is exploiting a lot of people, which would make his comment about "trust" a little bit easier to understand. But he doesn't elaborate on what, exactly, Valve is doing that could be considered exploitative.
He will have likely gotten less flak for these comments than he's about to receive if he had actually elaborated on his opinions and accusations.
Look At This Suit @ Oct 7th 2009 8:49PM
His main point is pretty much right in the title of the article. Valve takes a cut of the Steam sales, and he thinks that that cut is larger than it should be.
Plus, I don't think Gearbox is going to be at a disadvantage much longer. I think Borderlands is going to blow up, and they're going to make a respectable amount of money off of it, especially if they decide to release some DLC.
Jose @ Oct 7th 2009 8:49PM
http://news.bigdownload.com/2009/09/21/should-valve-spin-off-its-steam-service-into-its-own-company/
AndrewMP @ Oct 7th 2009 9:05PM
My belief is that he should have gone into further detail about the "large share" that they supposedly make. It seems as though his argument is, "Valve is a videogame developer, but they also have a distribution model that allows them to take a cut off the sales of their competitor's games." But when you think about it, so does Microsoft. I mean, Microsoft Games Studios develops games that are sold for the Xbox 360. Microsoft Game Studio's competitors also make games for the Xbox 360, which Microsoft receives a portion of their sales for. The same also holds true for their Games on Demand service.
So if his argument is purely, "Valve asks for too much from their competitors", then he should have backed it up, in my opinion. From a distribution standpoint, Valve has several competitors (such as Direct2Drive), and one would assume that if things were truly unfair, then game developers would turn to these other distribution channels.
Look At This Suit @ Oct 7th 2009 8:46PM
Pitchford knows that Valve has three piles of money:
The Orange Box pile, the Steam pile, and the Everything Else pile. The Orange Box pile is large. Extremely large. Gabe Newell wears it as a fancy coat when out on the town. It's not hurting anyone if that Steam pile shrinks just a tiny bit.
Bane @ Oct 7th 2009 8:48PM
After the Orange Box, it's hard not to trust Valve as a consumer. Best deal in gaming history.
I'm sure it hurts independent developers who don't have the power of suits behind them.
Saihna @ Oct 7th 2009 8:50PM
The orange box deal was one of the best deals ever. I got gmod right after it. xD
Chris Miller @ Oct 7th 2009 8:50PM
Yes, Valve is just milking us for money by dropping the price to a fraction of what we'd be force to spend elsewhere. Cry me a digitally distributed river.
Look At This Suit @ Oct 7th 2009 8:51PM
For Chrissakes man, it says right in the article that the consumer doesn't get hurt. It's the small developers being hurt.