Community MetaSteam | September 2021 - Welcome to Punxsutawney

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Wok

Wok
Oct 30, 2018
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How do you make the 10.7%? Including keys?
The statement is misleading too, since it reads as if "Steam lowered its commission to 20%", whereas it is conditional to reaching a revenue threshold.

Maybe he's taking into account the 0% valve gets from key sellers plus the rates it pays retailers for cash cards???
Without any other information, it looks like the dude's computations were: the commission is now 20%. Then we have 0% commission rate for Steam keys. That is an average commission rate of 10%.

More seriously, this article published 2 years ago hinted that keys account for ~ 28% of Steam sales (based on reviews), which lead to ~ 22% commission rate.

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I doubt this dives to ~ 11% solely because the commission rate for Witcher 3 decreased from 30% to 20%. So, if true, then cash cards must cost a lot, maybe leading to a loss for each sale, which could be interpreted (?) as a negative commission rate. Any clue, eonden?

Edit: I have found these old tweets. Non-standard payment methods cost:
  • 10% - 15% of the price,
  • account for ~ 90% of the sales in Asia.
That could eat half of Valve's commission for almost all of the sales in this part of the world. That does not explain the 10.7% rate though: even if Valve sells everything with a 15% commission rate all over the world, we would reach 10.8% rate (0.72*0.15) with 28% of Steam keys.

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In summary:
  • Steam keys ---> ~ 28% of the volume of sales, and 0% commission rate
  • purchases paid with cash cards, and more than $50 million revenue ---> 5-10% commission rate
  • purchases paid with cash cards, and more than $10 million revenue ---> 10-15% commission rate
  • purchases paid with cash cards, for the other games ---> 15-20% commission rate
  • direct purchases, more than $50 million revenue ---> 20% commission rate
  • direct purchases, more than $10 million revenue ---> 25% commission rate
  • direct purchases for the other games ---> 30% commission rate
To reach an average of 10.7%, one would need a ton of people (relatively to all of the other purchases) who would purchase The Witcher 3 directly from the Steam store with cash cards to buff their Steam wallet.
 
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spindoctor

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Jun 9, 2019
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The question isn't about doing well. It's about doing much better. Borderlands 3 is a good exemple of that. It did well. Now did it launch day and date on Steam, it would've done muuuuuch better. And on top of that, there's the big titles that would've done much better numbers but also the smaller one which should've done good or decent and completly bombed.
Kingdom Hearts is a good exemple of that.

And I think Final Fantasy VII Remake will be another great exemple for this. A title that should've done over 120k CCU might end up at 30k.
See I didn't want to bring up Borderlands 3 because I figured I'd be accused of cherry picking the best selling EGS exclusive to make my point, but since you bring it up... ;)

There's no doubt that Borderlands 3 would have 'done muuuuuch better' as you put it. The question is whether taking the deal was at all detrimental to them. Tim paid them $115 million dollars for exclusivity. That's the revenue for approximately 1.9 million copies sold at $60 each, and 2K had that on day one. Considering Steam takes it's 20% cut, that's the revenue they'd get if they sold 2.4 million copies at $60. And we know that not all copies sell for $60. Between regional pricing and pre-order discounts, I'd venture they got the same amount of money as they would have with 3 million or more launch day sales on Steam. After release, 2K had their usual celebratory press release about how it was their highest selling PC game at launch, the most pre-ordered game on EGS and how they doubled the peak CCU over Borderlands 2. Tim recouped his investment and added 1.5 million new EGS paying customers, which was his only goal all along. So what happened to the game when it came to Steam?

On Steam the game had a peak CCU of 93k. I suspect it would have been 300-400k if it had launched exclusively on Steam. From the numbers we know, the EGS peak CCU was at least 250k. SteamDB estimates the number of copies sold on Steam anywhere between 1.7-4.6 million. Playtracker estimates 2.3-2.4 million copies sold. Sergey's tool estimates 1-2 million :p. Heck even I own a copy of the game on Steam because a friend gifted it to me during that Humble price mistake since I otherwise don't buy EGS exclusives even on Steam. I have a friend who double dipped on both EGS and Steam. Both of us have never played the game on Steam lol. Coming back to the point, 2K announced last year that the game sold 10 million copies and that Steam sales were ahead of their estimates (during an investor call, so they can't lie about it). So think about it... 2-3 million copies worth of full price sales from Epic plus 1-4 million discounted sales on Steam. Yeah, 2K isn't worried about PC revenues. In fact, they're so not worried that they took the deal again for the spinoff game.

Again, it's a bit unfair to talk about one of rare EGS exclusives that was an unequivocal success. Even generally speaking though, does anyone know of many games that succeeded on EGS and then failed on Steam? Or the other way around, failed on EGS and then succeeded on Steam? It never (afaik) happens. So what is the downside of taking this deal? "Oh they're idiots because they're not building an audience for their future games". Sure. Maybe the hundreds or thousands of people who work in publishing departments across the industry and the multitude of indies are just all blithering idiots. Or maybe these deals are actually working out for them.

The only way this bullshit stops is if publishers start to believe that they are losing money by taking the exclusivity deal. Maybe some have already realized that, but then some are going back for second helpings and some new ones are hopping on board. Turns out there's a billionaire who is directing where this train will go. As a customer the only thing you can control is where your money goes. If you buy a ticket for the train then enjoy the fucking ride, I guess.

There are very few repeated customers for exclusivity deals and it seems like Epic had to give a bit more for Tiny Tina since it weren't announced as timed exclusive with the announcements, other than that, Square takes exclusivity deals everywhere and a lot of other companies have rejected that accepted before.
For a while there it felt like exclusivity deals were slowing down and now I feel like they're ramping up again. Maybe some of these deals were signed a long time ago and Covid delays are causing them to become apparent now. Who knows?

I just remembered Crysis remastered took the deal. Without knowing anything I'm still going to assume it bombed on EGS, like most other games. Publisher saw that and thought, yep, let's take the deal for 2 and 3 again. No reason to deny that this is happening.
 
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mastemas

truman doctrine (actual norwegian guy)
Apr 15, 2021
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I've grown to believe everything in adult life is a scam. Congratulations nonetheless.
thanks although my adult lfie is more a mix between being a NEET and being a student

because of digital lessons, it's pretty much pointless to stay in the student city, so i use 50% of my week (calculated) at home in a city 300 kilometres away from the student city, and because i get to be at home, i get to live the beautiful days of being a NEET (not really, i just like having pets around me)
 

Mor

Me llamo Willy y no hice la mili, pero vendo Chili
Sep 7, 2018
7,109
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For a while there it felt like exclusivity deals were slowing down and now I feel like they're ramping up again. Maybe some of these deals were signed a long time ago and Covid delays are causing them to become apparent now. Who knows?
Less than 15 deals in 2021 so no, it's still less than 2020 total number of deals and while there are a few to be announced yet, the number keeps going down it's just a perception based on the number of events we had and how close some of this announcements have been but technically speaking, the number of deals is reducing day after day.

-KH
-GalCiv 4 (alpha)
-Sonic Colours
-NEO TWEWY
-SReboot
-Crysis 2/3
-Tchia
-Tiny Tina
-Voidtrain
-Against the Strom (Early Access)
-Spelldrifter
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
4,045
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What you propose might be true, but it is entirely hypothetical.
Agreed, but the idea that initial game sales aren't substantially reduced is also entirely hypothetical.
As a main point of "evidence" you come back to games showing up in the top seller list, but as I noted that's not actually any relevant information one way or the other.

One game you explicitly mentioned is TW:Troy. Let's look at this a bit more. TW:Troy has a concurrent player peak of 4.7k on Steam.
Here are those same numbers for other TW games that recently launched on Steam:
TW: Three Kingdoms: 192k. TW: Warhammer 2: 85k. A Total War Saga: THRONES OF BRITANNIA: 23k.
Perhaps the single most relevant of those is the last one -- Britannia is also a "minor" spinoff in the "Saga" subseries, and yet it peaked at 5 times the player count. That usually means roughly 5 times the initial/launch sales. Does the exclusivity deal make up for a 5x reduction in full-price Steam sales? We can't really know, and none of this is hard evidence, but don't you think it makes quite the compelling point that a delayed launch can, in fact, substantially reduce your success?

Also, I don't think the case for "repeat customers" is as strong as you make it out to be: lots of publishers who seemed to be all-in on Epic exclusives have gone back to day-and-date Steam releases, and several "repeat" customers were negotiated in bulk from the start.
 
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Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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Oh well, when I said I would like a break, I... didn't get one.
When I boot my screen is black then directly goes to the win10 login, no more bios.
 
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eonden

MetaMember
Dec 20, 2018
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The statement is misleading too, since it reads as if "Steam lowered its commission to 20%", whereas it is conditional to reaching a revenue threshold.



Without any other information, it looks like the dude's computations were: the commission is now 20%. Then we have 0% commission rate for Steam keys. That is an average commission rate of 10%.

More seriously, this article published 2 years ago hinted that keys account for ~ 28% of Steam sales (based on reviews), which lead to ~ 22% commission rate.

[Hidden content]

I doubt this dives to ~ 11% solely because the commission rate for Witcher 3 decreased from 30% to 20%. So, if true, then cash cards must cost a lot, maybe leading to a loss for each sale, which could be interpreted (?) as a negative commission rate. Any clue, eonden?

Edit: I have found these old tweets. Non-standard payment methods cost:
  • 10% - 15% of the price,
  • account for ~ 90% of the sales in Asia.
That could eat half of Valve's commission for almost all of the sales in this part of the world. That does not explain the 10.7% rate though: even if Valve sells everything with a 15% commission rate all over the world, we would reach 10.8% rate (0.72*0.15) with 28% of Steam keys.

[Hidden content]

In summary:
  • Steam keys ---> ~ 28% of the volume of sales, and 0% commission rate
  • purchases paid with cash cards, and more than $50 million revenue ---> 5-10% commission rate
  • purchases paid with cash cards, and more than $10 million revenue ---> 10-15% commission rate
  • purchases paid with cash cards, for the other games ---> 15-20% commission rate
  • direct purchases, more than $50 million revenue ---> 20% commission rate
  • direct purchases, more than $10 million revenue ---> 25% commission rate
  • direct purchases for the other games ---> 30% commission rate
To reach an average of 10.7%, one would need a ton of people (relatively to all of the other purchases) who would purchase The Witcher 3 directly from the Steam store with cash cards to buff their Steam wallet.
My guess is that they talk about effective commision rate as "post payment methods" and payment methods are like 5-7%. And then consider Valve games comision rate as 0% or some shit like that, which gives a real commision rate of 20% or something like that.
It is just hard to parse what Epic own witness could have done to make themselves look beter..
 
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Wok

Wok
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TROY was free for 24 hours, and there were 7.7 million "entitlements". In comparison, Britannia is believed to have in the best case scenario 0.7 million owners overall on Steam. If Epic paid a high enough amount for the "entitlements", then it could be a good deal. Even more so if the money is quickly transferred, as the publisher can focus on less risky and more important projects. It is not just about maximizing life-time profit, there is also treasury management and risk mitigation.

Edit: I stumbled upon this while looking for minimum guarantees for TROY, which I think we don't know.

 
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Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
4,045
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That's good information, but I don't think it really affects my point in the original discussion one way or the other.

I'm not arguing that, in very specific circumstances exclusive deals for specific games have no chance of being profitable. Of course they do.

It's that we cannot look at "hey it's in the Steam top sellers after the exclusivity is up" and conclude that any given game for which this holds was automatically better off financially by being exclusive. You really don't need to sell a lot in the grand scheme of things, particularly by AA/AAA metrics, to top the charts for a bit.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
7,870
15,903
113
Oh well, when I said I would like a break, I... didn't get one.
When I boot my screen is black then directly goes to the win10 login, no more bios.
After a quick search, I may have to disable windows quick startup or whatever it is called, but first I should unplug the hdmi that goes to the TV as windows may mistakenly display the bios there.
If that is indeed an hdmi issue, windows shitty handling of multi-monitor never ceases to amaze me.

-

Dear Santa: 'For Windows 11 : no more rebuilding icon cache and good multi-monitor'
Santa : 'ROFL'

Edit -
Ayup, Windows 10 being bad with monitor management confirmed.
 
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dex3108

MetaMember
Dec 20, 2018
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Finished Sherlock Holmes Devil's Daughter today (just in time for Deathloop). It was ok but i expected more. It looks like that they will change things in some significant ways for new Sherlock and i like it.
 
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spindoctor

MetaMember
Jun 9, 2019
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Agreed, but the idea that initial game sales aren't substantially reduced is also entirely hypothetical.
The thing is, the sales number is no longer the measure of success in Tim's brave new world. It's how much money a game makes and that includes Tim's money hat. For an EGS exclusive deal to be considered bad for a publisher, the amount of money they would make launching the game on Steam minus the amount of money they make anyway when people buy it a year later has to be more than what Tim offered them. In other words, Epic money + late Steam sales revenue > launch Steam revenue makes it the right choice.

And it's not even that simple. Suppose you have a projected revenue of 10 million dollars for your game. Tim shows up at your door and says I'll give you 8 million dollars right now and you can do whatever you want after a year. You probably take that deal, even if it is less than you thought, because it's money in your hand right now. You don't have to satisfy tens of thousands of customers to get that money, and you can probably make back at least some of it from those customers later.

As a main point of "evidence" you come back to games showing up in the top seller list, but as I noted that's not actually any relevant information one way or the other.
We don't have any sales numbers or data so all we can do is infer information. A game being in the top sellers list means only one thing; it's making money. That's the only way it gets there. Just like we infer information from the number of reviews a game gets. Just like you infer information from pointing out peak numbers for Britannia and Troy. To say that the top sellers is not actually relevant information is needlessly dismissive.

One game you explicitly mentioned is TW:Troy. Let's look at this a bit more. TW:Troy has a concurrent player peak of 4.7k on Steam.
Here are those same numbers for other TW games that recently launched on Steam:
TW: Three Kingdoms: 192k. TW: Warhammer 2: 85k. A Total War Saga: THRONES OF BRITANNIA: 23k.
Perhaps the single most relevant of those is the last one -- Britannia is also a "minor" spinoff in the "Saga" subseries, and yet it peaked at 5 times the player count. That usually means roughly 5 times the initial/launch sales. Does the exclusivity deal make up for a 5x reduction in full-price Steam sales? We can't really know, and none of this is hard evidence, but don't you think it makes quite the compelling point that a delayed launch can, in fact, substantially reduce your success?
I picked Troy because it was the last big game from EGS that I could think of. It's not the best example to base any sort of inferences because of two factors; it was a AAA game and it was given away for free. I imagine a lot of people who prefer to wait out exclusivity and get games on Steam were probably tempted to get this one on EGS anyway because of it being a high profile and completely free game, removing all the friction to obtain it. Another guess is that if the game had launched for $60 on EGS, a lot of people would have waited to buy it on Steam and the Steam peak CCU would be higher. This is just me thinking out loud though.

We don't know what the deal was for Troy, of course. Whether it was lump sum or per download or some combination of that or something else entirely. What we do know for a fact is that Sega was okay with the deal that ended up with 7.5 million copies of their brand new game being given away for free. Seven and a half million copies. I can't give you a number but I have to imagine it takes a lot of money for that to come to pass. For reference, Britannia sold between 275k and 1 million copies according to SteamDB. To assume that Epic's payment for this deal wouldn't dwarf 5X these current Steam launch sales is absurd. What's the most generous sales figure we can attach to a 5k peak CCU? 50k? 100k? Does anyone think Epic didn't pay for at least 500k copies of this brand new full price Total War game? I'd imagine it was more. Sega also took another deal with Sonic Colors too, so it doesn't seem like they consider it a bad idea.

Also, I don't think the case for "repeat customers" is as strong as you make it out to be: lots of publishers who seemed to be all-in on Epic exclusives have gone back to day-and-date Steam releases, and several "repeat" customers were negotiated in bulk from the start.

I'm not making some grand argument that every publisher is going back for the deal. It's just an observation from what I see happening. Also I was incorrect in calling them customers to begin with. It's Tim who is actually the customer in this scenario. He has to show up at a publisher's door wearing his hat made of money for any of this to happen. Maybe he saw some of his past deals and was like "Nope, fuck that, not doing that again". So those publishers are like "Okay, well, back to Steam as usual".

Here's something else I was thinking about; At first there weren't that many Japanese publishers taking deals or even publishing on EGS. I had this impression that it's because their business culture is a little more conservative and risk averse. I think it's possible that might be about to change. When Tim went to Square Enix they were like "Fuck yea, we'll sell out for a lollipop and two bubble gums so let's go". People here say that Namco and Capcom wouldn't do that and they want to grow their user base on PC. That's possibly true, but also don't forget that Capcom recently took multiple deals to delay the PC version of the last two Monster Hunter games. Both money hatted PCVR updates for Ace Combat and Resident Evil 7 vanished without a trace. Koei Tecmo just had a freebie giveaway on EGS, so they're warming up to the idea of EGS as well. They don't even sell that many copies of their games on Steam (relatively speaking) so how expensive would it be to get them to release an exclusive there?

I don't know guys. I think any publisher can be bought out if you give them enough money.

EDIT - went to get a snack in between posting and Wok said half of what I said anyway. Sorry for the repetition.
 
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Wok

Wok
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At first there weren't that many Japanese publishers taking deals or even publishing on EGS. I had this impression that it's because their business culture is a little more conservative and risk averse.
I don't understand this part. The more averse to risk, the more likely one should be to accept an offer for minimum guaranteed sales. If you think Japanese publishers are risk averse, then they should accept money hats really easily, assuming Epic does not low ball to the point that they take offence.
 
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EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
7,397
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I have 17 desktop icons arranged down the right-hand side of my desktop.
Haven't had a problem for years. I've even forgotten how to fix it, i'd have to go searching. lol
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
7,870
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113
I have 17 desktop icons arranged down the right-hand side of my desktop.
Haven't had a problem for years. I've even forgotten how to fix it, i'd have to go searching. lol
Yeah, but those icons don't change often, am I right ?
 

EdwardTivrusky

Good Morning, Weather Hackers!
Dec 8, 2018
7,397
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I add or remove apps every now and then but the icons are mine. I never allow apps to put icons on the desktop, i'll make 'em myself if i want it.
Some of the apps pointed to by the shortcuts update themselves weekly and i've had no issues.
 
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spindoctor

MetaMember
Jun 9, 2019
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I don't understand this part. The more averse to risk, the more likely one should be to accept an offer for minimum guaranteed sales. If you think Japanese publishers are risk averse, then they should accept money hats really easily, assuming Epic does not low ball to the point that they take offence.
The risk of trying something new on a completely new store and ending up with less money than if they had just sold their game on Steam. Maybe they don't want to piss off their Chinese audience if EGS isn't available or popular there?

But you could be right and it could just be about money. A peak at SteamDB for Romance of the Three Kingdoms 14 puts it at a maximum of about 600k sales. If Epic would guarantee a million sales or something they'd probably take it.
 
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Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
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I don't understand this part. The more averse to risk, the more likely one should be to accept an offer for minimum guaranteed sales. If you think Japanese publishers are risk averse, then they should accept money hats really easily, assuming Epic does not low ball to the point that they take offence.
People often characterize some Japanese publishers as "risk averse", but I think that doesn't quite fit: it's more accurate to say that they are simply reluctant to change how they operate in any way, and that is particularly true when the impetus for that change is largely or entirely non-local (i.e. not primarily about Japan).

"Risk averse" sort of implies that they actually do a meaningful and in-depth global risk and reward analysis, and then only make moves which minimize risk while offering a high reward. That's a perfectly valid strategy. But I'm not willing to credit some specific Japanese publishers with doing anything like that. Their moves may look (and frequently be) risk-averse, but only as a function of being the result of a process that primarily values the comfort and ease of doing the same thing you've always been doing, as long as it kind-of sort-of works.
 

Durante

I <3 Pixels
Oct 21, 2018
4,045
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Started Trails in the sky, I'm really enjoying how fresh it feels by not having a silent protagonist in jrpg. Guess I'm going into a big Kiseki rabbit hole if this game grows on me, which I prolly think it will.
Estelle is one of my favourite (probably my outright favourite) protagonists in JRPGs.
As long as the pacing doesn't bother you, you are in for a treat with the Trails in the Sky trilogy!
 

MaskedCircle

"Let's Positive Thinking"
May 28, 2021
153
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Estelle is one of my favourite (probably my outright favourite) protagonists in JRPGs.
As long as the pacing doesn't bother you, you are in for a treat with the Trails in the Sky trilogy!
Estelle already growing on me, seeing a proper personality from a protagonist in JRPG feels so nice I can't explain. My biggest issue with JRPG is being solved here. Even if there's an issue with pacing I'm determined to at least sit through all.
 

PC-tan

Low Tier Weeb
Jan 19, 2019
3,804
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I always thought it was weird how Sony handles their payment processing fees. This is why you can't buy anything that is less than $5 from Sony. Nintendo, MS, and Valve let you pay what you need and don't have a minimum amount but Sony has it where you need a minimum of $5 to buy something.


I remember trying to buy something from PSN and it was just such a hassle since they wouldn't accept my credit card or my pay pal account and I had to end up buying a PSN card from Amazon and that was sort of a hassle as well because I need it right away before a game got delisted.
 
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