Let the Battle BeginÂ
It is no secret that companies like Ubisoft and other developers are unhappy with Steam. Many have come out to openly criticize Steam business practices. Particularly how much money the developers receive when they put a game onto Steam. As it stands right now, Steam currently takes 30% of all profits made by games on their platform. Ubisoft has arguably been the most high profile company to openly disagree with this practice.
In response to the 30/70 model that Steam uses, Ubisoft has pulled many of their games off of Steam and now sell them exclusively on their own digital store. But there are still some of Ubisoft’s games hanging around on Steam. However, the writing is on the wall. Ubisoft seems to be determined to move away from other online retailers in order to maximize profits.
Other online stores like the Epic Games Store has also tried to undercut Steam by taking a smaller percentage of the profits. Epic Games only takes 12% of revenue. So for all you math whizzes out there, that means that Epic Games is taking less than half of what Steam does.
Even EA has brought about its own online store to circumnavigate Steam. If you want to play Battlefield 5 or Anthem, you’ll need to download EA Origins in order to launch the game.
Some people within the industry are hopeful that a dose of healthy competition will force everyone to improve their product. Greg Kasavin and Tommy Refenes, who are both developers, said that this is only going to benefit gamers in the long run. “The console cycles were always best when the rivalry is heated”, says Kasavin.
No one knows how this will play out for the big companies. But this news should excite gamers like nothing else.