City-builder dev says indies need "half a million" in profit to make more money than Valve, decries the 30% Steam store tax as a "relic" that "needs to go down"

An indie developer has argued that Valve's Steam store transaction fee of 30% for developers "needs to go down."

If you didn't already know, Valve takes a commission of 30% from developers whenever they sell a game via Steam. So if you sold a game for $10, Valve would take $3, and you'd be left with $7 – but this isn't always the case for indie developers who still have a publisher to pay.

That's the scenario Tomas Sala, indie developer behind The Falconeer, is speaking about in the tweet below. Sala argues that it takes "generally at least half a million if not more in revenue for a dev to finally earn more than Valve on their own game," because indie developers still have publishers to pay even after they've paid Valve's Steam store transaction fee.

Sala provides a scenario where a theoretical indie game makes $750,000, and posits that the developer themselves would merely be left with $175,000 after everything is said and done. The veteran developer adds that while this could cover the indie game development costs, "we all know indies work for free and spend triple or more than they get on development," so that's not really realistic.

"So Valve takes more than most indie devs up until really large numbers," Sala further writes, before adding, "The 30% tax is a relic... it's unearned and unjust..." and "It needs to go down." 

The Steam store tax is an issue that developers have been speaking about for a long time. Take this indie developer, for example, who took to Reddit to write that they'd made a profit of $400,000 on their game. Now, keep in mind this is a UK-based indie developer, so income tax, national insurance, and student loan repayments need to be applied, but after all that, they're merely left with £53,380.

30% of their $400,000 was reportedly taken by "VAT/USA taxes/Refunds," while another 30% was taken by the Steam store tax. Even before UK national taxes are applied, that's merely $196,000, a far cry from the original $400,000 that they started with. Using this example as a case study, Sala's point about needing to earn over $500,000 to make more money than Valve sounds perfectly justified.

Take a look at our upcoming indie games guide for a list of all the new small-time titles you can support.