A former Epic Games developer is calling out Steam users, saying that they wouldn't move on from Valve's store even if a better alternative emerged.
Kiaran Ritchie, former principal animation engineer at Epic Games kicked off discussions surrounding Steam's 30% sales cut last week (with the assertion that "you could vibe code a Steam alternative in a week"). Which in-turn led noted Steam hater Epic CEO Tim Sweeney to assert that "Valve has held gaming back for years" – because the person whose company proudly asserted it had "vibe coded the Epic Games Launcher" knows what's holding gaming back!
Ritchie elaborated on their opinions on the 30% cut in a separate post, with the post saying that while developers are paying 30% in order to access Steam infrastructure, "in reality it is purely to get access to the massive Steam userbase." He adds "PC developers have no option but to distribute through Steam or lose the vast majority of sales."
As for that 30%, he says that it's "siphoned out of the PC games industry into a black hole," arguing that "Valve could easily lower the distribution fee while maintaining healthy margins." He later gives "Kudos" to Valve, saying "They played Capitalism so well they broke it."
And while a point can certainly be made that Steam is generally a better platform than the alternatives, and that it has the most to offer players in its library, Ritchie argues that it doesn't really matter, claiming "no avid Steam user wants other stores to succeed."
"Even if an alternative were objectively better, by whatever metric you care about, it would still be of no interest to Steam users," Ritchie says, adding, "Competition in this space is not only uninteresting to most Steam users, it's actively denigrated!" He then says that the Steam users "the very ones maintaining this unbreakable stalemate, would benefit the most from a better financed game development ecosystem." He concludes, "I don't think this is fixable. It's just sad."
Personally, I don't think Steam needs to charge as much either, but Ritchie hits the nail on the head, that it's "to get access to the massive Steam userbase." Because unfortunately, losing 30% to Valve is probably better than joining the list of games that flopped on PC because they were Epic Games Store exclusives.
Emmanuel Rosier, director of market intelligence at research and analyst firm Newzoo told GamesRadar+ that "As long as Valve is independent and not a publicly traded company," it looks impossible for Steam to be overthrown as the de-facto PC gaming marketplace.
