Games aren’t too cheap. Market size since the old days has grown astronomically. Execs appetites for 10’s of millions of bonuses are their problem, not the gamers. And that’s with current prices. The other problem is sheer availability and slop. Maybe also lack of being critical when consuming videogame content.
Market size can’t be valued in vacuum without considering market share. Sure, there’s a looot more people that can buy your game, but the attention time of those people is fine and the market is oversaturated with games.
Groceries have doubled in price in the last 5 years, game prices have not. I’m not saying they should, I’m giving context. The largest cost of a game production is usually salaries, by far, and those need to keep increasing, which lowers margins, and that then only keeps being sustainable if sales increase, which honestly I don’t see it anymore.
Not every souls player will buy the next non from soft souls like because there are so many already.
As per the article, the signs we’re seeing are that the market size has stopped growing, which is why something else has to give. Klima hopes that prices will be permitted to increase post GTA6 (I certainly don’t think so), but the situation is bleak for the industry if they can’t. Mathematically, executive bonuses are just not moving the needle, but cost of living in certain parts of the world is.
Klima hopes prices go up, Yacht Club Games puts out $20 games.
Yacht Club suffered layoffs trying to put a bow on that $20 game, and they were already way smaller than Warhorse making a much smaller game.
Bonuses certainly aren’t meaningless. CEOs (or at least one case) are trying to fake their employees out of bonuses. Billion value acquisitions aren’t helping either, these values all have to be recouped.
If market has stopped growing, it may also have to do with those living cost crisis.
Cash gravs from major companies aren’t working either (Sony and others). Those 400m holes again need to be recouped.
In the end I seriously hope that gamers won’t just swallow the expected increases. I know for a fact that I won’t. There’s plenty to play, I can wait years for the one game I wish for.
They’re not meaningless, but at a macro level, there are much bigger fish to fry. I know it’s ridiculous to see one person make tens of millions of dollars, but most of that is stock, and that person is typically responsible for multiple large teams. Even if it was all cash, a $10M bonus would instead pay for about 80 people in the US for one year, and it’s quite typical for a AAA game to have teams of hundreds. Meanwhile, your money will go twice as far in Asia or parts of Europe.
From what we’ve seen from other recent efforts to raise game prices, I don’t think we’re about to see one after Grand Theft Auto. The market expanded for years, in part, because prices rose so slowly relative to inflation. Sure, they found tens of thousands of people willing to pay $70 for an N64 game, but you might get hundreds of thousands willing to pay $40 for the equivalent game today. I think raising the price further at this point is going to end up cutting out the customer that this market expanded to, which is why prices aren’t going to go up, generally.
But then that’s still very bad news for the industry. One of the ways studios will survive in high cost of living areas is to scope their games down, but that’s going to make it tougher to compete with low cost of living areas and will result in job losses any way you slice it.
Sure, but that’s just natural in economy. There’s growth and then there’s decline. Constant development of games that are too large is not beneficial to anyone but few that actually have the time to play them. It will definitely be interesting to observe how this will play out.
It’s natural, but it’s going to be painful, and even though Klima benefits from the economic shift, he’s still concerned about it. I imagine a lot of institutional knowledge he acquired came from parts of the world where those jobs are rapidly disappearing.
Apparently there are lots of studies and calculations that indeed suggest games are overall way too cheap for the industry to be sustainable. I hear it from insiders again and again. From small indie studios to industry giants.
And many point their fingers at platforms like Steam to be the culprits. Steam in particular is pretty unpopular among developers overall. Looking at how competitive the market is and how many devs are pushed into burnouts in just a single production I tend to believe them. The current model does not seem to be sustainable for studios of any size.
That said, I think a lot of studios could try scaling down their productions too because I hear about feature creep from the same insiders just as much. They really need better planning.
Steam in particular is pretty unpopular among developers overall
Any hard data on this? Everything I’ve ever heard says otherwise.
I’m sure it stings to have Steam take a 30% cut (or whatever it is currently). I also think that developers have not fully factored the costs of keeping their own distribution infrastructure. They are free to do it, why don’t they? There are other platforms out there, why pick on Steam?
I see it said here and on Reddit all the time: “if it’s not on steam, I won’t buy it”. Gamers are the reason why devs can’t release elsewhere because so many gamers care where a game is purchased. And then at the same time, the gamers say the same thing you do in that devs can just release wherever they want, why are they crying?
And why do gamers say that? Is it because Steam is holding a gun to gamers head? Or is it because Steam is the most feature rich and most gamer friendly storefront?
Allow me to summarize my below ramblings. Steam is a de facto monopoly, yes. But it is one cuz it treats gamers better than any other storefront. Its not because they are evil, at least in my opinion.
I’m hesitant to believe steam’s 30% cut is really that awful for devs, or too big of a cut. I’ve read multiple stories about how indie devs make way more money on steam than off it.
If steam took a smaller cut, I don’t think we should assume the extra money would go to the devs outside of maybe indie titles, most of the extra money would go to the owners.
If the 30% cut Steam takes is so insanely high, why doesn’t someone make a rival storefront and offer even steeper discounts?
To be clear, I’m not going to pretend there isn’t some “fat” in that 30% cut. Gabe is a goddamn billionaire after 21 years of Steam. Tho some of that billion could have come from reinvesting some of his money and getting lucky, or from the success of the valve games.
As much as I despise billionaires, Gabe is probably one of the least evil billionaires when it comes to how he acquired his wealth. Steam filled a niche in the video game world and earned its huge monopolyish marketshare by doing right by the customer. If we consider Steam a monopoly, it’s a monopoly became no one has tried to really compete against Steam by offering great valvue to gamers.
I don’t know of any anti competitive bullshit steam has pulled like other companies. I can fairly easily install gog games on my steam deck. If that was a Xbox deck or a PlayStation deck, I’d bet money they’d lock down the software to prevent you from installing games that didnt come from their store.
Ultimately I think Gabe would be a better person for donating lot’s more of his money/not being a billionaire.
Ultimately, I worry about when Gabe is no longer the head of Steam. They are effectively a monopoly cuz no one else treats gamers as well. When Gabe is gone/if enshittification comes to steam, then I’ll think we’ll see a new storefront start to take over and an end to the steam “monopoly”. But that end will be, hopefully, because some other storefront is treating games better.
Going back to the original thread topic of devs not getting enough money. If steam suddenly changed to a 15% cut, there is no guarantee that extra revenue would go to the devs. Maybe some would, but if a studio is already underpaying treating devs shitty I’m betting most of that 15% will go to the owners/managers.
The majority of the game studios and storefronts are out there actively shooting themselves in the foot, while Steam is there just being decent. It ain’t the devs fault that their bosses decided to make a shit game, but it ain’t steam’s either.
I agree Steam is the best client feature wise, not arguing that. I’m arguing the point of “devs can just release elsewhere”. They can’t because people treat Steam like it’s the one true god.
I personally prefer GOG first because it’s DRM free but outside of that I don’t care, I click play and the launcher doesn’t matter. I just play the game.
Because Steam is by far the biggest, with the longest reach. If you don’t chose Steam you will most likely automatically sell less.
So the cost of using Steam is worth it for the benefits of steam?
Nah, I think it’s more like Stockholm syndrome. Or like a biker gang acting kind. If you don’t pay them their share you don’t get to do much business at all.
I’m doubtful there is like a ‘study’ on this but steam takes a 30% cut, which is absolutely massive considering its no secret plenty of developers say they really don’t justify it by having poor communication.
Unfortunately however, more importantly if you are a developer or create a project that is an easy target for bigotry you will see absolutely no help from the platform in protecting you. Which is crazy that you would be required to participate in the platform in order to succeed, then be abused on it and have the people profiting ignore you. (https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/feb/16/bigotry-steam-pc-moderation-developers-speak-out)
Unfortunately however, more importantly if you are a developer or create a project that is an easy target for bigotry you will see absolutely no help from the platform in protecting you. Which is crazy that you would be required to participate in the platform in order to succeed, then be abused on it and have the people profiting ignore you. (https://www.theguardian.com/games/2026/feb/16/bigotry-steam-pc-moderation-developers-speak-out)
They could turn off the forums and run their own community, but they chose not to. That’s a conscious decision on their part.
I’m doubtful there is like a ‘study’ on this <…> its no secret plenty of developers say they really don’t justify it by having poor communication.
The claim parent was making is that the majority of devs feel that way. I doubt that, and would like to see some hard data else it’s just unsubstantiated claims.
Yes, they could just shoot themselves in the foot I guess and exclude themselves from features and put yourself at a disadvantage.
“Well if minorities want to stop being made so sit in the back of the bus, maybe they should start their own bus!” type argument
It’s the fucking hell hole of steam forums, what ‘disadvantage’ is there?
I’ll wait for the hard data to substantiate the claim that steam forums are a hell hole first, of course
Apparently there are lots of studies and calculations that indeed suggest games are overall way too cheap for the industry to be sustainable
That’s really interesting. I guess it’s one of the few really competitive markets for digital goods in the world.
Do you have a link to one of these studies?
Never pay more than 20 bucks for a computer game.
Why 20?
