Steam's cut decreases to 20% after a certain amount of money. Also Steam does a lot more to earn their cut than any other platform, by far -- for example, they do a lot of promotion for you, both algorithmic and through things like Daily Deals, for free, whereas on iOS it is very difficult for ad spend to not be a significant part of your budget. The rule of thumb I've heard is, for every organic sale you make, Steam's algorithm will get you one more sale. So their cut feels quite worth it.

A closer example is game consoles, whose associated stores also take 30%, and nobody seems to complain about.

> for every organic sale you make, Steam's algorithm will get you one more sale

I'm not sure what you mean. Every game dev now refers what Steam algorithm gives you "organic sale."

Maybe my wording wasn't good -- I meant a sale driven primarily through a channel other than Steam (streamer, Reddit, ads, friend recommendation).

It's difficult for me to really trust this stat though because purchasing decisions are complicated.

You can also mod your Steam Deck to your heart's content. There's a plugin called Junk Store that will let you use other stores.

People are understandably much more amenable to Valve because the company as a whole behaves in a much more cooperative and pro-consumer way... e.g. Steam deck repair options, furthering Linux gaming, and Gaben's general philosophy.

Cult-like or not, I find it reasonable to support companies that do things which you agree with. Valve's non-adversarial approach to business (as opposed to many rent-seeking corps these days) probably helps that perception.

Steam feels like a partnership with developers where Apple is a gatekeeper. I publish free games on Steam and all it costs is a $100 one time fee per game. I get human review and feedback on my marketing material and store page assets.

Apple is incredibly strict with the content they allow to the point that it feels like a they exclusively cater to children. It’s easier to vibe code the apps that I want under my own developer account because at least I can side load those.

Not sure why this was flagged. Apple is strict and does not allow graphic adult content, famously so [1]. One of the only exceptions you'll find is Twitter/X.

Steam does allow this. But, has recently started restricting some adult content [2].

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2010/04/19/steve-jobs-android-porn/

[2] https://www.gamesindustry.biz/whats-going-on-with-steam-and-...

Steam sells games, which is mostly a "want" good. App Store has apps that have large scale economic and political implications - banking apps, messaging apps, etc. So it is understandable that people/governments care a lot more about reigning in the App Store than the Steam store.

Valve has plenty of competition and let people buy from other stores even on the Steam Deck. Heck, you can even add games bought on other store to the Steam Launcher and still use Valve functionality like controller mapping in them.

> Steam is taking 30% too. But you've heard much less fuss over it, right? Why? Is it because of players' cult-like behavior around Steam?

It's because Valve doesn't routinely screw over developers and gamers. Steam never removed a game from Steam because it could cause "customer confusion" because it was too similar to one of Valve's own games. When Valve released the Steam Deck, they didn't layer on a bunch of trash for "safety", they sold gamers a portable Arch Linux box that, other than running Windows games on Linux, also runs local LLMs, games from GOG, and development environments. You can write games for Steam on a Steam Deck, compile them, and run them. It's the exact opposite of what Apple is doing - Valve offers total control, and you can use it to do awesome stuff without having to pay a tithe to some overlord corporation that thinks they still own hardware that you purchased from them.