Just a week or so after he made an indirect dig at Valve boss Gabe Newell, Epic Games’ CEO Tim Sweeney is once again firing criticism in Steam’s direction. Reacting to discussions around a recent class action lawsuit against Valve, which claims UK residents have been left over $897 million / £656 million out of pocket by purchasing games on Steam, Sweeney has described the platform’s commission rate as a “30% junk fee.”
Epic Games has already embarrassed Google and forced change at Apple with its high-profile antitrust lawsuits, which fought for their respective storefronts to permit third-party payment systems to bypass high platform fees. Combine that with the Epic Games Store’s extremely generous approach to payment methods, and the company has earned itself a reputation as being great for publishers and a champion of player choice.
However, there’s one similar battle of hearts and minds that Epic CEO Tom Sweeney seems unable to win, and that’s bemoaning Valve’s practices on Steam. A regular critic of its high commission fees and (according to him) anti-competitive terms when it comes to offering better deals on other platforms, Sweeney has previously taken swipes at Steam. Earlier this month, he said that Epic “heavily reinvests” in players and puts revenue “back to work for developers in a way that those yachts and diamond teeth don’t” – a clear jab at Newell.
While you’d imagine that Sweeney’s stance would resonate with gamers and have an impact due to Epic’s past victories against Google and Apple, it doesn’t appear to have moved the needle much – Steam remains the biggest PC gaming platform by a considerable margin.
In his latest batch of critical remarks, Sweeney begins by responding to an X user defending Steam’s market dominance and 30% fees. He says that “Steam’s rules do explicitly prohibit games from steering players to competing purchase methods, forcing everyone to pay 30% to Valve. Apple and Google did the same until the court explicitly found this practice to be unlawful. Now they don’t!”
This has earned Sweeney a community note, which flags that the rule he seems to refer to is more focused on distributing Steam keys on other platforms and ensuring discount parity within a reasonable time frame. However, it is worth also noting that in Steam’s documentation on microtransactions, the funds for any purchase made within the game itself (even if it redirects you to the developer or publisher’s own website) will be taken from your Steam Wallet.
There are a handful of exceptions to this rule – some games, such as Warframe, allow you to buy currency from their website using different payment providers, and this currency can then be used in-game to buy items. For the most part, though, the Steam Wallet is the primary payment method, and that will result in Valve taking a 30% cut.
“Today, in the USA, developers are free to steer users of iOS and Android apps to competing purchase methods,” Sweeney adds. “Apple and Google collect 0% on those transactions. On computers and smartphones, Valve is the only major store still holding onto the payments tie and 30% junk fee.”
He also likens Valve’s practices to “a car dealership demanding 30% of gas purchases” after you’ve bought a car from them.
These could all be seen all well-intentioned points aimed at creating more competition and better deals for game creators, but it’s also worth noting that Steam is the Epic Games Store’s biggest competitor, so Sweeney does have a reason to push for more competition and less dominance. However, what’s most interesting to me is that there are swathes of people simply not buying Sweeney’s arguments. The ratio of likes and comments on an X post is by no means a perfect science, but the support for Sweeney’s remarks is often outweighed by those coming to Steam’s defence.
“‘30% junk fee’ is a wild claim,” reads the response of one X user with over 1,300 likes at the time of writing. “Steam provides a service to both the player and the developer. The car dealership doesn’t also provide the gas or any infrastructure around gas delivery. Gamers happily stick with Steam because it’s a good, player-friendly platform. EGS by comparison is a buggy mess that lacks features. It’s a no brainer for consumers.”
And this seems to be the main argument for PC gamers at the moment – if Epic seriously wants to challenge Steam, simply make the Epic Games Store a better product.
Of course, that ignores the publisher-side benefits that would come from Steam reducing its 30% fee (which I should point out gets cut to 25% after a game has generated $10 million in revenue, and then 20% after $50 million in revenue). I’m sure those making and publishing games would benefit from a smaller cut, and if the claims laid out in this UK lawsuit are proven to be true, reducing that cut could see game prices come down overall. But if Sweeney really wants to rattle Steam and reduce its dominance in the PC space, sweeping improvements to the Epic Games Store are probably the best way to go about it.