How does Valve make money from steam?

[Generic Turtle]

Do they get a cut of the profits like MS do with xbla? Also MS completely controls prices of games, do valve do th same?

[T@F]

Valve owns steam so they don't make money from steam alone,but they do make money from ppl buying the games to put on there steam account.
They get a cut on the games they sell through steam.

They don't set the price of the games devs do unless it's valve game of course.

There is also other stuff like vac,source engine ect.i'm assuming they get some sort of income if a company uses that within there game as well.

Some ppl most prob correct me,but thats how i see it.

[MovieMan999]

Originally Posted by T@F

Valve owns steam so they don't make money from steam alone,but they do make money from ppl buying the games to put on there steam account.
They get a cut on the games they sell through steam.

They don't set the price of the games devs do unless it's valve game of course.

There is also other stuff like vac,source engine ect.i'm assuming they get some sort of income if a company uses that within there game as well.

Some ppl most prob correct me,but thats how i see it.

That's right.
- Cut from game purchases
- Extra services like 'Cloud', 'VAC', and whatever else they have

Not really sure what else there would be and I really have to go now sooooo I'll leave it there. XD

[SEKCobra]

The main income are their own games, I dont think you could handle the server load they have(Updates, releases, videos etc.) just from the cut and cloud(And cloud even eats space + traffic too).

That's right.
- Cut from game purchases
- Extra services like 'Cloud', 'VAC', and whatever else they have

So, if they get a 'cut', where does the rest of the money go? Co-developers or something?

I'm sure valve get's a portion of the funds from devs who use cloud, vac, etc,. in addition to their own games. If I'm reading your question correctly though they do not have any licensing or certification fees associated with putting a game on the steam platform unlike xbla or psn which is why a lot of indy devs go the steamroute first instead of throwing a game on consoles....

[FuuKuy]

STEAM Store is like any other store: Gamestop, Amazon, GAME, etc.

The profit is fomr any game its sold on the store. STEAMworks is free of charge for developers.

[ICantShoot]

Originally Posted by Bassett

So, if they get a 'cut', where does the rest of the money go? Co-developers or something?

Someone once said, if you make a game and put it on Steam to be sold, you get 30%, Valve gets 70%. If the same thing would be on retail, then you get like 10%, game distributors (like EA, ACtivision) gets the 90%. While these numbers are really not exactly true, you get the idea.

Valve provides the service - Store, online distribution, Steamworks (achievements, VAC, Steam cloud) that developers can use. They even licence Source Engine if someone is willing to buy a licence.

Making things click takes money, bandwidth, etc. Valve got the ready package, Steam that handles that. After all, since they are a company, they try to make profit alongside of things. Just like any other company.

Their own games are just portion of the thing that Steam sells and these days they just do those for promoting Steam and for fun.

[Leox001]

Originally Posted by Bassett

So, if they get a 'cut', where does the rest of the money go? Co-developers or something?

Publishers

[Threesixtyci]

yeah.... I blame steam for the lack of Episode 3 for Halflife 2. In that Valve's main income is not making games, anymore. It's Steam....