Developers have come to the same conclusion, it's to their benefit for the customers to all be on one store with one set of policies and features so that's where the majority of the apps go.
So what are you going to do, force Apple to become a fragmented Android copy with multiple stores and side loading that a tiny fraction of techies actually use? Those people already have that on Android if they want it. Honestly you'd just screw over Apple and a few other people over a principle hardly anybody actually cares about or benefits from. It certainly wouldn't make any significant commercial difference. We ran that experiment and the results are in.
The idea that users would all be side loading apps and developers would be making far more money having their apps spread across 5+ different stores that would compete down to lower prices is delusional. If that were the case, why has this not happened on Windows or MacOS where side loading is actually the default yet Steam, GOG, etc still charge 30%? It's crystal clear that's just the split the market has converged on through a competitive process. After all Steam has competed from day one with a default split of nothing for direct downloads from the software publisher but has thrived charging 30%. If that's not direct market validation I don't know what is.
It's some combination of these things (and some others I haven't considered), and the value all of this added up, minus steam's downsides, is apparently worth an extra 30% if this cost is sufficiently hidden from the consumer.
Would people still pay a 30% fee if the store were forced to actually show the fee, and there were alternatives? I'm not so sure.
You're right that there's some value there, but it's probably closer to 3% than 30%.
That has happened. The majority of my 20,000 Steam games were acquired from outside of Steam.
"Steam keys are meant to be a convenient tool for game developers to sell their game on other stores and at retail. Steam keys are free and can be activated by customers on Steam to grant a license to a product."
They didn’t have to acquire the user themselves and now they have more eyeballs on their service. How many of these users buy a few things later and make waiving the fee worth it?
Steams not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
Do you?
> Steam comfortable holds its lead for good reason
Yes. One of those good reasons is that it allows people to purchase Steam games without buying them on Steam, thus avoiding having to subsidise Valve's 30% cut.
There's an absolutely gigantic ecosystem around buying Steam games from first-party (developer) and third-party (marketplace/bundle) sellers. I don't think you realise that it's a perfect example against the point you're making. There's enough competition from the ability to "side-load" games into Steam that it's very common to get some of the greatest games ever made for under a dollar, when their MSRP is up to two orders of magnitude higher.
These arguments are being made by a tiny minority for the benefit of a small community of techies who already have platforms available to them that work they way you want and take advantage of it, like you do. It's like coupon clippers insisting on a law that all products sold must some with discount coupons.
Minority? Probably. Tiny? Absolutely not.
Here [0] is a breakdown of 70 popular Steam games by the source of purchase for their reviewers as of a year ago. About 28% of all Steam purchases happen outside of Steam itself, with Valve getting a 0% cut. Note that for many games a majority of reviewers did not purchase it on Steam itself.
0: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ICv-UE4i651yMkpD...
Genuine curiosity, not trying to troll or anything.
A very large number of them I would not have bought individually, but they came in a bundle with other games I wanted.
HyperRogue, Hollow Knight, and LOGistICAL.