The team at Valve announced today that they’re changing up the revenue share rates on the Steam storefront, standardizing a rate of increasing take for devs whose games hit certain sales milestones.
It’s part of a larger series of changes the company is making to its Distribution Agreement, one that seems aimed at giving successful game makers more incentive to keep selling their games on Steam.
The new system starts now (well, October 1st, to be specific) so games that have already sold well probably won’t see their splits change until they hit the milestones like everyone else. Valve’s take will now lock in at 25 percent (rather than the common 30 percent) on any revenues a game generates beyond $10 million, and it will drop to 20 percent on any earnings over $50 million.
“The value of a large network like Steam has many benefits that are contributed to and shared by all the participants,” reads an excerpt of the announcement. “It’s always been apparent that successful games and their large audiences have a material impact on those network effects so making sure Steam recognizes and continues to be an attractive platform for those games is an important goal for all participants in the network.”
In addition, Valve claims to be updating its confidentiality guidelines so that developers can now share sales data at their own discretion, updating some of its messaging around safety for select virtual reality experiences, and adding in some (GDPR-driven) language to deal with privacy and player data.
Curious devs can find more details in the full announcement, and check out the updates themselves by logging into Steamworks.