Steam. The place we go for computer games. Loveably yet staggeringly strange. Run by a secretive company tucked away in Bellevue, Washington. Headed up by a man who loves knives. 

But it’s not as shady as it sounds. Valve’s developed and delighted diligently for its near thirty year history. It is behind some of the most well-loved modern games, whose ability to stand the test of time is perhaps only matched by Nintendo. The difference? The latter deals in platformers and technicolor. Valve’s Half-Life oriented offerings are filled with adult themes. 

Adult themes. Headcrabs, guns, dry humor, portals. Storytelling and the vastness of what technology can do for us and to us and why. Yet I’ve sat down today to write about perhaps the most adult theme known to the modern us: money. 

Why is it, my friends, that Steam opens to its store page? When you boot the application up on your computer, the vast majority of times you’re using it as a launchpad to play a game. You’re looking through your library – of games you’ve already bought – to spend some time delving into a story you love, taking down monsters with friends, or puzzling through the newest entry into your favorite genre. You’re not often going there to buy. To purchase licenses to games that will just sit in backlog purgatory. Certainly sometimes that’s a Steam user’s intent, especially on launch days, but it’s rare relative to how much we use the platform to play.

So, why? Steam has many technical head-scratchers built into its interface. The clunkiness of its mobile application, the staticness of its payment screens, an apparent inability to properly signpost what is clickable and not. Crashes, bugs, interfaces that look like they haven’t been updated since the mid-2000s. But is this one of those? No.

Steam opens to its store page automatically because you’re marginally more likely to spend money if you see interesting new releases before having to click over to your library of already purchased games. Steam takes a 30% cut from the revenue generated by game sales on its platform. This means that out of every dollar earned by developers on their games, Steam keeps 30 cents. That’s a lot of money. It’s the money that allows Valve to remain independent while Microsoft buys everyone else. It’s the money that gives Valve the freedom to be good to their community and fashion an identity as a high-quality games shop that cares about its people and releases bangers each and every time around. Valve doesn’t have to crunch out games year after year to slip by because they control the most powerful market in PC gaming by a country mile, and the main way that market functions is by leaching developer profits and inducing users to buy games they may never even play.

The trouble on the developer side is that your game will not sell if it’s not on Steam. Hell, it probably won’t sell anyway. In this oversaturated indie games market, 8,495 titles have been released on Steam in 2024. I’m writing this piece on the 177th day of the year. That means nearly 50 games are released each day on the marketplace, and most aren’t given top billing. There’s no chance the gaming public will see the vast majority of these releases, and when they are noticed and bought, Valve gets a heaping cut. It’s a win-win for the company and a clear loss for developers in most cases. On the customer side, we’re bombarded with messages to buy, buy, buy, none more frustrating than the fact that the place we access all our games is a store first and a repository second. Sitting down for a gaming session will always feel disappointingly commercial when using Steam’s default settings. There are, of course, options to create desktop shortcuts for booting games – which I would highly recommend taking advantage of – but the reality of Valve’s store-first strategy remains. 

And then there are the sales. Another tactic Valve uses to entice Steam users to buy more than they’ll play. Steam constantly lists games on sale in collaboration with developers. On the surface, this seems like a cheaper way to play, but it’s important to remember that following the money will always prove to serve the seller first. Otherwise, the deal that you’re so happy with would not exist. In this case, sales are used to strategically place games on your radar at key earnings dates for large companies who need to eke out more of a profit margin. Routinely, they list a game with a 20% or less discount, technically saving the customer money. However, the bump in numbers accompanied by a Steam sale is more than worth the slight dip in revenue per unit sold for the companies behind them. That’s why consumers should think of Steam sales as signals. Not a signal to buy mind you, but rather a signal that a company wants your money. You should only give it to them if you actually want to play their game, not just because said game is 45 dollars instead of 60.

If you’re looking to support the studios you love, buying their game at launch is the best way to do so. Paying full price to indie studios means you’re putting money (well, 70% of it, at least) in the pockets of the people who make what you love, and that’s something worth doing. Also, sales numbers in the first days and weeks of release can make or break gamemakers, regardless of how established or well-off they seem based on their track records. While it’s shocking, in today’s market, if a game doesn’t do well at launch, studios might begin to lay off employees or, worse yet, consider shutting down completely. So, I encourage you as a consumer to keep your eye on the work of the people you want to support, buy that work at full price when it drops, and ignore the signal of sale. It’s something that’s easy to get sucked into, but the more you follow the money, a bleaker and bleaker picture of Steam and its stewards comes to the fore. 

At the end of the day, Steam is convenient. Steam is there. It’s where I keep my games. It helped spawn the Steam Deck, my favorite piece of handheld gaming technology. Valve does many wonderful things and has fostered my enjoyment of gaming probably just as much as any corporation ever will. A company needs to be profitable to do these things. That I understand, and I’m grateful to the creatives at Valve for driving independent games and gaming forward.

But being greeted by that store will never cease to draw my ire, and it’s a powerful reminder of where the bottom line lies, for all of us, as we make our way around this very strange world. We, as individuals, are smallholders. Companies want what we have. Giving it to them is our choice. Exercise it!