I can’t even begin to understand how hard it is to make it on Twitch. I assume probably the top 1000 streamers make the real money and the rest 99,5% probably make like $50 per month…
They don’t. Their payouts leaked a couple years ago, of the thousands of streamers there’s a few hundred that make minimum wage or better. This pattern holds true for YouTube, only fans, etc.
It’s way more than a few hundred. What leaked was the twitch subscriber payout, which doesn’t count all the money spent on bits. Then there’s also sponsorships and youtube content.
I follow several Path of Exile streamers, and when that released they said that that was not the total payout. They usually do some video guides of builds for the game that, alongside twitch generates content for them. Then there’s also sponsors for gaming rigs and other kind of stuff, sponsors to try new games… Maybe it’s PoE specifically but even streamers that oscillate between 200-800, maybe 1k viewers when there’s no other PoE streamer online earned more that minimum wage with just the twitch payout (given the country they live in ofc).
How often are those small streamers the only one though? Having times where you do almost ok aren’t that great if you make nothing 30% of your streaming time.
It’s still more than a few hundred. I don’t remember how big the leaked doc was but it wasn’t in the thousands, it was bigger. Your statement can be true while the statement of the one I responded to be incorrect at the same time.
I mean, you comment is true and refutes nothing I said.
Complete guess here, but refunds are probably handled differently by the banks compared to new payments, i.e. undoing an error is probably free(ish), but paying people is how they get you
Do they just keep your earning in your account until one month your total outstanding earnings breach the 100$ threshold and you’ll receive all your earning in one transaction or does this money get swallowed by steam?
For context: I make indie games and have released two so far and I’m currently working on the third one which is weird as fuck. So the way that Steam works is, they don’t send you money anytime you make a sale, but they send all of it at the end of every month. Now September is almost over and I got an e-mail titled “Steam Payment Notification” and I get all hyped up. I open it and read it that the Payment Notification is actually that there is no Payment since I didn’t make $100 in sales. Way to hype me up and bring me down, Steam.
Yes, their cut is 30% which is a lot, but they are pretty much the only big platform out there. Epic games has been trying to get in the game but so far they are not close. Their cut is 15%.
I want to note that you’d need about $143 in gross sales to meet the threshold of $100 in net profit.
On the surface that sounds like a lot. But, they’re providing a service without any guarantee of any income. Epic can only compete because they’ve few users and are willing to operate at a near loss in attempt to garner market share.
This will be a difficult one for others to understand as a “good deal”. Gamers are usually correct when they pull out their pitchforks. This should not be one of those times.
While I’m no fan of Epic Games for bribing companies to keep games off of Steam for a year or more, Valve’s market dominance in PC game sales isn’t a good thing for developers or consumers.
Competition in capitalism is always better than a lack thereof. But, we’ve not busted monopolies in a significant way since Ma Bell. And, even if we were, at 75% of the global market share they’d not warrant any action yet.
There’s going to be a dominant organization because late stage capitalism sucks. And, I’d rather it be Valve than some alternative trying to fuck me over at every opportunity.
The thing is, steam’s market dominance is one of user choice rather than anticompetitive strategies or lack of alternatives. Steam doesn’t do exclusives, they don’t charge you for external sales, they don’t even prevent you from selling steam keys outside the platform, or users from launching non steam games in the client. The only real restriction is that access to steam services requires a license in the active steam account. Even valve-produced devices like the steam deck can install from other stores.
Sure, dominance is bad in an abstract theoretical way and it’d be nice if Gog, itch.io, etc were more competitive, but Steam is dominant because consumers actively choose it.
Youtube and twitch work this same way. When I was starting there were months where I didnt make any money because I didn’t meet the minimum. Hoping next month meets the requirement for you boss 🙏
It accumulates, so there is no money lost. It does kinda suck though that as you start, even though you can make money and did make a bit you don’t get to see it yet
It does make sense from a payment processing standpoint. It doesn’t make sense to spend more money on creating the transaction than is actually being sent.
Sending a simple transaction like this costs a couple cents though, which they could in theory bill to the developer as well. Setting the threshold at 100 is probably more to accrue additional interest on Steams bank accounts.
I think in the US I’ve heard ETF/ACH transaction fees are usually around $2.50? It might be possible to have that apply across a batch, though, as in if you submit 10 payments to 10 different people as a single transaction it’s still just $2.50, or 25¢ per person. I’m only getting this from hearing accountants complain at companies I’ve worked with, so I don’t understand the details. But I’ve seen it pretty common with companies doing payouts to want to see a minimum amount before they actually send the payment, otherwise it’s not worth doing.
I used to pay a particular company by purchase order for this exact reason. CC takes 2-3% of the payment, but purchase order - they’ve got to get themselves into the company system, track the PO, invoice, track the payment…at the time, a common estimate was $50 to process a PO, and if you’re only buying $100 batches, that’s a big hit. Did not like that company, but they were the only place to get whatever it was I had to buy.
if this is true I’d recommend sending GamersNexus an email with the details as they might be able to help considering their past actions to hold companies accountable
It’s true, but it’s Steam policy. If you haven’t reached the threshold for the month, you are not getting a payment. I guess I just have to sell more games and do better next time. I mean with Steam Sale events I will probably get there eventually.
Well, after Disney got quite some bad press for taking the right to accidentally kill people that have tried out Disney plus, it seems to be quite a logical move.
Steam probably realised that they cannot claim these things in court without seriously hurting their reputation.
You say you don’t care for Porsche IRL. If you have any interest in driving performance vehicles and have an opportunity to drive one, try to not pass it up. 10 years ago, I drove a 10-year-old 911 and it remains the best driver’s car I’ve ever driven. So precise, so confident. It’s what they’re known for. I knocked them before because they always looked so understated and the owners seem pompous. While both can be true, it’s still an excellent sports car. I’m out of the car scene and can’t talk about modern hybrids/electrics/SUVs and wouldn’t recommend a Panamera as the basis for your opinion.
FH4 just went semi-offline (no more seasonal or promotional content, still has online play/free roam randos). I wonder if that played a role in that pricing inversion. Last minute cash squeeze? Maybe it ushered the market away from 4 and into 5?
I do enjoy the FH titles. I wish there were more normal cars, but that’s probably partly due to not keeping up with the latest hypercars. With limited time to play, I spend a ton of time cruising in semi-normal cars across the open world. One of the unusual activities is 4th+ gear highway pulls in some blundering V8. Just hear it wind out from idle to redline. FH1 remains my favorite story because it actually had a story, it felt. It was shallow, but it had a clear progression of races, rivalry, and all the world building for the horizon festival. The rest have just too many races, tournaments, and events thrown at you at once. Every race unlocks 4 more. FH2 did an amazing job introducing the open world, drive anywhere style although I found the European map to be bland. FH3’s Australia was more diverse, but I was further overwhelmed by the number of map icons. I’m currently in FH4 and I suppose have finally accepted there’s never going to be another “campaign” style title. I guess that’s really the gaming industry as a whole with all the battle Royales and similar arcade-style games.
I guess I should hurry up and get FH5 before all the time-sensitively content runs out there, too, right? Damn consumer cyclism.
You say you don’t care for Porsche IRL. If you have any interest in driving performance vehicles and have an opportunity to drive one, try to not pass it up.
I used to be pretty big into cars in my youth. I actually took part in some drift racing in northern Japan when I lived there for a few years, and those guys are all big math/physics/car nerds (not the Yakuza gangster wannabes like you saw in Tokyo Drift; that movie was fantasy American street racing with a Japanese skin over it), so I really got into that stuff for a while. But high-end sports cars were out of our league, so I haven’t ever tried a Porsche. I guess that needs to go on my bucket list.
I suppose have finally accepted there’s never going to be another “campaign” style title. I guess that’s really the gaming industry as a whole with all the battle Royales and similar arcade-style games.
I really hate that there’s so much push to get us to play online multiplayer games now. I mean, I get it from a financial standpoint - it keeps players engaged with a game long after they’ve finished the campaign and if they can squeeze micro-transactions/seasons/DLC into it, it’s a source of added income for years afterward. But from a gaming standpoint, I just see it as repetitive gameplay that doesn’t lead anywhere, with rewards that are never worth the effort.
I’m also not a fan of playing online with strangers because the environment can be very toxic. I barely tolerate playing co-op with my friends some days. 😆
It depends on the situation. There’s plenty of games that made the DLC era notorious by putting out games with only half the content as prior games. In the case of Forza Horizon, I feel they’ve provided substantial content in the base games, at least as far as maps and modes.
I will agree with OP about the number of DLC cars though, because it’s excessive. I wish I could filter out DLC and stop being teased. It’s particularly annoying when basically and entire manufacturer is DLC (Porsche in FH4 I think) or when some 3rd party sponsor brand drops a ton of “sponsor edition” cars. Maybe I’m just out of the pop loop but I do NOT need Hoonigan cars when I can modify any of the base cars to be stupid fast. I rest my cane.
Yeah I play FH5 and have not touched the DLC. I feel like there is more than enough cars and content in the base game that I will probably never get to as is. It’s just a chill game for me, drive around the beautiful scenery, relax, and do a race here or there.
Even then, expansion packs were far and few between, and they expanded the story! They didn’t just add a custom skin of horse armor to your game. You got actual real content to enjoy with your money.
Incidentally, I just jumped back on the horse this morning by adding the latest World of Warcraft expansion to my account. I was almost done with Activision Blizzard and their awful content updates, but I decided to give it one more shot. So I might have some WoW screenshots incoming in the near future.
I had been an active player since 2005 and have bought every collector’s edition since The Burning Crusade. Only because Blizzard used to be an amazing company. But they’ve been garbage since they sold to Activision, and I’ve been spending more and more time away from it in the past decade. My wife actually gave up on it when Mists of Pandaria came out.
I barely played the last expansion; it just wasn’t fun trying to level up a dragon so I could glide just a little bit further across the map, when I have dozens of actual flying mounts in my inventory. Too much work for something that should’ve been given to us after meeting quest and/or level requirements. As far as I understand, their latest expansion is supposed to be the first in a massive 3-part story to reinvigorate the franchise, so I’m hoping they actually hired someone who knows what they’re doing this time.
I agree completely, I was just trying to say I think that was the beginning of it. I never touch cosmetic DLC but I at least consider DLC that adds story or more content. I play Paradox games after all. :-)
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