The Valve example sounds similar, but I think Amazon is comparably more nefarious:
- Valve chargers developers $100 per title, and a revenue sharing fee that starts at 30%
- in exchange, devs must follow Valve’s content and pricing policies (which requires developers not to undercut Steam’s prices
Amazon has a few different tiers for sellers, but in general, they charge:
- Monthly fees ($39.99 / mo)
- Referral fees (8-15%)
- Fulfillment and refund fees, which includes additional storage fees
- Advertising fees (for keyword bids or sponsored products)
Valve is kind enough to offer free promotion on the home page (if your game is popular, or has a sale), and digital games are much easier to scale, versus manufacturing and holding physical inventory. They also do a lot of nefarious shit, but I’d argue at least their partners aren’t being squeezed quite as much.
brucethemoose@lemmy.world 3 days ago
This is exactly my point; it’s easy to jump in and defend Valve for their good points when, at the end of the day, they take a third of all profits for themselves and have a pseudo monopoly with their platform.
One can make similar points about Amazon, about how much they can save retailers, especially before they enshittified so significantly.