Five years ago, Gearbox boss Randy Pitchford predicted that, "when we look back at Steam in five or 10 years, it may look like a dying store and other, competitive stores, will be the place to be," alluding primarily to the then-fresh Epic Games Store and its more generous developer revenue split. Cut to today and not only is Steam quite lively, Borderlands 4 is eyeing Steam and the Epic Games Store, whereas Borderlands 3 was briefly an Epic exclusive. As some onlookers readied their eggs, Pitchford addressed his inaccurate prediction online, defending his stance as pro-competition.
"Yeah, Steam is the leading store for PC games and Epic is not pressing their advantage (which is a shame)," Pitchford said in a tweet. "I’m a Steam customer, but sure wish they had more and better competition that was more favorable to artists, designers, and creators than to the retailer. I will continue to support competitors to Steam and also support Steam."
Separately, Pitchford added, "I don’t think I am anti-Steam as much as pro competition. It’s frustrating how much Steam takes given what they provide. I will happily support competitive platforms that are more favorable to artists and developers and creators than favorable to the retail operators."
At base, Valve gets a 30% revenue cut of Steam game sales, whereas the Epic Games Store takes 12% and offers six-month exclusivity deals that give developers 100% of the revenue. Epic boss Tim Sweeney has trumpeted this selling point for years, frequently mirroring Pitchford's stance on competition and supporting creators. The Epic Games Store has also continually pumped out free games to win players over. Despite this, the Epic Games Store still wasn't profitable as of late last year and hasn't dealt a major blow to Steam's PC dominance.
That's not to say that everyone is perfectly happy with Steam, however. Per PC Gamer, a notable 2021 GDC survey found that the overwhelming majority of surveyed developers (mostly North American and European) didn't think Steam does enough to justify its hefty cut. The 2024 survey didn't ask the same question for comparison, sadly, though it did find that PC is still the most appealing platform to surveyed developers, with 66% of respondents interested compared to 35% for PS5, 34% for Xbox Series X, and 18% for Nintendo Switch (presumably because the Switch is quite old and the Nintendo Switch 2 is on the horizon).
Plenty of developers like Steam, of course; just recently the creator of beloved shipbuilder Cosmoteer argued Steam's cut is worth it for the "free advertising" the storefront offers. Last year, Valve assured devs and users Steam should not be "pay to win," outlining the filters and algorithms that help games get noticed on Steam. Earlier this month, Steam added a new "Trending Free" chart to keep free games and demos from pushing other games down the coveted trending tab.
Borderlands 4 is set on an "all-new planet" rather than series mainstay Pandora.
