An interesting video popped up in my youtube feed for once:

I always figured it a lousy, unfounded argument made by people who attach their favorite games to a greed fueled company.  Perhaps some hard numbers will make it make sense now?

I wholeheartedly agree with most of the video but one thing is bothering me. The 30% that Valve takes is not less than the cost of putting a game on a shelf at Wal-Mart. Brick and Mortar stores take $10 from the $60 price tag and producing/shipping physical discs costs $5. A 30% take from Valve is $18.

I don't think the entire industry is doing lootboxes. Just EA, Ubisoft, Activision, and WB Games. I know those are big names in the industry, but I don't care too much, because the majority of their games don't appeal to me. I'm only really interested in Assassin's Creed, Rayman, Mario x Rabbids, Shadow of Mordor, and Mortal Kombat. In the case of Mario x Rabbids, Nintendo probably won't let Ubisoft ever get greedy, since it's Nintendo's flagship character being represented.

The best game I have played in the last 2 years was DARKEST DUNGEON. It costed 300k dollars to make.

On PC, but PC market in stores is almost dead outside the biggest games.  Compared to consoles a Sony or Microsoft take a cut like Valve does.  You also have to think about estimating production and inventory issues. Digital has been a boon for PC games of past decade.

Sony and MS take a cut of about $10 for console royalties. I completely forgot about that. So yeah we have $18 to put a $60 game up on steam vs $25 to put a game in stores. Unless you are the console owner, since you aren't going to charge yourself royalty fees. This is why Nintendo hasn't gone third party yet. A $60 1st party game from the big N, only has to pay $5 for production/shipping, and $10 to the brick and mortar store. That's a net profit of $45 per game. Meanwhile if you are a third party dev toiling under a publisher with heavy marketing you have a high chance of only seeing $10-$15 per $60 game sale. And your publisher only stands to gain a net profit of $10 per game sale, after the costs of marketing. This is why Lootboxes, and day one DLC have become so common. It's an easy way for greedy publishers to double their profits. 

I'm not sure if you've seen the Extra Credit's episode "The JCPenny Effect", but Steam's pricing and sales work like JCPenny's did with clothes. That $60 price tag you see on steam isn't really the real price of the game. It's just there to make your eyes bug out when the game finally goes "on sale". 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxfkWZPAUg4

So yeah, that's kind of another argument against the old "the cost of making games is too high" argument. Digital has made the cost of goods sold way cheaper, and increased profit margins for developers. Yet we still see the same old slave labor practices of employers, combined with greedy lootboxes, day one DLC, etc. This is why I refuse to support a game that has predatory day one DLC or lootboxes. There are way better games and companies to choose from. 2017 was an epic year for games, and I won't be missing Shadow of War. Hell, I can barely get through what I've bought this year. Just too many excellent games to be bothered spending even more money on games that ask for more than the normal price tag. 

The biggest question nobody ever asks is "why the fuck should we care?". If you are not able to present a compelling product at an affordable price without niggling your customers about more money at every corner maybe you suck at business and should move on to other things.

But no, this isn't about not making enough money on a game in the first place. Plenty of "failures" turn a profit. This is about not getting the maximum amount of money. And thanks to people who always fall for those myths that those poor poor billion dollar companies spout all day we have shitty lootboxes and shitty consoles that are apparently a necessity or else everything would collapse.

Fuck them and fuck everyone who defends them.

Yeah exactly. I can't believe how many people defend this shit, even on this site. It's fine to look at things from a logical buisness perspective but actively defending anti-consumer shit is terrible. It's one of the worst things about the Kinda Funny Gamescast

Been hearing that sentence since early last gen.

Agree.

If you make a game that needs to sell more than 3 million units to make some profit and it isn't part of a major franchise you are making it yourself way to hard as publisher or developer. Most AAA SP games turn into profit after breaking the two million mark. Besides that still leaves a budget of around 35 million make an appealing game. Should be pretty doable if not you just sick at making appealing games.