Valve does some advertising for Steamworks

There's been a slew of games recently, that probably had good chances of getting Linux releases, that have been scooped up by Epic Games exclusivity deals. Even more troubling was the acquisition of Psyonix, the developers of Rocket League, putting the game's future Linux support in flux.

Epic Games advertises their 12% royalty on game purchases made through their storefront, even though that is slightly disingenuous to customers because Epic charges some payment provider fees directly players. Valve, on the other hand, is holding Steam's royalty share at 30% for most titles. Additionally, the Epic Store offers developers comparatively little in terms of infrastructure and support compared to Steam.

To get the word out a little bit, today Valve created a new page for Steamworks, their ecosystem for developers. They go through many of the benefits developers receive when using the Steam platform. It's a rather impressive list of features, including stuff like persistent inventories for in game items and improved server stability using Valve's networking APIs. I often hear that payment processing through Steam is quite good too. And let's not forget support for Linux!

Of course, every game is different and the needs of each title will vary. But it's worth remembering that Steam is more than just a frontend to download games and offers a lot for their fee.