Valve is not the one setting the prices. The publishers/developers are. One could argue that they are increasing their prices becauses of Valve’s cut, but they aren’t. A Ubisoft game for example costs the same on Steam as it does on the Ubisoft store, which is obviously not taking any cuts for its own games.
Edit for the price parity argument: If the parity would have increased game prices to include Valve’s cut, AAA games would have gotten 30% more expensive many years ago. But they didn’t.
Valve is not the one setting the prices. The publishers/developers are. One could argue that they are increasing their prices becauses of Valve’s cut, but they aren’t. A Ubisoft game for example costs the same on Steam as it does on the Ubisoft store, which is obviously not taking any cuts for its own games.
Also, 30% is the industry standard. Here is a nice overview IGN made in 2019. https://oyster.ignimgs.com/wordpress/stg.ign.com/2019/09/GameRetailerCuts_infographic-1.png
Edit for the price parity argument: If the parity would have increased game prices to include Valve’s cut, AAA games would have gotten 30% more expensive many years ago. But they didn’t.
Ubisoft is a good example because they have withheld their games from Steam so plenty of samples to look at to see how they priced games themselves.
Have you seen the price of Square Enix games?
They need to pull their fucking heads in.