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Why doesn't Steam support Android? (feddit.org)

submitted 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Steam revenue estimated 2024: $10.8B

Google Play Store gaming revenue 2024: ~$31B

Why doesn't Valve want a part of that? I mean they already have an Android app. Several, actually. I realize there's some amount of investment but surely the payoff is worth it, and they have the necessary funds and skills? I mean if F-Droid can do it with nothing but volunteers and grants...?

Certainly plenty of games won't lend themselves well to the mobile experience but also plenty of them do.

From a personal perspective: I don't really care a whole lot for mobile games but I do like Balatro and want to play it on my phone, but if I want to do that I have to buy another license, which I can't even do because I don't run Google Play Services.

Epic got in on this already. Where's Valve?

Edit: my reflections on this conversation:

Valve could distribute their own app like Epic but they'd also probably have to remove it from the Play Store because now a cross-platform game would give them an Android version, thus breaking Google's ToS. So would doing such a thing outweigh lost sales from the Google version, and would it impact customer satisfaction? I wonder how many people are actually purchasing PC games in the Steam Android app...?

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

For a company like Valve, they are going to need greater adoption than what F-Droid has to be viable.

And I didn't say that a successful app store was impossible, just improbable enough that it doesn't justify investing in Android and that previous failures show how hard this is. Valve is still a for profit company and will make decisions to make money.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

For a company like Valve, they are going to need greater adoption than what F-Droid has to be viable.

They really don't. Valve is a private company and doesn't need all of the money. Just 30%

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

An android app store is going to cost more than $0 to make.