"You mad bro?": Lawsuit emails reveal Valve's internal response to Epic CEO's "you assholes" rant about Steam revenue cuts
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Now, as reported and shared in theGameDiscoverCo newsletter, new documents have been uncovered as part of the lawsuit, including somepartially redacted email interactionsbetween Sweeney, Newell, Erik Johnson and Scott Lynch.
“Right now, you assholes are telling the world that the strong and powerful get special terms, while 30% is for the little people,” Sweeney wrote. “We’re all in for a prolonged battle if Apple tries to keep their monopoly and 30% by cutting backroom deals with big publishers to keep them quiet. Why not give ALL developers a better deal? What better way is there to convince Apple quickly that their model is now totally untenable?”
For context, Steam generally takes a 30% cut from developers , but a few days before the announcement of the Epic Games Store, Steam revealed it was changing things so that its cut can go down to 25% or even 20% once games surpass higher revenue thresholds. Games have to reach between $10 million and $50 million for 25%, and go beyond $50 million for 20%, giving game developers more profit.
Epic’s revenue split, on the other hand, is a lot more favorable towards developers, with the company generally taking a 12% cut from all games. These days, it also offers programs to give developers 100% revenue for a limited time by bringing their older games to its storefront, or by releasing new games with an Epic exclusivity window. With that in mind, you can see the mindset that fueled Sweeney’s annoyance at Steam’s more generous revenue split deals being reserved only for the biggest and most financially successful games.
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Valve, however, didn’t respond how you might expect. The same document containing this email from Sweeney also reveals that the very next day, Valve’s chief operating officer, Scott Lynch, weighed in on an internal Valve thread, simply saying: “You mad bro?”
It would seem Sweeney was, in fact, mad.
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