I don't disagree, and we may both end up splitting hairs here, but when I say reasonable, I'm saying it entirely from my perspective as a customer in terms of what that 30% is paying for. I am obviously not objective as a customer so I think calling it reasonable is a fair thing to say from my perspective.
But there's also a little bit of experience there too. I remember when developers and publishers were praising Steam for only taking 30%. This was back when most games were boxed products in a shop and a developer/publisher's margin was far smaller than it is on Steam, and everyone thought they were getting away like bandits. So, you know, I think greed is a strong motivator here.
With that in mind, plenty of publishers and developers could get 100% of the cut from a game's sales and they'd moan it's not 110%.
So I consider it reasonable to want 30% of the money I'm paying for the game to make my experience buying, playing and accessing games better versus it disappearing into a publisher's coffers. Epic said they could do the same on 12% and given their client is an utter shitshow that has been categorically disproven.
That 30% has got me:
- refunds
- gift cards
- BPM
- SteamInput
- communities
- trading cards
- a polished and functional client, which apparently is hard going by the state everyone else's
- and Steam Deck.
Very reasonable in my mind.