Valve maintains one of the biggest platforms, and their own game engine. Valve also developed CSGO, TF2, and Dota, all popular online games that need constant maintenance (and even big content updates sometimes). Valve also invested in VR and sells hardware.
Valve has 1200 employees.
To me it's easy to see why Unity lose money.
Distribution, Analytics, Multiplayer, Anticheat, Publishing Services, Anti Piracy, Storefront, Sales, Mods, Custom Content Integrations, Localisation, and most importantly discovery (things you pay for dearly outside on mobile).
They never had need to convince developers that the fee is worth it and they never had to retroactively change terms of service. They have continually invested into the system and built the trust.
Most of all, Valve chose the long term sustainable business model when everyone else in the industry tried to extract per download charges from gamers. So gamers chose the company that sold them their game collection, just in the cloud instead of nickel and diming.
And developers chose valve because they were infinitely more trustworthy and offered better tools than any of the legacy publishers. They never increased the fees because they made bad bets either (and they had a few like VR)
Yes there’s a case to be made that the 30% should be reduced now, but realistically few could compare Valve to Unity when it comes to execution and long term value balancing for developers and gamers.
But I can't help but feel you're willing to twist the facts to defend Unity. I'll list some facts for the readers:
1. The 4% cut is a rumor at this point. It's not confirmed.
2. Unity didn't just announce a 4% cut at the first place. They announced a fee per install. It's an unprecedented business model. No other semi-popular game engine does that, ever.
1. Make a platform gamers love to use so much that they will still use it even if other stores are literally giving the games away for free
2. Build a brand that your target audience recognizes worldwide and trusts with their entire game collection.
3. "Exploit" the fact that your audience loves your product and brand so fanatically that you can charge the same amount on an open platform (PC/windows/linux) that other app stores need walled gardens (apple/android - literal lockin and literal near-monopolies/duopoly) to be able to charge.
I really struggle to find a way to frame Valve as the bad guy here. It's PC. There's literally nothing stopping you from just installing as many app stores / launcher platforms as you want. And it's not all-or-nothing - people DO use multiple launchers/stores. What gamer doesn't begrudgingly have Origin and at least one of EGS or the Blizzard/battlenet launcher installed alongside steam? And yet people still use steam, and spend the most money there by far.
I'm not "defending" Valve (actually I find it's very worrisome that they're a game developer and a platform at the same time.) I'm pointing out the fact in no way Unity can sustain 6x of employees than Valve.
It would be great if you could be Valve. Everyone wants to be Valve. But you are not Valve. Especially not if you're publicly traded or a private equity rollup - things Valve has stubbornly resisted becoming.
