Stardew likely qualifies for the reduced store cuts. Steam _lowers_ the percentage for a game when it sells high. Still somewhere between 10 and 25%, though.

Generally, the Steam cut is considered “fair” for Indy devs. The benefits of steam (discoverability, massive audience) generate more sales. My Indy dev friends are not upset about the steam cut at all.

This, however, is one area where eventually Epic Games shines — they take a much lower cut and if they increase in popularity with gamers then steam might be forced to lower their share.

In this case, as a solo dev, it's probably quite justified to be honest. I doubt ConcernedApe would have really been able to continue solo-ing it with this level of success if he also had to maintain distribution channels, sales/returns, marketing, legal stuff on a global scale.

It's probably the big name studios who already have entire departments to do that kind of stuff that feel they're being ripped off.

Gabe gotta buy a $500 million dollar yacht.

It pays to be the middle man!

I mean the company taking the 30% cut also pays taxes on that so more then you'd guess are going to taxes.