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Steam has a massive user base, people will browse the store, therefore your games for sale have a big user base that might see it on the store and decide to buy it. That is one of the advantages of steam for game producers, and probably worth the 30% to some.
I actually just bought the witcher 3 on GOG as the steam price was too high.
Correct, the potential reach of Steam is pretty good, but you may question what % of users actually browse the store. Its certainly not the whole userbase and if you can get a message across through regular marketing (which any publisher will do regardless) then that will always be preferable.
Steam is in that sense nothing more than a bit of window shopping. If you don't pass by the window, you'll never know it was there. Its not 'free marketing' in that sense, at all. Its just an appearance on a storefront, one out of the thousands that pass us by. That is also Steam's problem ever since it got bigger, providing fair and useful visibility for all those games. That is why they have all these things to filter what you see, like wishlist/daily queue/the early access and other programs. Yes even early access - its a double edged blade that also quarantines the non-complete games as much as it provides them with a store to be sold on. Unforunate side effect is that the definition of done isn't really defined that strictly, Valve had some issues getting that straight too and devs still use early access as a silly excuse to push unfinished content.
About the 30% in relation to this, you could say that the value you get in return for that 30% dwindles a bit with every other game that gets released through Steam. Now put that next to EGS's offer: a much lower cut and much higher visibility on the Storefront because there simply aren't as many titles to be had. The target audience then is potentially just as big as Steam's because anyone can browse/install for free. If you judge that purely from the perspective of the publisher, that is a major win, its a 'reset' of sorts and it comes with a nice cost reduction.
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