Steam’s rules for in-game purchases and selling direct

What Steam requires for in-game purchases

If your game sells anything inside the Steam build, the sale goes through Steam. Valve’s microtransaction page states the rule:

That covers individual items and in-game currency. The player pays from their Steam Wallet, Valve processes the payment and keeps its revenue share, and you are paid the rest.

The same applies when your game depends on a paid service you run outside Steam. Valve’s content survey says you must manage access to that service for your players and collect “payment from your player using a Steam-supported payment method.”

The older sentence that seems to say otherwise

Valve’s older Microtransactions Implementation Guide contains a line that reads the other way:

Treat the requirement page as the rule. It sits under Valve’s heading “In-Game Purchase Requirements”, it is specific (“any in-game purchases”), and the implementation guide is a technical walkthrough of the API. A studio that ships its own checkout inside a Steam build on the strength of the older sentence is relying on the weaker text.

What your Steam store page can’t say

The store page is off limits for sending players elsewhere. Valve’s description rules say: “You cannot use your store page descriptions or graphical assets to promote or link to other websites.” That includes your own web shop and your own launcher.

Where Steam’s public rules stop

Two questions matter most to a studio with a web shop, and Valve’s public documentation answers neither:

1. May you sell in-game currency or items on your own website to players who play the Steam version?
2. May a player spend currency bought elsewhere (on your website, or on another platform) inside the Steam build?

We found no Steamworks page that allows or forbids either. The binding terms are in the Steam Distribution Agreement, which partners review inside Steamworks and which Valve does not publish. This page does not guess at what it says. If either question decides your business case, get Valve’s answer for your title in writing before you build.

What Valve takes: 30%, 25% or 20%

Valve takes 30% by default. In November 2018 it added two lower tiers for high-earning games:

The lower rates apply only to earnings above each threshold, so the blended rate falls slowly. Worked through for three games, counting Steam revenue from 1 October 2018:

Across the whole store, most of the money sits in the lowest tier. GameDiscoverCo estimates that Valve took about $3.54bn of roughly $14.98bn spent on third-party games in 2025, and that more than half of that spending fell in the 20% tier.

Steam Direct also charges a $100 product submission fee per title. Every in-game sale in the Steam build pays the same share as the game itself, because the Wallet is the only permitted way to pay.

Steam keys: selling your game elsewhere at the same deal

Steam keys are the sanctioned way to sell a Steam copy of your game outside Steam. Valve issues them free and describes them as a tool “to help you sell your game on other stores and at retail.” You can request keys for games, demos and DLC that are available on Steam, and a launching game can receive up to 5,000 default release keys before further requests are reviewed case by case.

The condition is parity:

Valve allows discounts on keys at different stores at different times, “as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.” Valve provides keys as a free service, so a key sold on your own site carries no Valve revenue share. Keys do not help with in-game currency, because they cover games, demos and DLC.

Account linking: what Valve asks for

Valve wants studios with their own account systems to connect them to Steam accounts automatically:

The same page adds that, ideally, a player should not be able to detach their Steam account from yours and attach a different one. Linking is how a cross-platform game keeps one player profile across Steam, other PC stores and consoles. Whether that profile may carry currency bought outside Steam into the Steam build is the undocumented question above.

The antitrust case against Valve

In re Valve Antitrust Litigation, led by Wolfire Games, was filed in the Western District of Washington in April 2021. The developer and publisher plaintiffs allege that Valve enforces a “Platform Most Favored Nations” policy requiring price and content parity, and that this lets Valve keep a commission above competitive levels. Valve disputes the claims. In November 2024 Judge Jamal Whitehead certified a class of game companies that paid Valve a commission on Steam sales. The order does not cover the separate proposed consumer class.

The fight has spread beyond Seattle. A parallel collective action against Valve is before the UK Competition Appeal Tribunal, Vicki Shotbolt Class Representative v Valve Corporation. On 21 September 2026 Judge Whitehead let its class representative intervene in the US case for one purpose: to ask how the 2022 protective order treats evidence that could be used in the UK, which the court found involves “substantively similar claims.” The same order accepted a brief from 25 consumers whose arbitrations against Valve are pending. Briefs on that question were filed on 23 and 24 September 2026, and the court had not ruled on it by 6 October. None of this touches the merits.

What PC studios do instead

Valve’s public rules leave three routes that need no reading between the lines.

Keys on your own site are the simplest. Sell the game and its DLC as Steam keys at the same deal Steam customers get, and you keep the full price less your own payment and tax costs.

Steam’s microtransaction rule covers the Steam build only, so a build in your own launcher or on another PC store is outside it. The PC store comparison sets out Epic’s 0% on in-app purchases through your own payments and Microsoft’s requirement to use its billing.

A single account system, linked to Steam accounts as Valve encourages, lets a player keep progress across platforms.

The route that stays unconfirmed is a web shop selling currency to Steam players. The PC web store guide covers how studios set up the routes above.

Checklist for a studio on Steam

1. Route every in-game purchase in the Steam build through the microtransaction API and Steam Wallet.
2. Remove links and references to outside stores from your store page text and images.
3. Before you sell keys elsewhere, check that Steam customers get the same or a comparable price within a reasonable time.
4. If your plan relies on web-bought currency reaching the Steam build, get Valve’s written answer for your title first.
5. Work out which revenue tier your game sits in and model the gap to your direct-sale margin in the calculator.