Create Your Own Valve Game Inspired Products!

Dear Shop Owners,


We have some very exciting news to share with you! We know that many designers in our community are also gaming fans so we are thrilled to share that Shapeways and Valve Corporation today announced a landmark program to allow creators to make and sell 3D printed objects based on Valve’s games and hardware. This first-of-its-kind program grants a license to designers to create 3D printed objects based on Valve’s heralded game franchises including DOTA 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, and Portal, as well as its entertainment hardware including the Steam Controller and Steam Link.


The program is open to all creators without pre-approval. Designers will pay Valve a 10% royalty on sales for licenses connected to the game franchises and no royalty on products developed for the entertainment hardware. Royalty payments will be automatically handled by Shapeways.

If you're interested in designing for Valve hardware, such as the steam controller (its royalty free) they have some free 3D models already available.


To sign up, check out our page here and the tutorial on tagging products here. What Valve games or hardware do you plan to design for? Tell us in the thread below!

The beautiful thing about this is that it allows us makers to keep making whatever we want, while still respecting Valve's intellectual property ownership. I'll gladly accept paying a royalty fee when you consider the other ways they could have decided to deal with independent makers. But leave it to Valve to find a way for everyone to benefit!

Fair enough, if it means I can make something Valve related without a kick in the backside, it's fine by me!

With a bit of luck it might increase traffic on my shop, though that I doubt.

@Jdcdu87 It will increase your traffic if you make some more great products

You forgot the links.

There is a section of my long-term storage hard drive that is a ghost town of Hasbro products that I spent hundreds of hours creating and never received a single cent as compensation for my work because Hasbro pulled the plug on the Shapeways Hasbro deal. Here we go again, the Hasbro deal was similar to this Valve deal. I hope Valve will be responsible for their actions.

On the brighter side. I'm a gamer and I have always loved Valve! For those of you who are not gamers, I can tell you Valve is BIG! Every computer/console gamer on the planet knows Valve! I can assure you also that there will be money to be made with this Shapeways Valve deal! I am even going to temporarily drop what I've been working on and create something from my all-time favorite Valve game Halflife!

First of all that's a great idea and is opening a new field for my items.

The 10% royality is taken from the whole price, or taken from my royalities. This point is not complete clear out of different statements in the forum, or tagging guide.

I would assume they will be taking 10% of your royalty. It doesn't make much sense for it to be coming out of the total cost since that means Shapeways would be missing out on some varying amount of revenue depending on the royalty/product cost ratio. If something costs $20 to make and you add a 1 cent royalty then the majority of the 10% cut going to valve would be from Shapeways. Or maybe Shapeways will add some extra minimum amount to the final price of the product to avoid such problems? Maybe they haven't thought through all the potential problems and pitfalls yet.

The royalty is computed 10% from the retail (shopper) price. There's mechanisms in place as you describe that theres a minimum total price that can't be lowered beyond. The royalty is computed from the total price, but deducted from the difference between retail price and base price, thus setting the minimum you describe of where total price can't be lower than (BasePrice+10%)+(Markup+10%).

Here's an example of the breakdown:

• Base Price: $22.50
• Markup: $1.80
• Total Price: $27.00
• Computed Royalty: $2.70.

Hope this clarifies

So how would we be setting prices for such products? Final price as before or by specifying designer markup amounts first with the final price being calculated using the formula? If we need to set the final price then it would be helpful for the system to show the breakdowns of what the markup and royalty values are for reference.

(BasePrice+10%)+(Markup+10%)

• Base Price: $22.50
• Markup: $1.80
• Total Price: $27.00
• Computed Royalty: $2.70

$22.50 + 10% = $2.25
$1.80 + 10% = $0.18

$22.50 + $2.25 + $1.80 + $0.18 = $26.73

I'm coming up with a total retail price of $26.73. Did you round off? Or am I not understanding something.

The example was correct. Third party royalty comes out of the total markup value based on the total price so the numbers work out. Shapeways is not contributing any percentage of base price to Valve. It is added to the base production price and comes out of the potential designer's share.


I think confusion is going to arise out of the "markup" no longer being the same thing as the designer royalty because of the third party influence. I would be tempted to change the nomenclature to clarify things in the long run.

markup = total price - base price
third party royalty = total price x (TP%/100)
designer royalty (or shop royalty) = markup - third party royalty
under the condition
markup >= base price x (TP%/100)

(where TP% is third party royalty percentage)

https://www.shapeways.com/product/SPRHELNJS/dota2-axe

So how do you set this up? Without a reference link I don't see any way of triggering this in the product settings.

You can find a step by step tutorial to join here https://www.shapeways.com/tutorials/setting-up-licensed-products

Thanks, MrNibbles but I'm afraid I still don't get it. I'm the world's worst when it comes to math stuff. Can you explain it to me more like on a third-grade level? HAHA!

I see, had to add the right tag. So the pricing shows what the designer ends up with ("markup") and what the third party gets ("royalty") after the item ships.

Similar to before it is now MORE difficult to target a designer royalty amount. For example wanting to set the same royalty level for the designer and the third party, or targeting an exact markup based on absolute amount or a percentage of base price means typing in numbers for the final price until you hit your target.

You kind of need to do the process backwards. Start with a final price that is greater than the base price plus the Valve royalty. For example.

base price = $10

A 10% Valve royalty means a minimum final price of $11, for which you would receive nothing as a designer.

Now lets say you hope to get a $5 payment for yourself so you might type in a final price of $16. But what would you actually receive?

Valve would get 10% of $16 (the final price), or $1.60.

Final price of $16 minus $1.60 leaves $14.40 that goes to Shapeways and the designer. But Shapeways base price is $10 which leaves you with the difference of $14.40 - $10 = $4.40.

Now if you insist on getting your $5 you would need to keep adjusting the final price upwards in the pricing tool using successive approximation. Alternately you could probably generate an equation in Excel if you want to go the csv route, but there's no way you're going to easily do the math in your head for this arrangement.

In other words, if I recapture correctly how things are setup:
If you can reach $27 for your product you need to pay $2.7 from your possible markup of $4.5 for royalities leaving you an earning of $1.8. Thus you pay 60% of your earnings for royalities.

If you have a product type where you can increase the price by $2.7 because you are using some valve property everything is fine.

If not you share 60% for royalties. What can even be better then earning zero because you are not allowed to sell it.

Funny because 10% sounds not that hard ...

Ha -- yeah there's some circular math going on there.

We went back and forth and tested a few things, but ended up with computing markup and royalty off the total price. Ultimately, setting a "nice number" total price (ex 29.90 vs 27.83) has a better impact on shopper conversion, and thus settled on retaining this model