I make games and this literally happened to me this morning

For context: I make indie games and have released two so far and I'm currently working on the third one which is weird as fuck. So the way that Steam works is, they don't send you money anytime you make a sale, but they send all of it at the end of every month. Now September is almost over and I got an e-mail titled "Steam Payment Notification" and I get all hyped up. I open it and read it that the Payment Notification is actually that there is no Payment since I didn't make $100 in sales. Way to hype me up and bring me down, Steam.

I released a game like three years ago and it's earned $97 in that time.

I feel your pain

I'm sure if you owed them 100 bucks they'd demand it

Hey me too! I released my first game on Steam a month ago and by all objective measures it was a flop, but as a hobbyist I'm still proud of it. It honestly did better than I thought for a small niche game that I did a terrible job of marketing, and my one review so far was quite positive so I'll count that as a small win as I move onwards to the next game.

EDIT: Here's the game because my reply is getting harder to spot below - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2792160/SnowDown/ - It's a small Jackbox-inspired party game (using phones as controllers) but with real-time action and physics as you throw snowballs around and destroy structures.

I have lots of bills that are less than that every month, and yet somehow I can't just say they're not worth paying...

My bank: "We have a new valuation on your home! Open your app to see it!"

...

"It's down 2%!"

If you want to support me, a wishlist of my current game will mean the world to me: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2336120/Do_Not_Press_The_Button_To_Delete_The_Multiverse/

But please don't spend money on my previous games, I recognize that they aren't that good I don't want to burden anyone financially with them (I loved every minute of making them, but I was still a noob back then).

I guess I shouldn't be expected to pay for games until my total is over a hundred bucks then?

I've had Google charge me $0.01 before for firebase usage.

They really should have waited until I owed more since that cost them money.

itch.io once sent me 4$

I feel you, on Twitch is 50$.

They don't seem to have an issue sending $10 refunds to my bank account, I wonder how much it actually costs them

I used to make mobile apps as a hobby and I still get the weekly report of my dwindling numbers.

Do they just keep your earning in your account until one month your total outstanding earnings breach the 100$ threshold and you'll receive all your earning in one transaction or does this money get swallowed by steam?

Policy schmolicy. Withholding even one cent you are owed is fucking shitty.

Happens to me almost every month. Good thing I didn't quit my day job.

if this is true I'd recommend sending GamersNexus an email with the details as they might be able to help considering their past actions to hold companies accountable

Edit:
Steam policy rip, see comments down below

Jesus. This makes it reasonable to just buy $100 worth of your own game every month, just to make sure. Assuming that the number of real sales cover Valve's percentage and then some. Yeah, that's a non-zero opportunity cost for you, and additional float for Valve, however petty it may be. But for a small developer, maybe that makes sense.

don't make shitty asset flips then

My experience every month.