whats the point of protecting the secret?

Also, it will attract a lot of tax issues.

My assumption is that Valve is only paying taxes in US.

Valve's revenue from Steam is derived globally.

I didn't say they are doing tax fraud.

I said it may attract the attention of tax authorities from different countries.

Ie. VAT and etc.

There are many different types of tax ranging from import duties to VATs.

No, to prove it is a tax fraud, tax authorities (in Malaysia, country dependent) would need to prove two things at the very least:

1. Negligence
2. Deliberate in avoiding tax.

The above is extremely hard to prove.

Then they'll need to get a warrant.

Thirdly, many tax authorities are not well versed in how to deal with intangibles especially when it comes to cross-borders.

And then there is a Permanent Establishment issue.

I never implied Valve is committing tax fraud, I implied that there might be several tax risks.

Read Income Tax Act 1967, Custom duties, OECD transfer pricing guidelines, OECD intangibles, Double taxation agreements with US.

I do not have the time to list it down unless you are willing to pay me my hourly rate.

I am not saying Valve is trying to "hide" anything.

It is not illegal.

I am saying that sometimes tax authorities will look at things even if they do not understand the implications or the business. Most of the time, they'll just ask for documents to understand the business better before even asking tax returns and so on. If not applicable, they'll just leave it alone, if applicable then they'll just have a discussion with the company / representative.

Being exposed to tax risk is normal, majority of business have tax risks.

Ok let's say they were to disclose where all the sales come from.

And such sales did attract the attention of many tax authorities. (based on whether there are Double Tax Agreement with the respective countries)

Work to provide such documents to each tax authorities would be very heavy.

2ndly, there are trade secrets in such documents, Valve would definitely have the right to remove certain portion of the documents.

Then tax authorities would take their time to analyse, understand the business model and try to look for the relevant laws applicable to it. If law not clear, use cases and etc.

Then discuss with Valve.

Very long process not to mention expensive to Valve.

Note that is a very simple explanation.

If I were Valve, I'll do the same, won't disclose unless requested by different tax authorities.

I think you hit the nail on the head the first time out - that there's no point in them disclosing numbers.  It has absolutely nothing to do with taxes.  When they make their filings domestically, their returns will contain that information.  Based on their turnover and revenue, I'd say that they would probably have to do full segment reporting for both geographic and product segments.  However, this information would probably not be very useful to the industry press and fanbois alike.  (<---ex chartered accountant here).

it just sounds fishy too me.
from what i know, Distributers usually reveal info on total sales, so developers know how well are they doing on that platform, and they could cross check if the sales, tally with the revenue they recieved from the distributer.

well i do understand the circumstances companies needs to protect themselves. But as a developer, could u trust all your distributer data?

Ahh but when we're talking about traditional brick and mortar and physical products, the control is actually in the publisher keeper records of how much stock they have sent out, received, cash received etc, ie physical controls.

With DD its intangibles so there needs to be something worked out between steam and the developer/publisher.

Probably only way to find out is to submit your own game for steam certification.

i got duke 3d shareware version b4 pinjam from my tuition teacher CD last time then run on pentium 2 once i get hold of the full version...i wonder y today shooters no more episodic shareware type of games dy...imagine if 1st call of duty use this model,,,fuh cun siot 4 old times sake

anyway DNF will surely b my 1st steam purchase ever after 14 years of agony waiting 4 nothing till my brain cells exploded it should b good since remainder development is made by GEARBOX the makers of half life series...have faith with GS yo haha

seriously, we lost our morale to play after so many death
sometime, the team didnt die but once the captain die, he cant call it reinforcement and stuff.
Making cant complete the objective