this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2024
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No billionaire has clean hands. Think beyond just Steam. If an if an indy developer wants to independently release a game they’ll probably fail. Why? Because if you’re not on Steam or one of the other big services you won’t get noticed. They’re also big enough that no competing services are going to show up. They’re priced out. You’re automatically excluded from the market. Steam, Epic, et al by default are rent extractors first. You want to play as a dev? You’re forced to pay.
You are forced to pay either way or do you think hosting (both installers/updates and some sort of multiplayer matchmaking), marketing, payment providers,... all work for free? Without something like Steam you would just likely be forced to pay someone just to manage all of that for you as an extra employee (or multiple part time employees or outsourced services).
People forget what it was like matchmaking pre-steam. Games would vanish if they weren't some huge game publisher with a big following.
The fuck? Are you suggesting there is somehow a better way for people to find indie games? Let's say steam doesn't exist at all, and every indie dev has to host their own website and files....tell me how you plan on getting people to find their games?
Yes. They did that decades without sharing their profits.
Uhh no...no they didn't. B&Ms existed before the net and digital copies became Common place. The indie scene exploded with steam/itch/gog storefronts. The hell are you talking about, find me multiple indie games that have awards from decades ago. I'll wait.
They was selling on their websites. There was also shops and a second hand market that this platform killed.
Steam has been around for 2 decades now, and I'll ask again. Please find me a indie game that had success when steam wasn't around, and find me one that made it in brick and mortar stores that didn't take 30%+
They cannot reasonably derive 30% when others take 12 at equal service and at the same time show record profits.
People usually don't speak about the second hand market : how many shops have they closed ? How many were laid off ?
The second hand market wasn't killed because of steam, it was killed because of digitalizing everything...on top of that. The fact that you think physical copies allowed indie games to exist, shows how extremely ignorant of this topic you are. Physical media is extremely expensive, and was not available for anyone unless a publisher took a chance on you. Even if steam didn't exist, companies would have moved to digital anyways because its cheaper and more people get the product.
It was killed by steam, they did accelerate the transition and you have no right to transfer the game licence to anybody else. CDROM wasn't expensive. Did you see the games price significantly cut since it is digital ? Owning a product doesn't need to go through a physical media. You can buy digital version too.
It wasn't killed by steam, it was killed by technological progress. CDroms were absolutely expensive to produce, print, ship etc. What do price cuts have to do with availability? As I asked before, when since steam did indie games have the audience they have now?
Also why say CD-ROM wasn't expensive and then bring up digital? You're not doing anything to prove steam is this evil thing.
For final fantasy V the cartridge cost was $15 each, total cost $37 millions for the SNES. They did a version for PS1 the CD Roms disk coast was 2$ for each. It was so that expensive that Sierra did phantasmagoria with 7 cdroms. Woldfenatein and Doom didn't rise the success because of steam. Second hand market was killed by Steam, it even gone to court. And it is illegal to resale games due to their business model.
Lol yeah I'm sure indie devs could afford to front millions for carts and CDs.
Also you still haven't answered my question, show me a indie game that had success pre-steam
You are on lemmy, a open source and decentralized platform where thousand of different instances federate with each others...
Cool, that still doesn't answer the question...and if you're suggesting that people build a decentralized platform to rival steam...no one is stopping them from doing so.
Luckily your computer can run any software you want so there's no need to build any platform to play videogames.
I was reply to your concern of people not being able to find their games, the fediverse is an example of how you can build a non centralized network and still bring people together.
What's the point of this comment? This doesn't answer the question.
Ok then what's stopping people from doing that?
Nobody. Valve spend millions on advertising to remain popular and outshadow competitors. As a result there are many brainwashed fools who go around defending the company like you can see in this thread
I've literally never seen a tv ad for valve...hell I think I saw a print add in a gaming mag one time...but they really don't need to spend money on advertising, they provide a service better than anyone else and that's what keeps them around...EGS has been giving away titles for years now and they're platform still sucks and is a reason they're not as big as steam, not because of advertising.
You can absolutely do your own marketing, host your own infrastructure, etc, but that's way more expensive than just paying Steam's cut. Some games went that way (e.g. Minecraft), but most see a ton of success through Steam and decide their fee is worth the cut.
I don't see how that's a bad thing. Indie devs should focus on making a good game and creating promo content for it, and let Valve handle distribution, multiplayer, sales, etc.
Valve is successful because they make a good product that both users and developers like. EGS has a much lower profit share and provides far fewer services, and devs understandably choose Steam because it offers better value.
I wish their cut was lower, but the arrangement seems more than fair.
If devs think they can provide a better service, they're free to sell their game directly on their website if they want. They can even sell Steam keys and not pay any cut on those from their own website, so they can compare direct sales and Steam sales easily.