nanoUFOIndie developer behind 'Overwhelmingly Positive' rated shipbuilder argues that Steam's "free advertising" is worth the 30% cut
YourPrivatHaterIt absolutely is.
RickRussell_CAIs this controversial? You’re paying for the storefront.
You aren’t even paying anything, you literally just give them a cut of your product, when you don’t sell anything they carry the costs of it.
ÚwÙ-PasswortYou give them a cut of the turnover on their site(steam). Important distinction. A developer can generate steam keys for free and sell them elswhere, as long as the price is the same as on steam.
Wait really? Are they just ok with losing the cut from sales?
Yes they are.
Yes although they are being sued by developers for not being allowed to sell the keys at a lower price.
As I understand it the issue is actually that people weren’t allowed to sell their game for less on other platforms, but they weren’t necessarily trying to sell Steam keys.
Yes it is controversial, cause Steam pretty much has a monopoly on the PC market. Yes there are other options, but your games just won’t sell as well cause less people use them. So deciding not to pay Steam’s 30% cut isn’t very viable.
Ah, Cosmoteer. Extremely fun for like 10 hours, then you realize there is nothing left to do. I guess that dev has made a fortune off of it though, so hats off to that guy.
Honestly that sounds fine. It's okay if a small game is only entertaining for 10 hours provided the price is reasonable. We shouldn't expect every game to be an infinitely replayability mill
solsangraalwasn’t portal just a mod? very short game, but has some of the most memorable moments in all of gaming
It confuses the hell out of me that we don’t say that about any other media.
“This movie that I spent $18 per person on only lasts 97 minutes what a rip off.”
I mean, most of us who recognize that that’s shitty value just don’t go to theatres.
It’s why they’re dying.
Its still being updated and you can play for looong when you like building ships until your CPU melts.
Yeah, but you are then building for the sake of building. The crew limitations are a pain, so is getting the resources for the ships. If you are a purely combat player, having to mine asteroids for 95% of the time to get a bigger ship, or to get a necessary reactor isn’t fun gameplay. Then you build three large-ish ships and you cannot crew them all at the same time because people don’t want to work for you. Especially when you are a completionist and want to “finish” a system before heading out, you quickly stop getting fame and either need to jump to a higher difficulty system (which your ship won’t survive unless you know the “meta” well), or resort to more mining instead of the fun stuff.
You can disable the crew limitations also you can have multiple ships. I usually play with one factory(for mining and processing), one starbase (a gigantic storage, waaay bigger than the ones from the game) some smaller ships for defense and quick intervention(often nuke carriers) amd one or two really big and heavily armored Fighters (record enemy destruction was 0,5seconds with a 20 rail guns offensive)
Most things you complain about can be changed in the options or with simple mods, you don’t even need to mine, you can just buy stuff. Also capturing enemy ships is unnecessary for farming, just drag the mine tool over it (or install a mod that lets you harvest them for no resource penalty)
The higher level systems aren’t that hard, you just need to upgrade your ship and larn how to combat with them, every ship plays different. Best way to survive is to outrange the enemy and be fast backwards to keep distance. (rail guns and rockets or lasers or everything)
What matters is default settings. If you expect people to jump into a game and know that 10 hours down the line they made a bad choice, then it’s a bad default. “Just buy stuff” doesn’t work when stations don’t have what you need - it’s fine for a tiny ship, try getting enough uranium for 10 reactors in a reasonable time by buying.
Its a sandbox everything depends on the mods and options you chose at start, thats… Literally what these games are about.
Some gamers are just looking for a simple out-of-the-box experience, and will immediately turn their noses up at the idea of mods.
I am not one of those poor souls, but I do know quite a few of them.
These people shouldn’t buy a sandbox game then. You know from the start. (and they are idiots, steam workshop is super easy)
I had a friend refuse to use any 7 Days to Die modlets because they’re “unsafe” despite basically being XML translations. He wouldn’t even use one I wrote myself.
Sounds like a Windows user with schizophrenia. 🤦
Yeah I enjoyed it for longer than that but it just becomes so tedious once you have a few ships.
I prefer Starsector and Avorion.
shani66It’s also just the standard for selling your game on a big storefront.
A few indie devs who hated the idea of storefronts because of the bad taste of Apple self published only on their website. When they finally (after years) switched to steam, every single one of them shared how they got like a multiplier of sales.
One indie dev shared how he made more in revenue in a month on Steam than he did in a decade of self publishing.
That’s life-changing.
Apple is the same deal, though. There’s a reason there’s a lot more solo devs/small teams making money on iOS than Android. Their ecosystem doesn’t do all the work for you, but it absolutely provides a lot of help. You might not like, for example, the Human Interface guidelines, but the enforced consistency in behavior makes a lot more people a lot more willing to buy things.
What do you call it when customers only use one store and all the sellers have to go through that store to get any sales?
Not a trick question. Four syllables. Starts with an M.
Just a few days ago, I wrote a comment about how you would theoretically try and become a significant competitor to Steam, and one of the points I raised was that Steam’s storefront and recommendations are very generous (compared to others). It makes a huge difference that even indie games can appear on the front page regularly, both improving user and dev experiences.
vaultdweller013I found weird ass games like Age of Decadence because of steam. I dount I wouldve found that lovingly crafted load of slavic jank without steam, or atleast it wouldve been until Warlocracy made a video on it.
Shit, I’ve bought that but haven’t gotten around to playing it yet. Is it any good?
Its a solid CRPG but be ready for slav jank. Really good story.
My library and tastes are pretty eclectic so I think Steam’s recommendation engine struggles with me lol. That said, I love how it sends me shit no one seems to know about at the time, like Kenshi, Volcanoids, PULSAR, etc.
Yeah, though my tastes seem to be a rather close to a venn diagram circle with Mandaloregaming which is disconcerting at times. Maybe a bit more post apocalyptia on my part.
Yeah it’s becoming a bit uncanny when I pickup a game and see Mandalore, SplatterCat, or AlphaBetaGamer covering it a few days later.
I have mixed feelings on it.
When I was putting out games, publishing on Steam would mean a guaranteed 1 million impressions on the “New releases” list. That’s really good exposure for an indie title, which often succeed or fail due to exposure.
But 30% can be a lot for those same indie teams, especially combined with taxes. It can easily be enough money that long-term support or follow up games just aren’t viable.
And after that initial exposure, you’re not getting much for your 30%. The value of Steamworks can vary greatly game by game so you could end up paying $30k for $100 of bandwidth and minor marketing through things like sales and rich presence.
I would much prefer to see something like “30% after the first $X in sales” so you’re only paying the platform after it’s demonstrated it’s value.
Then generate the steamkey(for free) and sell them elsewhere! Steam is toatally Ok with that, as long as the price is the same.
I do and yes, those keys move slower than Steam sales. But let’s not pretend that’s pure altruism.
Selling Steam keys elsewhere still benefits Valve because people shop wherever they bulk of their library lives. The “as long as the price is the same” is also important, because it essentially means that Valve doesn’t need to compete with other platforms.
If you decided to sell your game for $50 dollars + platform percentage, buying from the Epic store would be a 10% discount. Almost every game on there would be able to offer this discount and that would be enough to start pulling users away. Rather than offer a better cut, Valve just writes it into the terms that you can’t do that.
You absolutely can do what you are saying. You CAN sell games for lower on other platforms as long as they aren’t steam versions. You CANT sell games that use steam keys for cheaper on another platform which makes sense because steam is still providing bandwidth and other services for your game.
Oh yeah that’s right. Sorry, I haven’t put a game out for a long time.
30% seems rather high
but… when they handle payments, refunds, advertising (within their application) and game download costs (server infrastructure?), etc etc etc. it doesnt seem that crazy.
at least, for a lot of indie developers, not having to worry about those things, might easily be worth those 30%
For it to “even out” they’d only have to increase your reach ~50%.
They do way more than that. And they give you an inherent legitimacy that putting it on your own site doesn’t. It’s not just handling refunds; it’s the certainty as an end user that you’ll get one hassle free.
Without Steam (or another retailer with similar traits), selling an indie game would be closer to a pipe dream than really hard.
All of this is true but the ugly truth people don’t want to unpack is this is largely because over 90% of PC game purchases occur on Steam, meaning it’s not that they give you an advantage much as you’re nearly dead in the water if you aren’t on Steam unless you’re a AAA game made by a major dev.
Valve didn’t do something nefarious to get there. But saying “they’re so helpful and expand your reach” is like saying “google search helped me so much” when the reality is if you can’t be found on google you practically don’t exist.
But they do give you an advantage. If steam didn’t exist at all, without a comparable replacement, it would not be possible for you to move a real quantity of units at all. The market they provide has massive value, and their market share is a product of genuinely being far and away better than any alternative.
People don’t refuse to buy games on Epic or Origin or Uplay just because they need everything in one place. It’s because all of those platforms are so much worse that they degrade the experience of games purchased through them.
That’s highly speculative. But again, I like valve and think steam is beyond a net good. We need to be asking these questions though. Market dominance is a risk in any hands.
Again, that’s because every other way to distribute games is terrible.
And it doesn’t really matter, because any sales you actually drive yourself you can give them 0% of, with free steam keys. Sales through their storefront are inherently partly driven by their value add.
I didn’t say their success wasn’t due to offering a great product over a sea of bad ones. That isn’t relevant nor am I contesting it.
Of course it’s relevant.
It’s why the PC market is what it is.
I am not arguing about why the market is the way it is, it’s not relevant.
I am saying regardless of how we got here, valve controls the PC game market, and that will always be a liability no matter who is in control. We have to be sober about this.
Valve controls the PC market because they created the PC market and are responsible for the overwhelming majority of its progress. And they have done nothing remotely abuse with it.
They’ve justified their cut and are fully entitled to it.
I agree they have not been abusive, but no they are not entitled to anything. That is a ridiculous outlook. You’re talking about a for-profit company dude.
They are entitled to a fair cut of sales through their platform. That’s how platforms work.
Dude the tunnel vision here jfc. I’m done
You’re the one disqualifying the huge service they’re providing.
They’re exactly as entitled to their cut of sales on their platform as the developers of the games are to get paid for their game.
Of course it’s relevant.
It’s why the PC market is what it is.
This is an anecdote, but it is also absolutely not speculation. I won’t install Epic, I avoid most AAA launchers/required accounts, prefer GOG, and get most of my games on Steam. Epic and many other studio launcher apps are hostile to the consumers or just a royal pain to use. I have a couple Sony games. Why should I have to be online to play a 20-year-old single-player game that I bought through Steam? So now I check if they have that garbage before I buy them through Steam.
I think Steam could afford to charge less, but I don’t think most smaller companies could get a basic store up for less than they charge (and the big companies have the tools to determine if thos is saving them money), and that still doesn’t get you everything Steam brings to the table, consumer confidence being the most important.
And exactly none of that matters because Valve has never attempted to maliciously take market share. If someone else wants to step in all they have to do is stop being shit. Steam has tons of issues. From the limited UI adaptability for devs to the rather archaic games list and somewhat silly discussions forums from the 90s, all the way to the convoluted larger menu system.
Yet rather than put any real effort into things we get shitty launchers from 9 different companies ONLY selling their limited scope of bullshit.
Plenty of amazing companies change. We have to think about that man.
wizardbeardI think there are a lot of people who weren’t around for, or don’t remember, how buying digital titles was before Steam got quite so popular.
It was pretty rare, and the overwhelming majority of indie games were released for free. There just wasn’t many good ways to get the word out, and most ways of taking payment were costly enough to set up that it was rarely worth trying to get some meager amount of pay if you were just a one man show with no external financial backing.