Exactly! People saying “I don’t care about developers, just give me good games I can get cheap” just have very dangerous blinders on. Solvent, successful developers keep making games which in turn = more games, which = more games for people to play and possibly like.
Myself, being a little dev, i’d love to be able to get in front of millions of people, even for a day or two, and have a real chance to sell my wares, rather than being almost instantly drowned in the ocean of games that is Steam right now. ‘Publisher-friendly’ sounds damned good to me.
The recent ‘exodus’ to other emerging portals doesn’t shock me a bit. I’ve spoken to at least 8 small/medium devs who are desperately looking to move away from Steam. Names you may recognize. They’re frustrated and feel completely forgotten by Steam, and I feel their pain, trust me.
Same. Not that I blame Steam or Valve, they have done their best for their bottom line. But no single service should have such a huge market share for a healthy commercial art form. A little competition is good for everyone.
FWIW, I will go where the price is cheapest. Epic games Store has the best price for several games I want to buy, like Subnautica, Super Meat Boy, and now What Remains of Edith Finch (i.e. FREE), so I go there.
As a writer of several game guides on Steam, I also feel like Valve just use my effort (and fellow guide writer’s effort) for free to add value to their own service, while we get nothing in return. (Really, OCD made me do it.) No community feature in Epic Games store is just fine by me, I can just come here or reddit (oops).
After reading this post, I was imagining a better version of the Xbox Play Anywhere program, where you buy a game on windows in any store, and then run it using this Proton thingie on my Xbox or PS4, or linux or Mac.
But no, I looked it up, it’s a Valve thing, and it’s only for Steamworks games. So you’d have to buy a game only on Steam (windows version) and then play it on Mac or Linux using Proton.
Unless gaming technology stabilizes, becomes reliable and doesn’t chase the latest improvements, that will never happen.
Proton, yes, it’s Steam only. The hard part is Wine and DXVK (Steam created and funds the later), though, which are fully open (and more up to date). Plenty of programmers can do their own launcher using more common skills, Lutris seems to be pretty good, for example.
Sure it will. Eventually it could get to a point where the vast majority of brand new games run on day 1, and the rest are fixed in a week or two. Or even better, with developers testing their products in Proton before releasing to ensure they work.
None of that is guaranteed by any means, but it’s totally plausible.
I always look at those guides as players helping other players out. I remember having to go to a BBS to get any strategy help back in the day. I always appreciate players who take the time out to help me learn how to play games better.
This is a cripplingly weak argument regarding guides. People are going to write guides regardless of whether or not Steam organizes and creates accessibility to them.
I love the “cripplingly weak” adjective, it makes you sound so much more superior.
If you don’t buy my reasoning, don’t. But I’m not ok with Steam making money off my freebies to the community. It is like GameFAQs doing the same. Hey Steam it is great you are hosting my guide, but if I’m contributing to YOUR ecosystem, at least give me back something. It is like Steam mod workshop having no way to reward the mod makers. So the mod makers are supposed to just make the games you are selling more attractive, all for FREE?
Yes I put only my own work up willingly. The point however is to help other players. OTOH having game guides (and community features like mods and discussion board etc.) in Steam adds value to Steam as a platform, that’s my point. Therefore the community contributors should be paid somehow. Work should be paid.
So you don’t feel obliged to tip or reward the mod makers if they are making something you like or play constantly? If you don’t, please stay away from my community.