Yep, I know a catch-all clause when I see one. Tick Valve off an you get punted, make Valve look bad and you get punted.
There are so many parallels between Steam and Amazon. Indie developers, and indie authors. It reminds me of the launch of ebook readers and the rise of self-publishers. It was all doom and gloom back then. Kindles wouldn’t last, and ebooks were a passing fad. If you think going up against 57 other games is tough, try competing against 500 or 600 new book releases every single day on Amazon when you have a new release.
I see both sides. When you hop on Amazon you can find ebooks about any subject. Violent, sexual, crazy, cookbooks for toothpaste eaters, and whatever. There are rules and authors/publishers who violate those rules loose their accounts. I also see why Steam is cool with this. Much like Amazon, the average self-published book only sells one or two copies. It doesn’t cost Amazon anything to list a book, all of the work is done by the author/publisher in the background. But if it sells a copy or two, Amazon gets a cut. Steam may have the same idea. Anyone can publish a game because the developers mom and dad will buy a copy, so Steam gets a cut.
Yeah this is a huge problem on Amazon. Tagging books with weird categories can make books rank higher in certain categories. More often than not, this just pisses off the customer. Sometimes categories simply don’t fit the book. I ran into an issue where I couldn’t find a good fit for a book, so I found the next best thing. Then my book ranked in a weird secondary category so I had to go back and work on my keywords.
There are rules, and authors/publishers who break them don’t stay on Amazon for long, although there are always those clever individuals who figure out how to get around them. Personally, I keep my work in the guidelines because Amazon is my sole source of income. I’d imagine developers want to be smart with their releases on Steam as well.
They loose their accounts? Are they too tight? Or is that loose as in releasing an arrow?
More than that, Steam charges $100 to list a game. This is recoupable by the developer, but I imagine a lot of these shovelware games fail to meet that threshold and Valve gets to pocket it.
Best post in the thread, even if I also do not share the “there is a drought” viewpoint :)
When a huge game banner on steam frontpage appears when a new game is released (this year, I remember several games having it there - Kingdom Come, Battletech, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr, now there is Moss), I thought this was something companies probably paid for?
Cheers!
Fascinating thread.
There is precedent for gluts and it would be interesting to hear thoughts from any economists on the board.
The precedents I’m thinking of are the comics glut in the 80’s. And maybe the sports card flies from around the same time. Heh, the 80’s gave us a lot of lessons. Like games, as @DaveLong points out, comics are a luxury purchase. But what happened with comics was that the were so many and as @IndieDerekD predicts, there was consolidation and much pain for independent creators.
The outcome of that stage of the industry was that comics still existed but became more expensive and the audience narrowed, becoming more the realm of adults. A comics salesman I spoke with a couple years ago said it had priced itself out of the range of children. In the process, yes, some indies died but others became stronger.
Of course this analogy has flaws. Games and game creation are still evolving, the products have always been purchased largely by adults but are still heavily enjoyed by children, and the distribution methods are different although comics are now also distributed digitally. The economic directions are different too. Comics started cheap and between increasing material costs and the shift of some power from publisher to creator, became more expensive. Games seem to be moving in the opposite direction, material costs are falling but as power shifts to the creator the prices are dropping (but the are other factors involved here like the effects of bundling and what Joel Spolsky referred to as the scalability of software).
But I think it’s interesting to look at how the glut we’re facing will have effects on developers, publishers, and consumers.
I was wrong about itch.io. Looks like they do way more curation than Valve while making nothing compared to Valve.
One would assume because why do that for free, but AFAIK it’s not actually known publically. Certainly when “normal” developers ask about this and similar topics (like Valve-run themed sales and the like) the answer is always along the lines of “if you warrant it, you’ll hear from us”
It will be interesting to see how much porn takes over Steam. It definitely changes the dynamic. Not for “gamers” anymore.
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┻┳| •.•) There’s going to be no appreciable difference in Steam based on this.
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I think there has to be money changing hands. The weekend sales are also probably done as a markdown where Valve is getting paid extra to promote.
This “trolling” policy is sorta like what Justice Learned Hand wrote in his Jacobellis v Ohio opinion: “I know it when I see it.”
Someone should ask a musician how easy it is to get noticed as an indie in a world where some low six-figures worth of albums are released every year worldwide. You think the Steam glut is bad, check Spotify.
You draw some interesting parallels, but I don’t think those cases are a useful comparison to videogames.
The crash in the comics and sportscards industries was mainly caused by speculators jumping in and the industry responding by flooding the market. I don’t think speculative buying has a meaningful impact in the videogames market, especially on the supply side of the equation.
I dunno that copy of Shithead Stolen Unity Store Asset Game #53403 might really be worth something in a few years
As a musician may I say this is a great example. Other genres of music I hear are struggling, however my genre EDM music is booming world wide, plus the still growing market for DJ’s & EDM festivals. Which of course has grown music equipment sales too. Here is the latest IMS report.
Its not really a tiny thing either, all in EDM music is now a $7.5B a year business which has grown consistently for over a decade. In my opinion because of, not in spite of the number of releases. The volume of new releases has increased the number of sub genres which has brought in new audiences who want to shake a leg or brought back some older ones.
Check out this poser, trying to sound knowledgeable. Every true fan knows that nothing past #22435 is worth playing!
As always, the real money is in selling the tools.