GoG has a bunch of issues of its own.
Yeah, I do love GoG, but they have issues too…their guidelines on admitting indies is a tad bit strict if you aren’t an indie darling or have a larger budget for assets. They also disqualify certain software used in its creation unilaterally, which is frustrating. My dream would be a place sort of like Steam, but with some minimal quality standards and guidelines, and a way to give more software a showcase to shine for a few days, at least.
Into The Breach is a cool game for example that’s on there recently, but it also i’m sure costs thousands of dollars (or more) to make. That’s what they consider an “indie”.
The weird thing about Steam is that the majority of gamers playing at any particular moment - 50% or more, as far as i can tell - are actually playing Valve branded games. Valve does make a ton of money selling games but they also make a ton of money from people playing their games. (PUBG was the first game ever to surpass the most played Valve-owned game).
What happens when this ratio drops to < 10%? Will Steam no longer be profitable to them (or profitable in the work/profit ratio rate of return they desire?) I don’t think we have any idea about the internal economics of Steam. Without TF2, DOTA2 and CS:GO, would Valve just say Screw It and sell off Steam?
The likelihood of that happening seems infinitesimally small.
What’s unfair about Steam?
I’m trying to dance around a very cynical reading of your posts, which is that you’re worried primarily about your own livelihood as an indie developer.
That’s an excellent thing to be worried about! But it’s not—by itself—a compelling argument against an uncurated Steam marketplace. “It will he harder for consumers to find my game” isn’t necessarily the same as “it will be harder for consumers to find good games”. Both things could be true, but I don’t see that in your argument yet, just the former.
I’m not convinced I’ve correctly understood your point though, that might not be what you’re saying at all. But that’s why I’m asking for clarification.
What’s unfair about Steam?
Today (June 7th) there were 57 new releases on Steam. A few were DLC or whatever, fine. On an average day this year, 13-40 games release on Steam.
If you don’t sell well on the first day, within literally 3-4 hours, your listing is moved down in the rankings by the algorythm and odds are, that’s it. Poof. If you get picked up by a bigger streamer or something, maybe you get a boost. A big maybe these days, mostly a dice roll, regardless of quality, because well, see my first 2 sentences. If you consider this “fair”, well, feel free to disregard my post, I guess.
I speak not only a dev, but as a gamer myself (I play, buy and love games). Am I worried about my livelihood as a small indie dev with 5 times the promotion for a game as 3 years ago but 1/4 of the sales to show for it? Umm, yep.
But I speak for the health of indie studios as a whole. One on Skype I spoke to the other day was incredibly frustrated by the state of things, a medium sized one you might know. He expressed what i’m saying now, almost word for word. If were just me, i’d be like “well, Derek, maybe the industry passed you by and you suck”. But that just isn’t what’s happening.
Steam’s current system is just a force multiplier for already existing popularity. It makes nearly zero effort to actually encourage any kind of discovery. I don’t think nearly as many people are finding good games for them as could if the system worked like, say, Amazon’s recommendation engine. They’re just getting regurgitated the same ultra-popular options everyone knows about.
I’ve said it before: if I didn’t know what I wanted to play next and want to have a store recommend me a game to play, I’m going to Amazon. The row of video game listings it gives me on its front page are substantially more likely to be of interest to me than Steam’s entire front page, despite Steam having a ridiculously larger block of data to work with.
Unfortunately, I suspect better Steam discovery doesn’t actually increase Valve’s bottom line very much in the short or medium term because it would just move money around from one game on Steam to others, which means zero financially. It would increase overall user satisfaction and promote a few more indies, but those are vague long term goals.
Remember when they wouldn’t let Opus Magnum on their store? That was crazy.
As I mentioned before, Gabe Newell was bragging about being the most profitable company per person in the U.S. This was in 2011 and their profits have only ballooned since then. This is what is really frustrating about them. They have insane gobs of money with which they could do a fabulous job curating, making nearly everyone but Nazi’s and lazy asset flippers happy. But they choose not to. Microsoft curates, Sony curates, GoG curates, Origin curates etc. But they’re too challenging to get on for many good indie developers. You have itch.io at the opposite end of the spectrum where anything goes and is free.
Steam should be the middle ground between the big publishers and the itches. Instead, they’re going to be a slight step above an itch while taking an unfair % from developers based on their standards and discovery for 99% of those who post games there.
I’ve been the biggest Steam supporter since forever. I obviously don’t like them shirking responsibility for their own platform claiming it’s too hard.
I wonder what the average number of games is in a user’s library now. I mean I imagine everyone has at least 100 games, right?
I just don’t get this at all. Valve is a store, it’s not a forum of ideas. If I made a game about raping teenage girls, I don’t have any right to expect that Wal-Mart should sell it. The first amendment is about government limiting speech.
I’m so surprised that they’re coming out and doing this so soon after the active shooter controversy. That was literally on all the major network evening news programs last week.
So does this mean they’re going to reverse course and sell the game?
I don’t get this idea that a storefront should be somehow putting unknown games in front of me. Does Walmart do that? Target? Macy’s? No… they put in front of you the stuff that someone paid to get put in front of you, via a markdown or advertising dollars. That’s the real world, not this pie in the sky ideal that every game is somehow equal.
Again, the great stuff bubbles up regardless. People do find it. There are many obvious examples of this like Minecraft, Rocket League, etc. These were tiny things to start with that ballooned into huge properties. There will be others.
Derek has got more indie cred than most folks, his views are well reasoned and worth considering. You can rest assure he is not being cynical here. I disagree with him in this case though.
Like you I don’t see more games or games which I don’t like as a problem. I don’t think it impacts me as an indie at all, in fact since I released my first solo game on Steam sales have remained at almost the same rate each year regardless of the amount of other games out there, except this past month see below.
It is unfashionable in the United States these days (neither political party believes in this anymore) but I still think free markets grow sectors of the economy, its not a pie you divide up, competition actually grows the pie.
So for me
more games = bigger market = more players = more games
An example is the apparently now despised Japanese visual novel genre on steam. As far as I can tell there are now more of them being made and selling than before Steam took them. I think that’s great, a new growing audience enjoying games and exploring that genre.
Another personal example as you would predict if you share my economic world view the Cultist Simulator has given game Cults and Daggers a little sales boost this past week, the Cult game market is BOOMING I tell ya :) Ok its a tiny trivial example but one that underlines my point I hope.
Personally I think there is a games drought right now, not a flood. I DO check the new steam releases most days, I find it pretty rare to come across a game for my tastes I would like more, far more. What I don’t do is dismiss games I don’t like as bad games. I think many of my respected colleagues in the business make this category mistake. It comes across poorly. Being a game developer is hard, I really do get it, but most game players do harder things every day (like work retail, be a parent, deal with a health issue) so when game developers complain about it being tougher to have what is frankly a dream job I think there is a justified level of eyebrow raising from some players.
that whole thing was so annoying. most of the media painted it as if Valve was releasing this shooter game and it was some big controversy. To anyone who has ever even opened steam once, it was obvious this was just a low effort shitpost game.
Just a reminder that the other half of this news was Valve promising to give consumers better tools to control what they see and are recommended on the store, and do so before they make any changes to their existing oversight (such as it is). Assuming they are true to their word, it’s not going to be them just dumping a free for all onto the store with the current shit tier discoverability.
OMG!!
Seriously though unless you’re an old school wargamer, or, perhaps, yearn for the glory years of B level RTS, it’s … kind of the best it’s ever been. And unlike the past the old games are more readily available than ever before. I’m drowning in games. Someone throw me a lifesaver. I often ponder if i shouldn’t sell everything electronic i own to keep me from playing so many games.
DIscoverability in the sea of shovelware is the biggest problem real small indies have right now, imo, and it is a serious problem. Especially in places like the iOS store where once something is off the front pages it’s essentially buried.
Yeah, Rod, I think you’re loco on there being a drought right now.
Well, first, retail stores frequently put commonly desired items in the back specifically so you have to walk past other stuff and possibly decide that you want it.
Secondly, the apt comparison is Amazon, not Steam. Which makes an effort to customize their pages per user (notwithstanding advertising based overrides) because they believe it results in more overall spending in the store. If they didn’t think so, everyone’s Amazon page would look the same.
Third, Steam doesn’t let me pay to be on the front page. If they want to do that instead, that’s fine. At least it will be clear how one gets Steam exposure. Right now, it’s “get popular somewhere else and maybe you’ll show up in Steam pages or maybe not who knows YOLO”
This just seems a ridiculous statement to me, at least the nearly zero effort line. If I check Steam right now under their Featured & Recommended platform I have Overture, Moonlighter, Ember, The Hardest Dungeon, Quest Hunter, Guild of Dungeoneering, Spiral Knights, Sacred 2, Card Hunter, Hitman 2, and Infinity Wars Reborn. I think I was familiar with 3 of those, and none strike me as massively popular. More than half look like something I would be interested in checking out.
If I scroll down I see ‘Trending among friends’ which is a great feature. Then the suggested curators which is an interesting take on finding games, though less helpful to me as of yet.
So as far as discovery goes I have seen lots of good progress by Valve on helping me find games. Which is to me all just icing on the cake. Until recently I didn’t really use any of that except perhaps ‘what are friends playing’. I get all my recommendations from this forum and other similar venues.
This is such a bizarre complaint to me.
Microsoft is useless… right?
Sony has nice juicy fat licensing fees just to be on a Sony device, I bet they take another fat chunk out for just being on their store but I don’t know in fact.
GoG curates? Sure. They also denied a game from the Zach brothers recently which was a forum darling. So no thanks.
Origin curates? What, their own titles? Does anybody use it for anything other than EA games?
For me the volume on Steam long ago passed the point where Steam curation was a useful feature and I don’t honestly believe it was useful to anyone else. Now it’s just a hinderance.
And way too many where it does not bubble up and gets buried. Many great developers have been lost because of this. I’ve read way, wayyyy too many post-mortems where the developer said they couldn’t get visibility, they couldn’t pay big bucks to have Youtubers play it, they couldn’t get traction despite begging places to highlight it.
So we’re going to have a space where known developers remain known and sell, and indie’s who can’t afford to make quality games because they blend in with all the crappy no effort junk. Just look at the “upcoming” list. Pages and pages of chaff. You can’t even pick out decent titles from it, unless they list a price like Jurassic World.
That’s why I said it’s too difficult for many to get their titles on them. Which is why it would be nice if Steam were the middle ground. With no standards it’s too many titles just circling the drain.