And there are surely devs that embraced the platform at least partly because of that (broken) promise.
It’s better than hiding it, for sure, but it should make people wonder what the next “alteration of the deal” will be, be it open or not… because there will be more, for sure.
If all they want to do is kill bundles, they could charge $1 per key after the limit and that would do it. But again that creates an incentive for developers to put their game on steam for $X and sell it elsewhere for <$X, saving Steam’s 30% cut and pocketing the difference.
Steam isn’t exclusive. You can put your game on Steam and GOG and Humble Store and Origin and the Windows Store. But if Steam is handling distribution, they don’t want to be shut out of the revenue. And I feel that is a reasonable stance.
If you choose to use SteamWorks, their proprietary DRM scheme, they use that to leverage some degree of Steam exclusivity. And that’s OK too. It’s not like it’s mandatory. You can use Denuvo or whatever and put your game on Steam, or choose no DRM at all.
@Galadin: The demand side is extremely cheap. Steam has a massive distributed CDN. They aren’t running on AWS. They pay for the phat pipes whether they’re being used or not. So there’s no real upside to charging users to download their games, even if you grab a 200GB game 20 times over the lifetime of your purchase, it costs them very little.
@jsnell: Keys from physical copies would be exempt from any limit, as Steam pre-approves them, they have mechanisms for returning and destroying unsold merchandise, and so on.
I think thats right. The Steam value proposition for developers has definitely changed (in my opinion got lower but there are arguments on both sides).
But yes to paraphrase the vader gif. “We have changed the deal” has happened with increasing frequency from Steam over the past few years.
I like Steam, I like the folks at Valve, but if or when I do another indie game it is an open question whether or not Steam would be a good fit for me. That was not a question a few years ago.
Steam fits as well as ever. The real question here is whether you want SteamWorks.
And even if you do choose SteamWorks and lock yourself into Steam, and Valve only gives you 1000 free keys to sell on Humble Bundle or whatever, as long as they offer some way to purchase additional keys you can still sell your game elsewhere. You just can’t use Steam to distribute your title while depriving them of their cut.
Good correction. Yes using Steam as one of many distribution channels is absolutely an option.
The biggest issue I have is that Valve has decided to do this now, when they are the de facto distribution platform. While we can talk about GoG, Humble, Origins and such, the fact is that most PC digital gamers expect their games to be on Steam. This can be seen by people often asking for a steam key for the game they got on Kickstarter or pre-release and now want to add to their Steam library.
I understand it is completely within Valve’s rights to do this, I do think it smells a bit bad to do this now. If you are a kickstart developer, many of your game purchases are done in that prerelease model, you now can’t guarantee steamkeys for these users.
This part of the rules hasn’t changed.
Crowdfunding.
Keys can be used to fulfill crowdfunding rewards and grant backers access to your product. Providing backers with beta testing keys prior to release is also OK, but only backers should receive those keys–they shouldn’t be sold outside of the crowdfunding campaign unless your beta is also available for sale via Steam.Steam keys can only be promoted as a reward for products that have already confirmed Steam distribution- it’s not OK to use the Valve or Steam logos to market a product that is not currently under Steam Distribution Agreement. For ongoing crowdfunding that does not have a set end date, it is only OK to sell Steam keys if the product is also available for purchase via Steam at no higher than it is offered via your crowdfunding campaign. If you are selling Steam keys for a beta or early access version of your product, you must follow the early access requirements listed below.
That’s great that they still support crowdfunding campaigns. But how will they know the difference then?
Good question. I presume they have some internal data for comparison that will let them look at an upcoming game’s genre, sale price, ETA, and dev history and estimate a likely amount of legit KS keys versus some asset-flip scammer that just wants 500k keys to sell on G2A or Kinguin.
I do wonder about how this will impact bundles. I suppose fewer indie games looking for word of mouth? For a place like Humblebundle to keep up volume, they may have to get bigger ticket games and therefore raise prices. That, or perhaps they’ll go the “grab bag” route for the smaller titles because of the limited number of keys.
I’ve always wondered how humble and other places got their keys. Never occurred to me that dev said could request as many keys as they wanted. That’s insane to me, because they are devaluing their own product. I can’t imagine why Valve ever allowed such a thing in the first place.
Well, Valve had an interest in Steam being the spot for PC gaming. And now they’ve absolutely achieved that, so they’re flexing their muscle a bit. But again I really don’t think their stance is unreasonable. These indie developers are giving away keys they sell on steam for dollars in these bundles for pennies and Steam bears all the distribution costs forever for no real compensation.
Hopefully the end result of this is that developers start to abandon Steamworks exclusivity and begin using GOG more.
Yes that would be a great change.
Amen.
I hope not.
Steam is simply the best distribution and updating platform. It blows away the competition. Do you guys even remember how updating games was before steam?
This is worrying though. Steam really feels like a very near monopoly and if this is a move to attack competition, that could be a real risk to the video game industry. Especially since steam sales have basically disappeared and/or become mediocre in recent years (once they secured market dominance).
The last thing i want though is a crappy alternative or for every publisher to have their own 85% steam alternative.
Also on a side note, valve does benefit when you buy a game using steam from someone else. It brings people on to the platform which is basically a huge storefront. and every game they have on it, makes them more invested.
Yes and no - getting someone playing your game is useful for word-of-mouth approaches. All you need is one person to say how awesome your game is that they got in a limited-time bundle, and (hopefully) easily-influenced friends go and pick up copies on Steam. Given that word of mouth cost you nothing and you got your game plastered on a decently trafficked website, it makes sense for developers who may have been struggling in marketing their games.
The # of keys they were giving away were definitely being abused. There are lots of garbage bin games with over 500,000 owners on SteamSpy that probably made near-zero in sales.
This sounds like a response to devs who’d pump out tons of keys to profit on cards / bulk giveaway sales.
I’m not sure I understand your position. You don’t want there to be increased competition for Steam, but you’re worried about Steam attacking competition, because it could be a “real risk to the video game industry”. Those two things seem contradictory.
Also, why do you have a problem with alternatives, regardless of how crappy you believe them to be? They’re called alternatives for a reason—you don’t have to use them. If Sega releases a game and in Scenario A it uses Steamworks exclusively, and in Scenario B it uses Steamworks, but is also available on GOG, then how could you possibly believe Scenario A to be preferable?
Finally, Valve only benefits from 3rd party sellers up to a certain point. When they were building their user base that may have been the case. That user base is pretty much built at this point. The only PC gamer I’ve come across recently who doesn’t use Steam is…well nobody; I was the last hold-out that I knew of. I eventually just stopped giving a shit. I relented and made an account, but with the stipulation that I’ll never pay for a Steamworks game unless it’s on a very deep discount.
It’s worked out very well for me, and even if they do clamp down and prices go up, my backlog is already to the point where I could completely stop buying games and have enough to get me through the next couple decades without a problem, and that’s saying nothing for the massive amount of console gaming I’ve yet to tap into.
I imagine this means the days of buying new $60 titles on cdkeys for $38 are coming to an end.