I’d argue that that is entirely a good thing overall.
It means that Steam is very open to Indie devs (something we already know) that don’t make as much money but are passion projects for the creators.
If they’re making enough from the…let’s call them prestige titles…to be able to afford to give indie devs a place to host their passion projects and maybe get more eyes on it, than I see no problem with that.
No idie dev is going into it thinking they’re going to be next giant thing. They just want to share their work and maybe make a few bucks. And Steam gives them that, PLUS the chance that maybe they’ll be a Rimworld or a Hollow Knight; something that sparks a giant success for them.
I’m not sure how they started, but Brotato came from a very small studio, and rose up to top-played on Steam Deck and some other charts. It made their creators a lot of money, because they were lucky, sure, but also because they made a very good game and had a platform to sell it from.
As far as I know, Valve’s monetisation scheme for developers is also quite fair. I might be one of those fanboys, but I think they deserve it to some extent. There’s much worse players out there, and with the money Valve is making and the market share they have now, they could absolutely be one of the bad ones and not care.
I believe that there’s always luck involved to some extent. You have a very valid point, though, if a game is THAT good, at some point success becomes the only plausible outcome. So definitely not a hill I would die on.
If they’re making enough from the…let’s call them prestige titles…to be able to afford to give indie devs a place to host their passion projects and maybe get more eyes on it, than I see no problem with that.
Valve is a for profit company, you have to pay to upload your games there and they take a cut of any sale. The article literally say that most games don’t make anything.
Sure. You have to rent a stall at farmer’s market if you want to sell your corn, too instead of selling it to a larger distributor. No body is saying otherwise.
The point is that having Steam as an option as an indie dev rather than having to connect to a larger publisher in order to get your work out there, is a good thing. The fact that some titles don’t make money isn’t part of it. It’s the fact that Steam at least allows these devs to cut out the middle man (the publisher). Maybe it’ll work and be a hit. Maybe it won’t. But at least they have the option to try.
No dev should consider releasing their game on the private store/platform of an evil corporation that promotes gambling to kids and who’s ceo is a billionare with a fleet of megayachts. Many devs have no better option because they are trying to make a living and catch up with life (unlike valve ceo who makes billions through questionable practices). If the market is so much centralized around certain publishers and distribuition platforms you can thank greedy corporations that for decades shaped the system to be what it is.
So in your mind, no one who is self-publishing a book should put it on Amazon. No one who is trying to sell their product on etsy should use PayPal. No one who is just trying to get rid of a few things around the house should use Facebook Marketplace… etc…
Welcome to reality. Sometimes the best of a bunch of bad options has to do. Should these companies all be put int he ground. Yes. But if we let perfect be the enemy of good, we never make any progress.
So in your mind, no one who is self-publishing a book should put it on Amazon. No one who is trying to sell their product on etsy should use PayPal. No one who is just trying to get rid of a few things around the house should use Facebook Marketplace… etc…
Exactly, don’t use these platforms they belong to evil corporations who among other things are helping israel government in a genocide
Welcome to reality. Sometimes the best of a bunch of bad options has to do. Should these companies all be put int he ground. Yes. But if we let perfect be the enemy of good, we never make any progress.
You are on lemmy defending corporations, ask yourself, are you making progress?
I’m saying that if you’re an author (for example) that wants to self publish instead of trying to find a big publisher to accept your manuscript, what are you going to do? Email a copy to anyone who wants to buy it? No…of course not. Similarly, if you’re a dev who wants to release a game without going through a big publisher like Activision or Bethesda or whatever…what are you going to do? Other than Steam and Itch.io, there aren’t many places to do that.
Does it suck? Yes. But the reality is that if we want to get our work out into the public, regardless of monetary concerns, we have to roll around in one mud puddle or another. Our only choice (until that changes) is how deep of a puddle we choose to get in.
if you’re a dev who wants to release a game without going through a big publisher like Activision or Bethesda or whatever…what are you going to do?
I write about it here on lemmy
Other than Steam and Itch.io, there aren’t many places to do that.
Why there aren’t many places to do that? How was it in the past? What changed? How you can improve that?
Does it suck? Yes. But the reality is that if we want to get our work out into the public, regardless of monetary concerns, we have to roll around in one mud puddle or another.
To me it sounds like the reality is that you are choosing visibility over doing what is good
So, choosing what’s good and losing visibility would en me up as a non-visible altruist.
Nobody would buy a book from a guy on a street. They’d go to a book store that is owned by a business man who offers books in exchange for money that he pays for the rent of the book store, for the salary of the staff and for himself.
You can, of course, sell on the street. But how much do you think you would sell just in the street compared to a publisher or just a random book store that asked you to pay for them to take some bookshelf space?
Money is where people are. Nobody goes on the streets to buy books. Peoole go to a book store to have variety of choices and to find something that they are interested in. Imagine you’re interested in sci-fi and you’d have to run around the city to find a street book vendor that wrote his sci-fi novel just fo sind out his novel is crap?
You’d go to a book store 99.99%of the time.
Now change “book” to “game”. See the point?
And, if we talk about decentralized. That might as well mean “free”. If the community holds all the games, devs are paid but community is left aside?
Lemmy doesn’t earn money. Maybe only donations. If we sell games based on donations to the service, who decides which dev gets paid and how much? In other words, this would be close to “free to play, ingame purchases” than to an actual game store.
BTW, some devs already locked their games to their own stores so here is this “street book vendor” type devs (more like publishers) that sell their games only there. But their service is crap, and everyone wants to buy in steam. 🤷
Nobody is forcing games to be released on Steam. In fact some of the biggest games played today are not on Steam. Roblox is not on Steam. Fortnite is not on Steam. Minecraft is not on Steam. Any game made by Riot games is not on Steam. Even smaller indie titles can easily get by without being on Steam. Vintage Story is not on Steam, Hytale is not on Steam. There are more titles whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head that are doing just fine without being on Steam.
Most devs put their game on Steam because not everyone wants to handle the stuff that comes with setting up your own game delivery platform and, whether you like it or not, Steam actually helps with visibility. I can give you an example right now. I had never heard of “The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker” until Steam recommended it to me a few days ago. It’s been out for 2 years and I’ve probably not heard of it because there’s barely anything about it on the web. Now it’s in my to play list. An indie dev just made some money because Steam advertised that game to me. In fact there are a lot of indie titles I’ve picked up due to Steam regularly promoting games through things like the Steam Next Fest or themed sales. I’ve also found games through the Steam Discovery feature but I don’t use it that much because it tends to mix in popular games I’m not interested with games I am interested in and most of the time I find what I want to buy without even needing to use it.
So your “evil greedy corporation” spiel only works when you ignore all the things Steam does that end up beneficial for indie games.
Nobody is forcing you to have a computer, buy gasoline or even own an house.
Of course not. Having a computer is a convenience thing, owning a house should be a fundamental human right but under the capitalist system it’s also turned into a convenience. Gasoline is also a convenience and as a matter of fact I don’t regularly buy gasoline because I avoid driving a car whenever possible. You might not even understand that you’re actually arguing against your own point here. The developers all have other options than Steam and just like me picking what conveniences I’m okay with they simply pick Steam because it’s the most convenient option for them. And just like my moral code makes me pick the less convenient option when it comes to gas so can devs pick a less convenient option when they’re not okay with Steam, I even brought examples of developers choosing to not be on Steam and still be successful. The idea that they have to use Steam to make a living is ridiculous.
Have you ask yourself why you never heard about it? Read my previous comment.
You mean this?
If the market is so much centralized around certain publishers and distribuition platforms you can thank greedy corporations that for decades shaped the system to be what it is.
So publishers and distribution platforms are the reason why the game has barely any presence on Youtube and really no other communities beyond a wiki and a Steam community. That’s a borderline conspiracy theory.
And a counter-question to you. If the publishers and distribution platforms have shaped the system in a way to make sure you see what they want you to see, why did a distribution platform recommend this game to me in the first place? And why 2 years after it released? I thought they were supposed to feed me only the games they want me to buy not the games I want to buy.
I believe you are ignoring all the evil greedy shit they do, such as promoting gambling to kids.
I’m not ignoring those things. I’m all for criticizing Valve for promoting gambling and trying to skirt the gambling laws (which would also make it illegal for them to let kids gamble). I’ve criticized them on this very point before and I don’t mind criticizing them on this point for as long as they’re doing it. That said.
This is simply not relevant to the current discussion because the money Valve makes from gambling goes straight to Valve and has nothing to do with indie developers. Unless you want to somehow drag indie developers into this gambling shit. Honestly you’d look less like a rambling hater if you could focus your criticism instead of lashing out at everything.
So publishers and distribution platforms are the reason why the game has barely any presence on Youtube and really no other communities beyond a wiki and a Steam community. That’s a borderline conspiracy theory.
In case you haven’t noticed if you search for a video on youtube you get 3 video results and the rest is all ads and sponsored content
Okay, open my eyes to this ad insanity. Go on Youtube and search “the black grimoire cursebreaker”. Excluding the roblox videos (which youtube suggests because it doesn’t know what else to suggest) and the youtube shorts (which are also full of youtube not knowing what to recommend because there’s not enough of shorts about the game) please name the 3 videos and content creators that are actual video results and then we can discuss the rest that are supposed to be ads and sponsored content.
I’d argue that that is entirely a good thing overall.
It means that Steam is very open to Indie devs (something we already know) that don’t make as much money but are passion projects for the creators.
If they’re making enough from the…let’s call them prestige titles…to be able to afford to give indie devs a place to host their passion projects and maybe get more eyes on it, than I see no problem with that.
No idie dev is going into it thinking they’re going to be next giant thing. They just want to share their work and maybe make a few bucks. And Steam gives them that, PLUS the chance that maybe they’ll be a Rimworld or a Hollow Knight; something that sparks a giant success for them.
I would argue that a significant amount of them are but that’s not the point.
I’m not sure how they started, but Brotato came from a very small studio, and rose up to top-played on Steam Deck and some other charts. It made their creators a lot of money, because they were lucky, sure, but also because they made a very good game and had a platform to sell it from.
As far as I know, Valve’s monetisation scheme for developers is also quite fair. I might be one of those fanboys, but I think they deserve it to some extent. There’s much worse players out there, and with the money Valve is making and the market share they have now, they could absolutely be one of the bad ones and not care.
Is it luck though?
It’s hard to make a game. It’s much harder to make a good game that pushes all the right buttons.
I play some of these games that probably make well under average, and there are very distinct reasons why they didn’t take off.
I believe that there’s always luck involved to some extent. You have a very valid point, though, if a game is THAT good, at some point success becomes the only plausible outcome. So definitely not a hill I would die on.
Valve is a for profit company, you have to pay to upload your games there and they take a cut of any sale. The article literally say that most games don’t make anything.
You seem to be implying that most games are worthy of turning a profit. Have you played most games on steam? There are a lot of really bad ones.
Sure. You have to rent a stall at farmer’s market if you want to sell your corn, too instead of selling it to a larger distributor. No body is saying otherwise.
The point is that having Steam as an option as an indie dev rather than having to connect to a larger publisher in order to get your work out there, is a good thing. The fact that some titles don’t make money isn’t part of it. It’s the fact that Steam at least allows these devs to cut out the middle man (the publisher). Maybe it’ll work and be a hit. Maybe it won’t. But at least they have the option to try.
No dev should consider releasing their game on the private store/platform of an evil corporation that promotes gambling to kids and who’s ceo is a billionare with a fleet of megayachts. Many devs have no better option because they are trying to make a living and catch up with life (unlike valve ceo who makes billions through questionable practices). If the market is so much centralized around certain publishers and distribuition platforms you can thank greedy corporations that for decades shaped the system to be what it is.
So in your mind, no one who is self-publishing a book should put it on Amazon. No one who is trying to sell their product on etsy should use PayPal. No one who is just trying to get rid of a few things around the house should use Facebook Marketplace… etc…
Welcome to reality. Sometimes the best of a bunch of bad options has to do. Should these companies all be put int he ground. Yes. But if we let perfect be the enemy of good, we never make any progress.
Exactly, don’t use these platforms they belong to evil corporations who among other things are helping israel government in a genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_involved_in_the_Gaza_war
You are on lemmy defending corporations, ask yourself, are you making progress?
I’m not defending anybody.
I’m saying that if you’re an author (for example) that wants to self publish instead of trying to find a big publisher to accept your manuscript, what are you going to do? Email a copy to anyone who wants to buy it? No…of course not. Similarly, if you’re a dev who wants to release a game without going through a big publisher like Activision or Bethesda or whatever…what are you going to do? Other than Steam and Itch.io, there aren’t many places to do that.
Does it suck? Yes. But the reality is that if we want to get our work out into the public, regardless of monetary concerns, we have to roll around in one mud puddle or another. Our only choice (until that changes) is how deep of a puddle we choose to get in.
I write about it here on lemmy
Why there aren’t many places to do that? How was it in the past? What changed? How you can improve that?
To me it sounds like the reality is that you are choosing visibility over doing what is good
So, choosing what’s good and losing visibility would en me up as a non-visible altruist.
Nobody would buy a book from a guy on a street. They’d go to a book store that is owned by a business man who offers books in exchange for money that he pays for the rent of the book store, for the salary of the staff and for himself.
You can, of course, sell on the street. But how much do you think you would sell just in the street compared to a publisher or just a random book store that asked you to pay for them to take some bookshelf space?
Money is where people are. Nobody goes on the streets to buy books. Peoole go to a book store to have variety of choices and to find something that they are interested in. Imagine you’re interested in sci-fi and you’d have to run around the city to find a street book vendor that wrote his sci-fi novel just fo sind out his novel is crap?
You’d go to a book store 99.99%of the time.
Now change “book” to “game”. See the point?
And, if we talk about decentralized. That might as well mean “free”. If the community holds all the games, devs are paid but community is left aside?
Lemmy doesn’t earn money. Maybe only donations. If we sell games based on donations to the service, who decides which dev gets paid and how much? In other words, this would be close to “free to play, ingame purchases” than to an actual game store.
BTW, some devs already locked their games to their own stores so here is this “street book vendor” type devs (more like publishers) that sell their games only there. But their service is crap, and everyone wants to buy in steam. 🤷
Nobody is forcing games to be released on Steam. In fact some of the biggest games played today are not on Steam. Roblox is not on Steam. Fortnite is not on Steam. Minecraft is not on Steam. Any game made by Riot games is not on Steam. Even smaller indie titles can easily get by without being on Steam. Vintage Story is not on Steam, Hytale is not on Steam. There are more titles whose name I can’t remember off the top of my head that are doing just fine without being on Steam.
Most devs put their game on Steam because not everyone wants to handle the stuff that comes with setting up your own game delivery platform and, whether you like it or not, Steam actually helps with visibility. I can give you an example right now. I had never heard of “The Black Grimoire: Cursebreaker” until Steam recommended it to me a few days ago. It’s been out for 2 years and I’ve probably not heard of it because there’s barely anything about it on the web. Now it’s in my to play list. An indie dev just made some money because Steam advertised that game to me. In fact there are a lot of indie titles I’ve picked up due to Steam regularly promoting games through things like the Steam Next Fest or themed sales. I’ve also found games through the Steam Discovery feature but I don’t use it that much because it tends to mix in popular games I’m not interested with games I am interested in and most of the time I find what I want to buy without even needing to use it.
So your “evil greedy corporation” spiel only works when you ignore all the things Steam does that end up beneficial for indie games.
Nobody is forcing you to have a computer, buy gasoline or even own an house.
Have you ask yourself why you never heard about it? Read my previous comment.
I believe you are ignoring all the evil greedy shit they do, such as promoting gambling to kids.
Of course not. Having a computer is a convenience thing, owning a house should be a fundamental human right but under the capitalist system it’s also turned into a convenience. Gasoline is also a convenience and as a matter of fact I don’t regularly buy gasoline because I avoid driving a car whenever possible. You might not even understand that you’re actually arguing against your own point here. The developers all have other options than Steam and just like me picking what conveniences I’m okay with they simply pick Steam because it’s the most convenient option for them. And just like my moral code makes me pick the less convenient option when it comes to gas so can devs pick a less convenient option when they’re not okay with Steam, I even brought examples of developers choosing to not be on Steam and still be successful. The idea that they have to use Steam to make a living is ridiculous.
You mean this?
So publishers and distribution platforms are the reason why the game has barely any presence on Youtube and really no other communities beyond a wiki and a Steam community. That’s a borderline conspiracy theory.
And a counter-question to you. If the publishers and distribution platforms have shaped the system in a way to make sure you see what they want you to see, why did a distribution platform recommend this game to me in the first place? And why 2 years after it released? I thought they were supposed to feed me only the games they want me to buy not the games I want to buy.
I’m not ignoring those things. I’m all for criticizing Valve for promoting gambling and trying to skirt the gambling laws (which would also make it illegal for them to let kids gamble). I’ve criticized them on this very point before and I don’t mind criticizing them on this point for as long as they’re doing it. That said.
This is simply not relevant to the current discussion because the money Valve makes from gambling goes straight to Valve and has nothing to do with indie developers. Unless you want to somehow drag indie developers into this gambling shit. Honestly you’d look less like a rambling hater if you could focus your criticism instead of lashing out at everything.
In case you haven’t noticed if you search for a video on youtube you get 3 video results and the rest is all ads and sponsored content
Okay, open my eyes to this ad insanity. Go on Youtube and search “the black grimoire cursebreaker”. Excluding the roblox videos (which youtube suggests because it doesn’t know what else to suggest) and the youtube shorts (which are also full of youtube not knowing what to recommend because there’s not enough of shorts about the game) please name the 3 videos and content creators that are actual video results and then we can discuss the rest that are supposed to be ads and sponsored content.