What do you think of Steam Direct?

[DamirH]

@Selentic;668881

You’re still predicating this on the idea that curation would be more than opening the greenlight page and looking at it for more than a minute or two. Most of those trash games that get released on the steam store, or greenlight are easily identifiable as garbage within SECONDS by anyone with the remotest capacity for critical thinking.

You are still talking about this as if it’s some sort of objective standard, when it isn’t. If you ask 100 people about the standard for curation you’d get 150 opinions.

@Selentic;668881

We’re lumping fez in with the trash now? Whether you like it or not, the game undeniably had creative thought, and serious effort put into it, that resulted in a game of passable quality.

Even if Fez were undeniably trash, someone self publishing a bad game is not a reason to go insert unnecessary parasitic middlemen into the process for anyone else because they didn’t happen to have X amount of money they could part with.

I am not talking about the game, I am talking about the developer - entitles brat who insults his customer base while sucking up to your usual corrupt news outlets, all of this with zero accountability, because he’s “independent”. Without someone to answer to, people like him will continue to **** on gamers and gamer culture until there’s nothing left of it. Draconian measures like EA or Activision are on the other extreme, but I’d argue they’re far less damaging than the indie alternative because they include a degree of professionalism.

@Selentic;668881

No I’m not telling you that. I’m telling you that, as someone who probably cares more about games than most people, I don’t care about all these other marketplaces, and most gamers are in the same boat as me. If a game is not on steam, short of some very special circumstances it may as well not exist as far as I’m concerned, because steam is where my game library is.

Sorry, but as a developer you don’t get to choose what markets you “care” about, regardless of your love for games. If your game would sell 100 copies on RandomNewMarketX, that’s 100 people who bought your game on that market as opposed to Steam. Which means there are thousands of people using the service daily. You sell there, get funds for the Steam fee, release on Steam. As an indie who is just starting out with nothing but wind in his pockets, this is a win-win situation.

1. You get to sell your game on a less crowded market without big names stealing your spotlight
2. You promote a competitor to Steam (Very important as competition is always a good thing)
3. You make money without paying any fees
4. Once your game has been in the open for a while, building a community and some word-of-mouth, and you start making money, you can release it on Steam with a much higher chance of success than just dumping it fresh out of your BuildFinal folder.
5. Steam is less crowded by garbage who don’t pass this crucial gauntlet.

It’s a win for everyone!