Operation Tell Valve All The Things, 3.0

FOD:

Please read this entire article before posting a hot take. This is a long, hard, nuanced discussion.

First, some context.

For the past two years I've been running a wide-ranging survey of independent game developers. Last year the results were published in PC Gamer, the previous year they were just shared privately. I know for a fact that Valve reads these reports, and even responds to them. Of the 19 issues we raised in the past two surveys, we got a resolution for 55-60% of them, depending on how you figure. A full catalog with dates and details can be found at the bottom of this article.

[Valkron1]

Maybe Valve could go make some games or something 🤔

[Nitrowolf2]

It’s also no wonder why we have so many different market places

As a publisher why take a pay cut for somebody to distribute your content when you can do it yourself at a lower cost.

[UltraNova]

Nuh it as long as they are controlling the lion's share of PC gaming they won't bother. Also these so called devs need to put their money where their mouth is, in this case take their games and take them to Epic's store of they really feel cheated on Steam.

[kevnb]

They aren’t even in trouble at all, nobody owns pc gaming and nobody can stop people from selling games however they want. Valve is still by far the market share leader and many gamers won’t even buy a game from anywhere else.

[Shikoku]

With the majority of the market being asset flips and garbage I don't blame them.

[NarutoFox]

30% they pay is ridiculous

[ssmilloy36]

it's what bulk retail gets. so it's even more ridiculous that it's digital

[kevnb]

How so? Do you think digital games just appear out of thin air? Not to mention steam takes care of patching, anti cheat, distribution and advertises the games...

[tgonzo]

@kevnb I think a lot of the heat towards Steam is specifically a perceived change in the marketing role it plays. In its current state, Steam might be even detrimental to smaller games in terms of exposure, thus there is a sense that 30% do not provide the same value as some years ago

[MetroidFREAK21]

I mean if I were a dev, I would go with the store front that took less profit from the people who made the game... Makes sense to me

[kevnb]

Devs don’t usually even think of this, it’s the publishers.

[RainOfTerror]

But the main trend with digital distribution is to cut out publisher and make it easier for developers to sell to the public themselves, so they better think of it that way.

[kevnb]

yes some developers go straight to the store now, but publishers are the ones with money to invest. The other option many are using is crowdfunding, but publishers want us to hate it and the media makes sure to point out every time there is a bad experience with crowd funding (probably paid by publishers).

[opc]

A lot of people blame the flood of garbage on Steam but no one seems to want to accept the reality that there is an over saturation of amazing games at low prices. In the digital era, great games live on forever and get cheaper and cheaper.

I played ACIV: Black Flag for free, The Witcher 3 for $20, Arkham Knight for $5, Alien: Isolation for $5 soon I'm going to get a trial of Games Pass and play a Gears of War 4 for free... there are many more. My point is I actually do sift through the garbage and add tons of indie games to my wishlist every week, but the amount of amazing games at incredibly low prices overshadows them. I want to buy Hollow Knight but Twitch gave me SOMA for free...

This is all on top of a ridiculous amount of games that I bought and have not played yet.

Simply put, a lot of developers are going to be frustrated with sales because many of us have stocked up and there is very little reason to spend time and money on something that doesn't amaze you.

[Amplitude]

Ugh this is why I like physical games

I have thousands of dollars of Steam games.
I lost all my digital Wii games when the store shut down for good. A lot of games have been pulled as well (Motorostom on the psp, PT)

I'm not saying Steam is gonna lose this battle and go bankrupt but the fact that there's even a slight chance that people might start boycotting them really sucks cause who knows what's gonna happen in 30 years

[WitcheRivia]

Fake News.

Some developers (mostly the bad ones) are taking a gamble on the Epic store because they get more money when they sell their games. If you only sell 3 copies on Epic store then you're still making less money than if you had sold it on Steam as more people will buy it.

Basically, nobody wants to download a Fortnite Launcher to play other games when they already have Steam. Not to mention Tencent owns 40% of Epic & nobody wants to give their money to the anti-consumer Chinese company.

[Reefskye]

So who are these Devrlopers? EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda? You mean the companies that made their own digital distribution and charge the same price as they do on steam? While not having to pay steam a 30% cut? Yeh untill you drop your PC game prices to lower level than consoles seen as they sell direct to the customers, I have little sympathy. They have the nerv to complain about it yet they cut out the middle man and still try to charge the same price.

[kevnb]

Publishers, not developers. Big publishers are already able to have their own platform for selling games and obviously make more by not using someone else for distribution.

[kevnb]

Competition is fine, stop being so hyperbolic...

[mkis007]

I want maneater and satisfactory...so therefore I will add another launcher to the list.

[King_Noctis]

Valve and number 3 don’t exactly go hand in hand.