My point is that it is an option, and still a competitive one, when so many still use this option. If it wasn’t, these games wouldn’t have succeeded and/or would have died off. Its an option middlemen have to out-compete, and I’d argue many don’t.
Comment on Legal action over 'unfair' Steam game store prices given go ahead
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 15 hours agoA software company can run its own store, and make its own launcher. Just look at so many of the big titles over the last two decades: Minecraft, League, Tarkov, War Thunder, Roblox, and more recently Hytale.
This is also survivorship and selection bias though. Not only would you not have heard of the ones that failed, but these are the games confident enough to not launch on Steam in the first place. Several of them are so old that Steam was in its infancy and not the de facto storefront when they came out.
PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
Steam was the defacto storefront when all those games came out.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
In 2005 when Roblox came out? No. League of Legends came out in 2009, and I had barely started shopping on Steam for non-Valve games back then. Most of us were still buying games on disc at Walmart. Minecraft was doing early access before Steam had the feature.