Most devs who shared their thoughts online say that not being able to sell on Steam means a death sentence for their game. There was a case recently about a game who Steam banned from selling and without the media coverage they would’ve never made it, because itch.io sales represent a very small portion.
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 day ago
The game is Horses and they got huge ad campaign out of it. Thing is, game is mid and wouldn’t sell a thousand copies without the shitstorm they’ve built up.
Look. Minecraft originally was not sold on any platforms except directly by mojang and is probably the most famous indie game to date. It is not death sentence unless your product is crap. But it is a certain bonus to be sold on the most popular platform.
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Minecraft released when Steam was not dominant yet. We still got physical releases when Minecraft first went on sale. Nowadays? Good luck
imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 hours ago
Wdym when Steam was not dominant? Minecraft was released in 2009 and by that time tons of games were sold on Steam and there was barely any competition except maybe infamous GFWL and GOG who were certainly not a decent competitors in any way.
For Minecraft it took a few years to become widely popular. I think it only took off around beta 1.1-1.2 which is about 2010-2011. By 2011 Steam was an unstoppable game-selling supermachine.