Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
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.
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. 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.
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.
No idie dev is going into it thinking they’re going to be next giant thing
I would argue that a significant amount of them are but that’s not the point.
verifiedbyme@lemmy.world 1 week ago
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, their monetisation scheme is also quite fair. I might be one of those fanboys, but I think Valve deserves it to some extent. There’s much worse players out there, and with the money they are making and the market share they have now, they could absolutely be one of the bad ones and not care.
Rooster326@programming.dev 1 week ago
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.
verifiedbyme@lemmy.world 1 week ago
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.