General Gaming Steam developers speak: Maximum profits for Valve, minimum responsibilities (longform piece by Polygon)

[Pikachu]

https://www.polygon.com/2018/10/19/17959138/steam-valve-developer-support-pricing-reviews

 

Quote

There was a time, not so long ago, when every PC developer wanted to be on Steam. Getting your game on Steam — if you could manage to somehow contact Valve and impress the company with your wares — was a golden ticket to sales and success.

 

Those days are over, according to the 20 developers I spoke with for this story. While selling a game on Steam has never been easier, only a “chosen few” are reportedly lucky enough to have Valve’s mysterious algorithm favor them with some promotional screen real estate, or popular enough to get a Valve representative to help them with a support ticket. The rest often feel like they’re on their own.

 

For many Steam developers, this two-tiered and algorithmically curated culture of “one Steam for the popular, and one Steam for the rest” is leading to dissatisfaction, resentment and confusion.

 

[SuperSpreader]

Oh noes Gaben how far we have fallen from the light $$$$

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Some of those issues -- especially those related to setting the regional pricing -- should be the developer's responsibility, not Valve's.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Hicks said that for him, the major difference between Valve’s 30 percent and Microsoft or Sony’s 30 percent was in the level of personal support and care the companies provided.

 

“Sony and Microsoft both provided me with personal contacts that I can pitch ideas to. They also provide contacts to pitch things regarding marketing [...] so if I have an idea for a cool promotion I can at least talk to someone about it,” Hicks explained. “Additionally, they do everything they can to provide each game with a nice chunk of store visibility at launch.”

 

Now THAT is on Valve to improve.

[Keyser_Soze]

Also everyone and their mother puts out a game so it's just a lot harder to stand out unless you have prior knowledge of the game or watch something like UPF on Giant Bomb where they play random new games

[Brian]

I never buy shit on Steam because the experience is awful. #closedsystemFTW

[Dexterryu]

Excellent article. I still use Steam and it's my prefered platform to download/manage games but I don't think much of them as a company anymore. They've had incredibly poor support for a long time. To hear that developers have the same problems is not a surprise.

[RedSoxFan9]

valve seems like a terrible place to work if you are one of the people who has to do work.  It’s not surprising that they don’t care about developers either. 

[Massdriver]

Get your shit together Valve!

[Kal-El814]

I just don’t give a shit anymore. The other launchers are competent and I only fire up any of them when I’m about to boot a game. Valve sucks at this shit and will forever, the honeymoon is over and it is what it is.

[Moa]

The lack of support availability from Valve is the only thing in this article that seems alarming. For 30% I would hope that Valve is prompt in helping developers use their platform. 

 

However, every time I read one of these articles I feel like the developers have very little self-awareness. They harken back to the days when steam was curated and any indie game released on the platform would instantly be successful, but they never seem to consider that their game would not have been allowed on Steam to begin with. They all think their game deserves more marketing but rarely seem to consider that there is finite marketing space for practically infinite games. I already see enough garbage on my Steam storefront, I don't need to see an add for your Castle Crashers knockoff. 

 

They always say more for me and never realize they are also saying less for thee. 

[Xbob42]

54 minutes ago, Moa said:

The lack of support availability from Valve is the only thing in this article that seems alarming. For 30% I would hope that Valve is prompt in helping developers use their platform. 

 

However, every time I read one of these articles I feel like the developers have very little self-awareness. They harken back to the days when steam was curated and any indie game released on the platform would instantly be successful, but they never seem to consider that their game would not have been allowed on Steam to begin with. They all think their game deserves more marketing but rarely seem to consider that there is finite marketing space for practically infinite games. I already see enough garbage on my Steam storefront, I don't need to see an add for your Castle Crashers knockoff. 

 

They always say more for me and never realize they are also saying less for thee. 

Yup. Been saying this for a while now. Of course the popular games get more attention. That's how the fuckin' world works, sunshine. It's not Valve's responsibility to make your game popular. It never was, and it never will be. Anyone that thinks otherwise is a fucking idiot. The fact that any game getting on the platform made it an instant success in the past was a BAD thing, not a good thing. Of course, if you were on the receiving end, you likely disagreed, but that was a very tiny pool of people.