I don’t see how that is “steam” economy.
That’s just economy when you try to sell anything, specially anything art related.
If you made any art and try to sell it in any store the most probably amount of money made is the same number in every currency.
I don’t see how that is “steam” economy.
Valve is a for profit company that decides which games to advertise.
The advertisement algorithm is pretty much understood. It depends on wishlist and first day sales.
It’s not like Gabe, or anyone, is sitting there deciding which game gets advertised and which game isn’t. As far as algorithms go, steam one is pretty straightforward and fair afaik.
It’s not like Gabe, or anyone, is sitting there deciding which game gets advertised and which game isn’t.
They are indeed in charge of the ads on their website, not only they can decide what gets featured in ads but they also design the website page and the ads placement as they like.
Like, lots of games just aren’t very good, and lots of games are pretty niche. If you want to make a lot of money in the games industry, selling an indie game on steam is not the way. make a preditory mobile game instead.
Try to say anything bad about the all-father and you will be flooded in downvotes …
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.
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, Valve’s monetisation scheme for developers is also quite fair. I might be one of those fanboys, but I think they deserve it to some extent. There’s much worse players out there, and with the money Valve is making and the market share they have now, they could absolutely be one of the bad ones and not care.
Behold the whole story of every economy
Pareto principle at work
Hey op, I see a lot of your arguments in the comments.
I have a challenge.
Name 5 things Valve could implement to change this that would not be to the detriment of indie devs.
This is not a joke. You have opinions. I want to hear them.
I’m also curious (since I see you pushing a decentralized market place in the comments), how you think a decentralized marketplace would function and what would be better about it.
No solution, only angry >:(
I’m one of those that makes most of the money off a different platform. I’m not making it because the platform is helping me. It’s inertia. I’m the best in my category and so I dominate. Same for these games.
I believe that this is as much about game quality, over saturation, and marketing/inertia as it is about Valve in general, but I’m trying to understand what they think (based on the contents of the article) can be done to fix this problem for game devs.
Okay, but explain how consumer preferences are somehow Steam’s fault?
If you told me it was that way because Steam was boosting AAA games and suppressing indie titles, then okay, you have a valid reason to criticize Steam for that, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Okay, but explain how consumer preferences are somehow Steam’s fault?
Valve is a for profit company, they make money by advertising games and selling them, their website is literally an ad shelf.
doesn’t seem to be the case.
It seem the case to me that they are advertising the shit out of certain games with ads as big as the entire screen.
Steam is gross, popularized the “own nothing” model (along with loot boxes), and just has a bunch of (very passionate) fanboys because it’s the least gross option (barring gog, which they often conveniently ignore), but this is more a problem of publishers consolidating and buying studios, giving some games obscene marketing budgets. The overwhelming majority of games are released by people whose marketing amounts to making (not promoted) social media posts on an account no one follows. Meanwhile Ubisoft, Microsoft, take two, etc have the capital and connections to dominate the press, social media, YouTube, etc
Best game ever won’t make a dime if no one knows about it. Even if you can get some pull it’s hard to compete with the game that everyone is talking about. That game is also probably more expensive, which theoretically gives you an edge, but in practice much of the time probably means your game isn’t getting purchased if the consumer is also hyped about gta6 or whatever
One measure they could take is to significantly lower or even eliminate their cut for niche games. They currently do the opposite, the largest cut (30%) comes in until your game makes 10 million, then progressively gets lower (25% 10-50m, 20% 50+m). A lower bracket that says like, 0 to 10% if your game makes under 300k or whatever. Based on this article they clearly make the majority of their revenue from heavy hitters so this would barely impact them
Valve is a for profit private company, the platform and the ads on steam are designed to boost their profits not to promote other people work. If you go on steam website right now you will see ads for 1% games as big as the entire page.
Candy Crush makes about a billion dollars a year. GTA V makes about 500 million from selling shark cards. Whatever happening at the steam store to warrant an article like this isn’t on steam, its 100% on consumers being dumbasses.
It’s also on many people wanting to play AAA games and there not being many good AAA games so everyone plays the same few good ones
I really dont get this, there have been and still are things you can very much criticise valve for but people come up with the most insane shit to criticise them for. “Uhh yeah this problem affecting the whole game industry is steams fault”. Also the top 1% are prolly aldo much much more expensive to produce so i dont think its as bad as it sounds at first but yeah.
Alternative Headline: Sturgeon’s Law Continues to Exist
Barely make anything compared to multi million companies
Solo dev games can make a fraction of what those giant games and the dev can live a very comfortable life. Etc: balatro
Very pointless article.
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But that’s the thing. It’s incredibly rare that a indie game becomes successful enough to sustain even a single developer. It’s like with every other entertainment industry. YouTube, OF, Twitch, TikTok, you are competing with millions of other people in exactly the same situation as you. I think it’s OF where you need to be in the top 25% to earn $1k per year.
Hard work and clever marketing can improve your chances of a success, but you still need to be extremely lucky to be noticed enough to make a living out of it.
I remember this talk about a developer making a living as a game dev. Not by making inspiring or “good” games, but by pretty much endlessly reskinning solitare games.
Have you ever considered the fact that these games suck?
Talking about statistics is not pointless, it’s quite interesting sometimes even.
Games like Balatro or Stardew Valley are absolute unicorns. Most smaller teams and solo devs that have a constant stream of some revenue through Steam need to work on the side to earn a living.
The point they’re making is pointless. Should have clarified my self better. I think this is an issue of behemoth companies are eating the big chunk of market and not leaving anything for the smaller creators to make a living. Same like McDonald’s is everywhere squishing smaller burger shops.
This a market problem not steam. The article points it like it’s steam’s fault. IMHO steam does its best to support indie devs. they even patch their games so they’d have a smooth release (sorry its a Reddit link)
80-20 rule still holds true, huh?
It would be weird if it didn’t follow a power law distribution.
Aka the Pareto Principle. Aka “80% of everything is shit”.
Aka “80% of everything is shit”.
That’s Sturgeon’s law (originally 90%). If you want to condense Pareto, it’s “80% of value is created in 20% of the time”.
This is why I follow reviewers and curators that sift through the bottom 99% to find interesting indie stuff. It’s absolutely jaw-dropping what never shows up on Steam’s store landing page or queues.
Splattercat is one such reviewer. He tends to prefer dystopia and post-apocalypse style stuff, and clearly works hard to bring interesting titles some more exposure: https://www.youtube.com/@splattercatgaming