Let me get this out of the way: I like Steam. I like Valve.
We have a poll up right now that asks whether you use Steam. Let us know please.
I’ve been in digital distribution since before digital distribution was a thing. The very first computer game that was launched at retail and digitally distributed was Galactic Civilizations back in February 2003.
For us, digital distribution was a matter of life or death. Consider this, how many other independent (or heck, just non-publicly traded) game studios have been around 20 years? Go ahead. Count them up. Not many eh?
I incorporated Stardock back in 1993 from my college dorm room. And I can tell you, if it weren’t for digital distribution, we would have stopped making games a long time ago. That’s because the more people that are between you and your customer, the more opportunities there are for theft. Not by players but by retailers, publishers, distributors, etc.
One of the reasons why the whole “piracy” bellowing from publishers irritated me was because the biggest obstacle to getting paid for my work wasn’t from pirates. It was from the middle men.
In 1994, we released our first game. Galactic Civilizations for OS/2. It was published by a company called Advanced Idea Machines. The game was a huge hit. So I heard anyway. We didn’t get paid. And being a poor college student at the time, I couldn’t afford a lawyer.
So in 1996, we released Galactic Civilizations 2 for OS/2. This time we released it ourselves. But our retail distributor, Micro Central, went bankrupt and didn’t pay us and our mail order distributor, Blue Orchards went out of business as well and didn’t pay us.
So then we moved to Windows and we released Galactic Civilizations for Windows, published by Strategy First….and again, didn’t get paid.
Do you see a pattern here?
What saved us was digital distribution. With it, we could sell directly to customers, cutting out the middle man.
As you can imagine, when Steam came out we started to get a little nervous. Not because of the competition but because we feared the idea that we would one day need to sell our software through a third party and hence risk not getting paid…again.
As it had turned out, our fears have been unwarranted. Impulse, now owned by Gamestop, pays like clock work and so does Steam. By contrast, with a retail distributor you were lucky to get paid merely 90 days late. And that’s not counting the obnoxious and expensive RMA games they play. I like the service Steam provides. They’re easy to work with, they’re honest, and they’re passionate about what they do. And most importantly, they let me, as a game developer, focus on what matters: making games.
Anyway, the point here being, what are your feelings on Steam these days?
@Alstein,
Yep. Across the board. Valve only charges 30% for sales that occur via them.
Of course they don't piece together the latest version from a variety of zips.
Users only need to get 1 zip with the latest version of the game.
You can save on bandwidth by having a universal patch, users install on top of their v1.0 downloadable, this raises the zip count to 2. (with newer universal patches replacing older ones) but it does take a little more effort on the developer's part in creating the universal patch (compare a directory containing latest version and v1.00 release of the game).
The main drawback of the 1 zip method is bandwidth efficiency, which might or might not be a big deal depending on the size of your game and how often you release patches.
Also, if we want to go from the hypothetical to the actual. The vast majority of the 1 zip implementations I have seen are self extracting zips. Updates are released in the form of a new self extracting zip containing the whole game. So its all down to bandwidth efficiency, which admittedly is a bigger deal for you guys since your games weigh in the gigabyes.
Interesting.
That's not really workable. People are not going to accept downloading 10GB or whatever for every little update. And there is still the matter of the installer which would need to place the files.
In 2013, there's really no compelling reason not to use Steam.
When we left the OS/2 market, there were a lot of people who were mad at us then. Similarly, there were lots of people who didn't want to run "Windoze" just to play a game and insisted on DOS versions.
People who want to play PC games are going to either deal with a tiny selection of non-Steam games or deal with it.
We've done the math and it's a no brainer. It's Steam from here on out. Even if that, unfortunately, means losing some good customers. The cost/benefit ratio is just too one-sided.
I use Steam extensively. I absolutely love it, and I think it is a tremendous boon to gaming in general. I also believe, however, that it is dangerous. Not only is it a database [potentially] tracking me in these PRISM-days (hence my choice to run my profile with maximum privacy), it also functions as one giant advertisement, often playing a deciding role in which games I choose to play (and purchase). This makes Steam extremely powerful, more than I'm entirely sure it should be. For instance, I'd be far more inclined to become aware of and, following, purchase a game on Steam than on your own platform, Impulse. 'Normal' stores? I never even visit them. I recently ordered a game from GreenManGaming, but outside of that I believe every single game I've purchased these latest years have been through Steam. That's power.
The greatest benefit, and the greatest danger of Steam is that it's so awfully convenient. Much like Facebook, Google, and the other megacorps, and with the same dangers as a consequence.
It's why I purchased LH directly from SD. No way I'm giving any money to Steam.
As to ZIP files, could you occassionly release a 'use at your own risk' zip file for the community here so that those of us that don't ever want to interact with Steam can choose to update via the ZIP ?
And on this same line, please add steam workshop support to your games. It's not much fun for modders to manage this process either.
1. Most indie titles have size measured in MB not GB.
2. For a 10GB title you use the "universal patch" method. 2 files total (initially self extracting 10GB game, and a single small patch file which later gets replaced).
As I said, self extracting zips with a default directory are the norm for such distributions. Equal file placement to a "proper" installer.
I'm not going to comment here from a user's perspective, but Steam is indeed the big ticket for indie developers. Just listen to the first few minutes of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEmj2vwBedw&list=PLmJnvU5T53FlE1H7-zqN49fk_772K-KF4 (you don't have to watch the video)
I saw the anti-Steam arguments on the boards for Endless Space. That game still did extremely well (had a lot of free updates and DLC plus an expansion pack), and now those guys are producing Endless Legend and Dungeons of the Endless.
The reality is just that...reality. There currently is no better way with the same benefits.
Steam is also very fair to developers and Frogboy isn't the first dev I've heard say the same.
Most of the time it just isn't worth it to make those kinds of sacrifices for a small minority of customers. It sucks but that's just smart business.
Exactly! The minority who refuse to use Steam will soon be gone, just like the ones who once refused Windows in favor of OS/2.
I use steam
It's across the board. You can release a Steamwoks game and if none of your customers buy it on steam (Humble/Amazon/GMG/GG/Gamestop/etc) Steam doesn't see a dime. They only take a cut when a customer purchases directly. Thus Steamworks is free. But the Steam STORE like all stores takes a cut. I realize sometimes they 'feel' like all the same amorphous entity.
Most digital stores tend to take an industry standard 30% cut.If you get a game on GOG/Amazon/or whatever it's basically 30%
Notable exceptions:
1) Humble Widgets which are the things you might see on a devs website to buy a game.Humble Widgets are sub-10% margins
Note the Humble Store is different! They 'net' to the developer is around 20-30% because Humble gives proceeds from teh Humble Store to charity.
2) Buying directly from a developers (such as the Stardock store!) means the dev/company gets more money directly
The problem with that is that it's entirely complicated for users to manage. I mean realistically think about how it used to work in the 'old' days. Let's assume I just want to get to the latest version. Usually that meant a bizarre install chain of 1.0->2.0->2.5a if you're lucky.
Also note that digital distribution ensures your customers are all on teh same version incredibly quickly. This allows you to deploy patches quicker which is essentail for MP games for all clients to be on teh same version (which is why Steam was invented in teh first place). In addition it allows you to quickly deploy patches for catastrophic issues, or in fact roll back clients to a previous version if necessary.
The problem with your analogy is that model more or less stopped right around when games started breaking the 1GB ceiling. Even 'minor' patches to games like Skyrim are in the several hundred MB using SteamPipe.
Basically think about if you buy a game on GamersGate tehy have an installer. So does Gamestop. So does GOG. etc. They all have custom installers for their infrastructure. SO you have to deploy patches to all these channels sumultaneously using entirely different tools. If your game is steamworks you only have to deal with one installer chain for your patches
That's more a case of poor use of technology rather than any inherent limitation of on-line distribution. Stuff like rsync (http://rsync.samba.org/tech_report/) [binary diffing and patching] has been around for decades now. RTPatch® on Windows also did the same with patch installers, but it was rather slow. Microsoft has tools that do the same http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jmstall/archive/2006/11/07/binary-diff.aspx. And Google [who else?] has something that looks even better http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/software-updates-courgette (but see http://lwn.net/Articles/359939/)
In SteamPipe "Data files are no longer placed into GCFs but directly into the file system", so it's in fact easier to use binary patching.
As for the state of Steam in 2014 from a consumer perspective, this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLNh5HPbQPo by TotalBiscuit summarizes it pretty well.
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