Then you have all of the incredible things Valve offers to a game dev, beyond simply existing where most pc gamers are…
…here, use our achievement system, here, you can make in game items tradable, here, you can use our servers for multiplayer peer discovery and linking friends to friends easily, here, you have a whole storefront, news blog, and discussion board… oh you made your game for Windows? No sweat, you don’t need to port it to Linux, we got you there. Oh you wanna do DLC? We got a whole system for that. Oh we forgot to mention cloud saves, we’ll do that for you. And! If you want people to mod your game… we’ll host all their mods, and make it so users can just upload them and download them and such.
You know how many games I’ve seen start on itch.io, incubate, develop, then do an initial launch on Steam?
Way, waaay better plan than just jumping straight into Steam Early Access. You put a firewall between the people on Itch who know they are beta testers, and people on Steam who expect working product, and thus avoid the reputational damage of going through all or most of development on Steam.
Anyway… I’d call all that stuff pro-indie-game-developer.
I certainly agree that gambling, p2w loot drops are bullshit, and the Steam item market being able to convert into actual money is… not good, and should be changed.
(I will note though that a game dev can decide if their game’s items will be directly tradable, or marketable for basically SteamBucks, or both. You can just only allow them to be directly traded.)
But the rest of it? Yeah, a whole lotta games that start with little money can have a lot easier time developing and remaining financially solvent, with all the infrastructure that Valve/Steam provides… maybe the analogy would be they effectively help you up a few of the first rungs of the proverbial ladder.
Its also worth noting that Valve is not a publically traded company. They do not have stock. They do not have a board of investors or shareholders demanding line must go up.
They do things the old fashioned way, they build up a giant warchest of money, money they actually have, with no loan payment due, no strings attached… and then then deploy that money to do things like invent their own VR tech, fund Proton development, build the Steam Machine and Steam Deck, etc.
Every other company in the space that does anything like this is beholden to capitalist investors and the demi-gods of banking and finance in a way that Valve isn’t.
Its why Unity enshittified and then imploded, and why Godot hasn’t.
When you need to make line go up for somebody, when you very directly owe people money… shit comes out the end of the pipe. When you don’t… as long as you manage your own affairs well, you more or less are in charge of what comes out of the pipe.
The commission/valve cut is tiered.
First $10m of revenue: 30% cut
Between $10m and $50m: 25% cut.
Over $50m: 20% cut.
Then you have all of the incredible things Valve offers to a game dev, beyond simply existing where most pc gamers are…
…here, use our achievement system, here, you can make in game items tradable, here, you can use our servers for multiplayer peer discovery and linking friends to friends easily, here, you have a whole storefront, news blog, and discussion board… oh you made your game for Windows? No sweat, you don’t need to port it to Linux, we got you there. Oh you wanna do DLC? We got a whole system for that. Oh we forgot to mention cloud saves, we’ll do that for you. And! If you want people to mod your game… we’ll host all their mods, and make it so users can just upload them and download them and such.
You know how many games I’ve seen start on itch.io, incubate, develop, then do an initial launch on Steam?
Way, waaay better plan than just jumping straight into Steam Early Access. You put a firewall between the people on Itch who know they are beta testers, and people on Steam who expect working product, and thus avoid the reputational damage of going through all or most of development on Steam.
Anyway… I’d call all that stuff pro-indie-game-developer.
I certainly agree that gambling, p2w loot drops are bullshit, and the Steam item market being able to convert into actual money is… not good, and should be changed.
(I will note though that a game dev can decide if their game’s items will be directly tradable, or marketable for basically SteamBucks, or both. You can just only allow them to be directly traded.)
But the rest of it? Yeah, a whole lotta games that start with little money can have a lot easier time developing and remaining financially solvent, with all the infrastructure that Valve/Steam provides… maybe the analogy would be they effectively help you up a few of the first rungs of the proverbial ladder.
Its also worth noting that Valve is not a publically traded company. They do not have stock. They do not have a board of investors or shareholders demanding line must go up.
They do things the old fashioned way, they build up a giant warchest of money, money they actually have, with no loan payment due, no strings attached… and then then deploy that money to do things like invent their own VR tech, fund Proton development, build the Steam Machine and Steam Deck, etc.
Every other company in the space that does anything like this is beholden to capitalist investors and the demi-gods of banking and finance in a way that Valve isn’t.
Its why Unity enshittified and then imploded, and why Godot hasn’t.
When you need to make line go up for somebody, when you very directly owe people money… shit comes out the end of the pipe. When you don’t… as long as you manage your own affairs well, you more or less are in charge of what comes out of the pipe.