this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2024
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Yeah but whatever, having them on the store doesn't mean that they're selling or even being suggested, it means that someone paid $100 to get it listed and available. Steam doesn't bother with organic marketing until you have at least ten positive reviews from people who didn't get the game for free, anyway; so this is kind of a non-issue.
If a whole bunch of people are now capable of putting honest games together, I call that a win. If it's AI it's already pretty much against the rules of the platform, and will likely not sell even if they sneak it in dishonestly, so I call that a mildly offensive red herring. You can get a refund within the first two hours of gameplay with no questions asked anyway.
We fine.
I've gone back and forth, but I agree. People just need to stop assuming that a game being on Steam is an endorsement. It's just a platform. They've removed almost all barrier for entry to enable truly indie developers to have their game on the premier PC game store. I'm sure indies prefer paying $100 and doing whatever they can to gain social traction compared to begging the gatekeepers at major publishers to give them a chance, though I could be wrong.
Yeah, and there's a a lot of games on Steam that would never get approved by a publisher, especially the smallest of indie games. Besides, if you have the means to get a finished game on Steam without a publisher, you get to keep all revenue to yourself instead of losing ~50% to a publisher.