I have mixed feelings on it.
When I was putting out games, publishing on Steam would mean a guaranteed 1 million impressions on the “New releases” list. That’s incredible exposure for an indie title, which often succeed or fail on exposure alone.
But 30% can be a lot for those same indie teams, especially combined with taxes. You can put years of work into a title and lose half the money it earns to groups that didn’t directly contribute at all. It can easily be enough money that long-term support or follow up games just aren’t viable. It can be your entire outsourcing budget or a whole employee for a year.
And after that initial exposure, you’re not getting much for your perputual 30%. The value of Steamworks can vary greatly game by game so you could end up paying $30k for $100 of bandwidth and minor marketing through things like sales and rich presence.
I would much prefer to see something like “30% after the first $X in sales”. Their cut would kick in only after they’ve demonstrated their value as a platform and small teams wouldn’t have to watch a company with billions of dollars take a very large bite out of their very small pie.
It may not be, because no amount of money is ever enough for a wealthy neoliberal. You could pay $200 in pure profit for a game and there will still be slimy executives saying “We could make that $201 if we showed them ads and $202 if we sold their data”
Since the discussion is about bullying and threatening people because they don’t think people should have autonomy over their gender expression, at worst it’s the second most fragile shit you’ve heard.
It’s much better on the highest difficulty settings but there’s still room to improve. It’s one of those games that doesn’t seem to know what it’s strengths are.
Oh yeah that’s right. Sorry, I haven’t put a game out for a long time.