Game developer, animator, artist, dumpling eater, bug appreciator, creator of squishy friends.
★★★
Created Frogsong! Working on a secret new game!
ME: [putting a game on steam] waahhhhhh this sucks
ME: [4 years later when itch sales have long since dried up but i still get a deposit from valve every month because they actually show my game to new potential players] wahhhhhhh ok fine i like you
Frogsong sales on itch are in the double digits whereas steam sales are in the quadruple... steam sucks but its kind of the best option for small devs by a long shot
It's funny because I just saw a post that was the opposite of this the other day, going like "Game devs please put your game on Steam we want to give gaben 30% of the money so he can buy more yachts"
Edit: ah yep it's here https://cohost.org/thecatamites/post/6592495-cool-indie-game-i-ca
i don’t think they’re in conflict. it can simultaneously be in the best interest for an indie dev selling a game to put it on the storefront with the largest number of customers, and for there to be a number of people who are morally opposed to said storefront for a litany of reasons. the biggest storefront isn’t always the best storefront, but the average person doesn’t really care about what storefront is best, they just use what they already know and the vast majority of people know steam.
yeahhhh, they're actually extremely compatible posts, i think. like we wouldn't be mad about steam if it weren't so essential
this post got me to finally get around to getting set up on steamworks. thanks for the kick in the pants.
How do the harassment levels on the two platforms compare these days? There were a lot of reasons I stopped using Steam, but that's the main one that keeps me from wanting to go back
that is a REALLY good question that i don't know the answer to tbh! would love to know if someone has the answer to this
That's the main reason I don't use it either. I guess just because Steam is so much bigger it also has WAY more people who are hostile to queer themed games. I don't think I could stomach the sort of harassment I've seen on there, whereas Itch has been very welcoming and receptive to my work.
Maybe it would be worth it for a bigger project, but... it just seems really frightening. :/
Good to know it's not just me!
It's important to factor in mental and physical damage when doing this kind of cost-benefit analysis. Cohost, Itch, and a very few Discords are currently my only online spaces as I tend not to do well online in general.
I do hope at some point to come up with a solution that works for me. Perhaps one day I'll be able to pay someone who can handle online social situations to act as a buffer between me and the digital world....
not only will they fight you to not make bank they will fight you on the very premise of the word, and im v sorry
Is there a, like, Steam equivalent for TTRPGs? I'm planning on launching my TTRPG on itch but mainly because i don't know of other spots for indie TTRPGs and i don't want to kickstarter it.
drivethruRPG is a major place that people go to buy TTRPGs! it's pretty focused on them compared to itch which is more for indie games in general, so a better place to snag sales from what i've heard
thanks. i'll need to look into how easy/hard it is for me to publish there. in my mind you needed to be established to publish there.
i would've bought ISAT on itch.io, but i spent 10 minutes trying to find it there and couldn't (so instead didn't buy it). all i saw was the manual and wallpapers.
if that's the experience others are having as well then that probably is skewing things
