powersnoutage

Saturn ΘΔ

@powersnoutage

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skunk on the web
big boy appreciator
fat skunk summer forever

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powersnoutage
@powersnoutage
thecatamites
@thecatamites
thecatamites
@thecatamites

cool indie game i can't wait to get it once it's on steam. i think gaben deserves 30% of the money from it and i think the developer should have to put up with the dumbest metacritic brained motherfuckers on the planet as well. in general i really want to make sure the people making work i enjoy have as much of their time eaten up as possible dealing with guys who'll phone in a bomb threat if the game's framerate ever drops below 45, just to make the whole experience as degrading as possible. you're welcome 👍

thecatamites
@thecatamites

yeah i know this is a petty thing to gripe about but i also remember when the steam greenlight fee was, totally arbitrarily, hiked to 95 buxx and there was real if futile discussion by indie devs about whether this was exclusionary to developers with no money. now it's $95 per game and i see friends and peers pay that much to release freeware on the platform just because otherwise they feel totally ringfenced off from their own audience. all for the thrill and privilege of being put on a list called "soy games" by noted curator wojackliker88. it's not that it ever got better for anyone who can't pay that fee, or don't have resources to deal with the nontrivial chance that they'll be made an example of by some consumer rights toady. there's just no longer a pretence of caring about these things, or about what happens to the medium once those kinds of conditions - invisible to some people, hypervisible to others - get taken as a given for the sake of enabling gabe newell's jerkoff yacht sessions. anyway.. Something 2 Think About...

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in reply to @thecatamites's post:

Krake
@Krake

Literally was just being told by someone that Gabe Newell is a god of gaming when I was complaining game devs who don't get a directors role are underappreciated by gamers.

Dude probably didn't even make Half Life 2 so great, all the devs that worked on it are credited as an amorphous blob of "valve" in a long list. I certainly don't know who did what, but I do know who made the most money off of their work. 🤐

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Krake
@Krake

The steam '''community''' was already disgustingly toxic, and basically a manifestation of every negative gamer stereotype, but then they released those fucking reddit golds. Now no one can say a single thing on there without 12 dudes trying to pwn them with their sick jester award. 😐

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giwake
@giwake

and if you dare show a modicum of support or even have any minority in your game you'll get a horde of Gamers harassing you and spamming clown awards. because The Woke.

and make sure your game, no matter how cheap it is, goes on sale!! your game is 1 dollar? put it on sale!!! you wont get those Gamer Money Stats if you dont!!!

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breadbox
@breadbox

So why do so many programmers release their games on Steam only? Sorry, I realize that this has to be a really stupid question. But I honestly do not get it. How does it benefit the developer?

Like for example, Artless Games has a game called Understand that is only available on Steam. They have a presence on itch.io, with over a dozen games on it. But not that one. And this is an extremely common pattern I see, with games all across the spectrum.

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miscu
@miscu

I imagine the numbers on itchio alone don't really work out if you're banking on a game being your sole funding between projects (especially if there are more than just 1-2 people working on it). afaik itchio is more useful for hobbyists and those with regular income flow via patreon

as much as steam's cultish fanbase like to claim differently, valve unfortunately do have a vice-grip monopoly on the general PC market by virtue of momentum

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breadbox
@breadbox

Sure, the Steam user base is huge. One can't generally afford to ignore it. But why not release on itch.io as well? (Or GOG, or Humble.) To continue my example, developer Artless Games does have some titles on both Steam and itch.io. So the fact that Understand is Steam-only feels like a deliberate choice. (And a choice that seems quite common among game developers, too common to be chalked up to idiosyncracy, or laziness, or oversight.)

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vaporware
@vaporware

I think it just boils down to maintaining less things. Like sure it doesn't take that long to put it on itch. But there's all the little things like uploading to itch as well and uploading it again everytime there is an update and then also maybe checking the itch comments for bug reports and then maybe dealing with having 2 sources on income to report on taxes instead of just one. And anyone who buys it on itch doesn't contribute to the positive metrics steam uses to decide when to boost you.

I worked on a live service indie game for a lil bit and release management is a pain in the ass. At some point the ~20% you save on purchases from itch instead of steam aren't worth the extra hassle.

I'd definitely prefer more people put their stuff on itch too, but I can understand why it's not worth it for some. A lot of people even in my indie dev gaming group will buy the steam version instead of the itch version just cause it's more convenient for them, which is kind of annoying...

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breadbox
@breadbox

And anyone who buys it on itch doesn't contribute to the positive metrics steam uses to decide when to boost you.

Okay, that point actually makes sense to me. (At least, I can see why that argument would be enough to discourage someone from the effort involved.)

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in reply to @thecatamites's post:

MobileSuitLilah
@MobileSuitLilah

The monopolistic hold steam holds over the pc ecosystem blows my mind on its own but also how completely hostile so many people are to the idea of any alternative. In my work slack I have on multiple occasions witnessed grown men in their 40s start a message with "I am against monopoly BUT" and then launch into a tirade about how they wish everything would fully consolidate under Steam because it's too annoying to juggle more than one storefront before then posting a "Saint GabeN at the Steam Sale" meme while 45 other grown men in their 40s react with "THIS 👆". It feels bleak every time

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thecatamites
@thecatamites

it feels sort of like other 2000s nerd culture things in terms of this all-consuming monopoly that somehow still attracts the fervent evangelism of a cult underdog.. i feel like i know many people who are otherwise sensible but turn into the guy from Falling Down when it comes to this one thing

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MobileSuitLilah
@MobileSuitLilah

Absolutely, I think Gabe Newell did a really effective job in the late 2000s to early 2010s painting himself as a hero to the "oppressed gamer underclass", who would rob the Big Evil Corporations™️ and deliver deep deep discounts into the pockets of the Common Gamer™️ and who understood them and what they wanted. And now he has been so thoroughly and ubiquitously mythologized that so many folks (even if they’re no longer actively in these spaces) no longer question or think about it, even though he's always been just another shitty libertarian corporate robber-baron.

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finklesworld
@finklesworld

in this situation as someone who has never published anything to either itch or steam, which of course means i have all the authority to dole out advice for pricing video games, i'd tack on an extra five to ten smackers to the price (maybe more... imagine...) to compensate for steam's horseshit. people don't like the massive upcharge? damn guess they gotta go to a different website for once... sucks i guess... :/

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ctmatthews
@ctmatthews

as far as i'm aware, that rule is specifically only for selling steam keys for your game on other stores (see docs here). i think you can do whatever you want if you're selling people non-steam versions of your game. but then again, i've never tried charging more for my games on steam than on other stores so maybe i'm missing something.

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