How Steam Can Improve for Indie Developers
Originally Published October 3rd, 2018
Hit titles such as A Hat in Time, Celeste, and Cuphead have been quickly making their way to the front pages of magazines, the thumbnails of YouTube videos, and deep within critic’s hearts. But publishing and promoting quality games has never been as easy as 1-2-3 for independent developers, even when using Steam, the go-to platform for P-C Gaming.
On Steam, producers of high-quality games saw their products falling through the cracks just because they were independent. In a poll of 230 PC developers by Lars Doucet from P-C Gamer, a staggering 85 percent said that it was difficult to get their game in front of curators after their game was published and downloadable from the Steam Store. 52 percent said this was because of too much competition from big-budget, high-quality games being published on the same platform. Although the price of publishing on Steam is only 100 dollars per game through Steam Direct, the lack of administrative and promotional tools for developers after the fact leaves them with a sour taste in their mouth.
The issue with promotion on Steam can be circumvented by crowd-funding on sites like Kickstarter, but that option can yield extremely unreliable results. Depending on the project and the team, you could end up with great titles like Shovel Knight, Superhot, and F-T-L, or you could end up with disappointments like Mighty Number Nine and Night Trap Revamped. The site has also had several PR disasters like Project Phoenix, Yog-ventures, and the OUYA console, which has led to increased skepticism in potential backers.
Some developers who want to avoid that skepticism about their projects take part in mobile markets. With more than a billion people as a potential audience and a relatively simple uploading process, it sounds like a developers dream, right? Well… it used to be. Now that there are more than 1.5 million games the App Store and the Google Play Store, competition is stiff, and market saturation makes it nearly impossible for a game to gain traction. As Managing Director and co-founder of Rubicon Paul Johnson told Games Industry dot Biz, “Having to give your game away for 69 cents a throw and then competing with one thousand new apps each day is hardly a draw for anybody.” Things aren’t any better with Steam’s absolutely massive library of 781 million games, and because of the lack of promotional options, nearly 37 percent of those games haven’t even been purchased or played.
Steam can definitely learn from other industry leaders that have become more supportive of independent developers over the past couple of years. Nintendo, Playstation, and Xbox all have accessible and extremely friendly indie programs. The I-D-@-Xbox program has a four-step online application; the Nintendo Developer program has six steps; and the Playstation Partners application is just a single form. Even though publishing a game through Steam Direct is also a simple process, there are a few hurdles to jump over to get the quality promotion and community that is on console stores.
The I-D-@-Xbox, Nintendo Developer, and Playstation Partner programs all require applications, so admission is not guaranteed. On top of that, being a part of a legally established company is required, and a nearly finished game needs to be presented in order to get approved. This means that publishing for console can never be a developer’s first choice if they need their game out there right away, which substantially narrows options for independent studios. Even after developers get accepted into the program, they must pour substantial amounts of money into development kits for each console.
The Nintendo Switch Development Kit goes for 450 dollars. The average price of Playstation development kits is 25 hundred dollars. An I-D-@-Xbox developer revealed that total costs for making a game came to about three thousand dollars, with the bulk of the expenses protecting intellectual property and copyrights. But because of the cost, game-makers get what they pay for. Development kits are high-quality and easy to use, promotion tactics are strong and effective, and management of the games that go through this process knocks Steam’s way of doing things out of the park.
Even though consoles seem to have the process down, Steam is still the most ideal way for independent developers to get their game out there because of the 100 dollar entry point and guaranteed publication on a major platform. It’s the crucial flaws that keep Steam from being the perfect solution: game publishers have relatively no control over the page for their game, and exposure for games that aren’t triple-A titles is seriously lacking. To be the ideal platform for independent developers, Steam needs more moderation tools over Steam game community pages, a more robust system for video game promotion than Discovery Queues, and a few pointers from its console relatives in the gaming industry on publication quality. So until Steam corrects those points, let’s just be thankful that developers are no longer forced to go through the pain of publishing their games on physical discs or cartridges.