Going gold?

[ptisinge]

Originally Posted by Heliocon

Then self publish
Or release it on steam which does NOT require a publisher.

There are mountains of success stories for devs who do this, but I would like to know where your analysis comes from exactly? Did you read this?

That's just insider experience from a game studio with more than 100 staff and 3 major releases to the counter, millions of units sold, and only starting to get a fragile sense of security now, and that's only because of a strong association with one publisher, which comes with weaknesses and drawbacks as well. Even with success, a game studio can often come very close to being bankrupt during fragile periods between finished projects and the next ones. This vulnerability does not help the bargaining power of developers. It's really hard to secure a publisher, believe me. It's not that easy to go for an indie release on a platform like Steam when you're a studio with more than a handful of people, you've got to secure funding to make your studio cover a number of expenses, not something you can do alone. Publishers are not only printing dvds, they're also producers, don't forget that.

[ElAurens]

And remember, Steam is not putting games out there to download out of the kindness of their hearts.

They take a cut of the action, just like UBI or EA do, so it's possible that a studio might even take in less total income from a Steam release, as they will also, by and large, have a major publisher (UBI, EA, etc...) as well.

[Kikuchiyo]

Originally Posted by ElAurens

And remember, Steam is not putting games out there to download out of the kindness of their hearts.

They take a cut of the action, just like UBI or EA do, so it's possible that a studio might even take in less total income from a Steam release, as they will also, by and large, have a major publisher (UBI, EA, etc...) as well.

The only issue I take with what you are saying is that Steam sales give the company(s) offering games through them a higher margin of profit (estimated 70% vs 30% for retail) so it is technically more profitable to offer your games solely through steam than through Steam and B&M stores. The downside is a developer/publisher potentially misses out box sales. I imagine a devs profits are about the same (when using a second party publisher) when they also offer their games through a DD like Steam.

Urp I see what you were at Vevster and corrected the miswording.

[Vevster]

Originally Posted by Kikuchiyo

The only issue I take with what you are saying is that Steam sales cost the company(s) offering games through them a higher margin of profit (estimated 70% vs 30% for retail) so it is technically more profitable to offer your games solely through steam than through Steam and B&M stores. .

I don't quite understand your first sentence "Steam sales cost the company(s) offering games through them a higher margin of profit "

Do you mean Steam takes a higher cut? That would be exact but contradictory to what you write further


Steam, as a publisher often take a higher % than a retailer. That's because they act both as publisher & retailer for some games. They can take as much as 80% of price for some indie games....They take the risk with infrastructure as a retailer takes the risk with shelf space.

So when you say "it is technically more profitable to offer your games solely through steam than through Steam and B&M stores. " I'll answer "it depends, and sometimes it's quite the opposite". Each case is different; too many parameters to sum up.

Some people do not like DLing games, via Steam or else.

Best thing today is to offer both DL & boxes, gives a broader audience. That's why publishers like Ubi also offer games on steam.

[JG52Krupi]

I never understand why some ppl refuse to use steam, sure I like to have a physical copy and yes they can make mistakes and have to follow silly release dates but the benefits of steam far out weigh any problems I have had with them.

My only negative comments are the prices and the fact you can't decide on which drive you can install games to. However you can get some sweet deals on good games most weekends, if only the price of new games would drop as quickly as they do in shops but I've never seen a used game on steam

[Therion_Prime]

Originally Posted by JG52Krupi

My only negative comments are the prices and the fact you can't decide on which drive you can install games to.

Just move the steam folder to another drive, delete steam.exe reinstall steam into the new location, run steam.exe.

[JG52Krupi]

You can only have one steam install at any time and I want to have il2 on my SSD and keep the other games on my large drive. You can do this with other download clients I.e. Direct2drive

[Wolf_Rider]

Originally Posted by JG52Krupi

I never understand why some ppl refuse to use steam, sure I like to have a physical copy and yes they can make mistakes and have to follow silly release dates but the benefits of steam far out weigh any problems I have had with them.

I fall into that camp... and not because I think Steam/ Game Spy, etc, to be dodgy but because I like to run a clean system. Equally, I don't like DRM's which install drivers, even though I never had any noticeable problems with the first LOCKON Starforce DRM, I did find my system ran better after SF was uninstalled. Reporting home factor plays a part as well.
I very rarely have any software conflicts and like to keep things that way

[zauii]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

I fall into that camp... and not because I think Steam/ Game Spy, etc, to be dodgy but because I like to run a clean system. Equally, I don't like DRM's which install drivers, even though I never had any noticeable problems with the first LOCKON Starforce DRM, I did find my system ran better after SF was uninstalled. Reporting home factor plays a part as well.
I very rarely have any software conflicts and like to keep things that way

Its just in your head, steam does not bog performance unless your system has got other issues.
Infact firefox is more of a resource problem than steam if you're using that.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Wolf_Rider

I fall into that camp... and not because I think Steam/ Game Spy, etc, to be dodgy but because I like to run a clean system. Equally, I don't like DRM's which install drivers, even though I never had any noticeable problems with the first LOCKON Starforce DRM, I did find my system ran better after SF was uninstalled. Reporting home factor plays a part as well.
I very rarely have any software conflicts and like to keep things that way

I have had some odd hardware behavior since installing a Starforce CD, but what finally pushed me hard away from CD's was the copy protection on Bioshock, where you couldn't install off the disk more than three times. To the best of my understanding the Steam versions don't have that restriction.

That said, Ubi did manage to get the call home DRM for Assassin's Creed 2 into the Steam version, probably because of how tightly they integrated it into their game. That managed to eat a couple of my saves too. Very annoying.

Overall I've found the Steam DRM to be less invasive and install fewer hidden drivers than the current cycels of the CD based DRMs, simply because most companies are fine with Steam's Log-In system as the primary DRM.

Now D2D, they apparently encrypted the data files for their edition of "Sword of the Stars", and managed to up the turn cycle time from around twenty seconds normally to about twenty minutes. Kerberos e3ventually figured out what was wrong, but htey had all manner of grief getting D2D to finally unencrypt the files they weren't supposed to have been encrypting in the first place.