It is for publishers as customers, not for users of course. You can’t realistically navigate around their service if you want to make money with your game.
You can’t realistically navigate around their service if you want to make money with your game.
Where are you getting this from? Yes you can absolutely do this. Mojang did this for decades a la Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress did this for decades. Roblox is massive. World of Warcraft, I mean, yes you can absolutely make a hit title, sell well, and have nothing to do with Steam.
Destiny too, like it wasn’t like they were doing bad before bringing titles over to Steam. It’s clear they wanted more money which is why they did that lol. They were already making plenty and decided they wanted to make more
That’s a lot of Unicorns that don’t fit your narrative lol. I could list more, but I think I already proved my point. Yes it’s possible to publish a game and be successful without Steam, and yes it’s been done multiple times across the existence of Steam.
League of Legends, Genshin Impact, fucking Star Citizen isn’t even a proper game (yet?) and it’s the highest grossing game-related kickstarter in the history of kickstarters. The 5th highest kickstarter ever. StarCraft series, Diablo (up to 4), Lineage series, FIFA Online, really anything Tencent touches that has online capabilities. And of course the OG Ultima Online which still runs today.
None of these even really scratch the surface of the massive Korean/Asian PC gaming markets or the Browser-only games that were wildly successful in the days of Facebook lmao
That just reinforces my argument, and it sounds like we finally agree: You don’t need Steam or Valve to make a financially successful game. You need an audience. Steam provides a big one, but you can absolutely garner that audience outside of Steam and the examples I provided are proof of that.
Plenty of studios and developers build that audience outside of Steam using the massive swathe of social media outlets to this day. Hypixel was/is a massive Minecraft server with a huge number of daily players and their growth in popularity was mostly through forums, and later Discord. Minecraft itself started with forum posts and grew purely through word of mouth. Dwarf Fortress was free for a very long time and lived purely off donations before it eventually came to Steam after it already had a massive audience. None of them had any base to speak of from the start. They built those audiences and none of that build up happened through Steam.
The reason I’m even bothering is because people newer to game dev read threads like this. Tell them “Steam is required” and they don’t try anything else. Then the lack of success stories gets used as proof that Steam is required even when it’s not. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s wrong.
You don’t need Steam, but it is really not advisable to skip them, to a point where you do need to publish there. That makes it a quasi monopoly, whether Valve intended to do that doesn’t matter. These exception are still extremely rare (and Hytale could only build an audience because Minecraft was already there without Steam). On r/gamedev, the question is almost never asked (a telling sign already), but here’s an instance where it has been asked and fellow indie game devs and professionals are pretty clear on the necessity of Steam: https://archive.ph/b7202
It is for publishers as customers, not for users of course. You can’t realistically navigate around their service if you want to make money with your game.
Where are you getting this from? Yes you can absolutely do this. Mojang did this for decades a la Minecraft, Dwarf Fortress did this for decades. Roblox is massive. World of Warcraft, I mean, yes you can absolutely make a hit title, sell well, and have nothing to do with Steam.
Edit: The most recent example right now is Hytale, which is purposely not on Steam and reached 1M+ active players in the first week.
blizzard was really doing well with diablo and overwatch before they decided to be stupid af. now those games are on steam LOL
dear blizzard: too late LOL
Destiny too, like it wasn’t like they were doing bad before bringing titles over to Steam. It’s clear they wanted more money which is why they did that lol. They were already making plenty and decided they wanted to make more
Destiny went to Steam because Bungies contract with Activision ended and wasn’t extended.
You’re listing absolute unicorns. Ask any dev/publisher that want to release a game and they will 100% not skip Steam.
That’s a lot of Unicorns that don’t fit your narrative lol. I could list more, but I think I already proved my point. Yes it’s possible to publish a game and be successful without Steam, and yes it’s been done multiple times across the existence of Steam.
yes, please list more. it’s not “my” narrative, it’s economic realism. ask some devs.
League of Legends, Genshin Impact, fucking Star Citizen isn’t even a proper game (yet?) and it’s the highest grossing game-related kickstarter in the history of kickstarters. The 5th highest kickstarter ever. StarCraft series, Diablo (up to 4), Lineage series, FIFA Online, really anything Tencent touches that has online capabilities. And of course the OG Ultima Online which still runs today.
None of these even really scratch the surface of the massive Korean/Asian PC gaming markets or the Browser-only games that were wildly successful in the days of Facebook lmao
Existing customer bases are a requirement. Asian markets are different, true.
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That just reinforces my argument, and it sounds like we finally agree: You don’t need Steam or Valve to make a financially successful game. You need an audience. Steam provides a big one, but you can absolutely garner that audience outside of Steam and the examples I provided are proof of that.
Plenty of studios and developers build that audience outside of Steam using the massive swathe of social media outlets to this day. Hypixel was/is a massive Minecraft server with a huge number of daily players and their growth in popularity was mostly through forums, and later Discord. Minecraft itself started with forum posts and grew purely through word of mouth. Dwarf Fortress was free for a very long time and lived purely off donations before it eventually came to Steam after it already had a massive audience. None of them had any base to speak of from the start. They built those audiences and none of that build up happened through Steam.
The reason I’m even bothering is because people newer to game dev read threads like this. Tell them “Steam is required” and they don’t try anything else. Then the lack of success stories gets used as proof that Steam is required even when it’s not. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it’s wrong.
You don’t need Steam, but it is really not advisable to skip them, to a point where you do need to publish there. That makes it a quasi monopoly, whether Valve intended to do that doesn’t matter. These exception are still extremely rare (and Hytale could only build an audience because Minecraft was already there without Steam). On r/gamedev, the question is almost never asked (a telling sign already), but here’s an instance where it has been asked and fellow indie game devs and professionals are pretty clear on the necessity of Steam: https://archive.ph/b7202