Steam gets a lot of flack; particularly of late. I've seen comments about them ripping Developers off on the forums there recently, but in all honesty I find it pretty hard to agree, and I don't think a lot of these people really comprehend the service Steam offers.
A large community of gamers to market to.
Digital distribution, including backend, servers, marketing, sales, etc...
All the Developer really has to do, is publish the game to Steam; after that, it's a e-retail environment where Steam handles sales and distribution and sends them money. It doesn't get much better than that.
The issue with Steam lately could largely be resolved simply by not including DLC and add-ons on their searches. I find that the most annoying thing with looking for games on Steam is the reptitions of all the little content packs cluttering the lists, and as a result I largely avoid it entirely. Instead I just type the game I am looking for in the Search bar and go directly to it; or alternatively, I use the front page to sift through current offers, which is actually really not providing developers with exposure under the current climate, unless they are on it.
Early Access should be separated from Published, Triple A products, and DLC should have its own sub-category that is not included in default searches. It can easily be found for the game simply by going to that games store page, and I'm not sure how other people feel, but for me, seeing 30 DLC items for one game cluttering 2-3 pages of the Search actually puts that game on the Do not Buy list for me. They're very poor advertising. Additionally, Steam could provide Store pages big Publishers; something they only partly provide is being able to link back to Publisher content on Steam. Being able to go directly to Activision, or Deep Silver, or another Publisher, and browse their products from the front page would probably help a great deal.
Otherwise, I love Steam, and have zero interest in going anywhere else. I do not want Origin on my PC, or Bethesda.net, or an Epic Games Launcher, or Greenman launcher, or 2-3 3rd party launchers and accounts required just to play a game. Steam provides by far the best interface and service as far as I'm concerned. I can download games on a second drive, and if I reinstall the OS, I just install Steam, select a game I have installed, hit install and point to the location of my Steam games library and it finds everything. No need to download it again unless I uninstall it.
Some of the flack is deserved, but largely it's grossly exaggerated in my opinion. Steam has just become unfortunately cluttered, and doesn't do as good a job advertising products anymore; and that's compounded by the Early Access games providing competition for big publishers that I'm sure they really don't want.
And as far as Publishers are concerned, the'd be better off not giving companies exclusives, or moving everything in house and requiring gamers to either go to one point of distribution, or go directly to them, rather than just make use of the available marketplaces to distribute their games. I've ignored at least two games in the past 3 months because of this, where if they'd just published to Steam, I'd be playing them now. And from chatter on the Steam forums, I'm not the only one. They're effectively cutting off their potential distribution and sales by doing this.
Just my opinion.
post edited by xTemon - 2019/05/05 14:19:57