STEAM IS DEAD (to us)

For a few years now, people have been saying “Steam is dead”.

Now aside from the obvious jokes about the websites service dropping out from time to time, there may be some weight to this!

Steam was hailed to be a haven for the indie game developer. You could make a game and publish it yourself, the freedom was yours, you could test the water to see if you were any good. You could learn and improve, some people still manage this.

Steam held an ethos however of never curating the games, so if you had big money or no money, you all had the same chance.

It sounded too good to be true.

And so this ethos, combined with being able to release an unfinished game (usually for beta testing) is where the hook and bait were formed.

Some people realised you could release an unfinished game (or as I call these specific games “unbaked”), and still charge people to download it. Preying on those eager to play a game before its official release, or those that love indie games and want to be the ones who gave feedback that in some cases would became part of a game.

That was just the start. Because then we had the “asset flips”. Games where no effort was made. An evil genius dev (game developer), could grab some free game assets, make a quick and dirty first person shooter, slap a name on it and publish, then grab some other free assets, make the same game but have it look different (copy, paste, repeat) and hit that publish button.

There became a sea of terrible games, but Steam, sticking to their guns and continued to refuse to curate (it’s all making them money, why do anything?). Steam as it’s name suggests, is just a machine taking in endless fuel, burning it up and churning out a ton of steam (cash).

This lazy man option has some even worse problems in my opinion. There are games on steam that are incredibly distasteful, games that children have access too. Games that in some cases, honestly shouldn’t exist. The problem is, that like a car crash, it’s something people just feel the need to see. And to see, is to pay, and to pay is to feed, so the incentive to make such things breeds. 

Those devs who have a love and passion for games now steer clear of the “Steam machine”, there are so many places to self publish, why wouldn’t they go elsewhere.

Steam however, is not the only “toxic” game dev hub. There are problems with almost any publishing platform. Some places you really need money to make a successful release, some places over curate, some places have such a complicated system for you to publish the game it hardly feels worth doing. But none for me, are as bad as Steam.

Steam is unlikely to change their system, they are a giant in the clouds with a goose that lays golden eggs, even if all the best devs stop using them, they’ll likely still make money. They don’t need to care, they don’t want to care.

I hope this black hole for games eventually swallows itself and falls into the abyss of the internet, only time will tell.

Thanks for reading.

About the author:

Stuart De Ville (StuDev) is a 3D Character artist and game developer. His first game Winona Wolf is free to download on the Apple and Google mobile app stores.

He is currently working on a title called ‘Bullion’ for release on console - find out more at www.bulliongame.com"

You can follow his work at www.stuartdeville.co.uk