So, would it be better if Steam never would have gotten indies on the plattform in the first place? Steam can't service everybody. But for those it can, it is a godsend. Should we banish Steam because it can serve all devs equally (which is simply impossible). Steam hast taken on countless "no names" that did not have any brand recognition before.

And what about the HiB? Nobody complains about their power.

The "power" of Steam isn't really something devs can complain about. The main advantage of Steam ist that "mainstream gamers" take notice of the indie scene. Before or without Steam the indie scene was /would be confined to a small niché. Steam doesn't draw "indie fans" away from other channels, it adds "indie fans" out of a different segment. And even if those 10.000 COD jocks never play the indie game they bought for 2,5$. It still is a lot of money those devs can really put to use.

Every distributor quality checks their games, and I've seen many shitty indies (and some of them on Steam, none the less). GG, even Desura aren't different in that regard.

Because others won the lottery but not you, does that mean the lottery is bad?

Honestly, what are people expecting from Steam? People are to often critizing Steam out of dislike and for critiuism sake. Regional locks, e.g. is a huge issue that should be put under stronger scrutiny. But noo, people complain that a dev sold 100.000 games on Steam...

EDIT: Never mind. :)

An incorrect statement as you seem to have already found out. That graph doesn't show purchases, it shows people playing and for it to show up, a considerable amount of people need to have played it on any particular day. All that graph shows is that there aren't many people playing it outside of sales periods. That doesn't mean no one buys it.

Then again, I can throw Batman Arkham Asylum up there, and the graph also shows large parts of the year where apparently nobody plays it. Most games that actually do show continuous use throughout the year are games that have a multiplayer component.

On top of that, if you'd translate that graph to any of the other retailers, they'd probably be flat across the entire year.

As for price sold. That is a valid argument of course. Most people will have bought it on sale no doubt, although that probably still holds true for the other retailers with the exception of BMT Micro. However, there's no guarantees that anywhere near the same amount of people would *ever* have bought the game at full retail price but only when it came down in price later, and maybe even then only on sale.

However, with the rates shown by the other retailers, that would take years to achieve the same return that Steam has managed for them already. Sure, they might've gotten that in the longterm as well by selling for higher, but a quick return is just as valuable, and where they would have had to limp on financially in the longterm case, now they have a massive cash inflow which has already guaranteed financial success and let's them work on new projects.

In that sense, if the graph shows anything it's the actual success Steam's sale practices and promotions have for indie developers included in this.

As for the argument that that makes them a little too 'powerful', that's a fair argument in some ways. Although most of the indie games I see threads pop up for on SPUF 'why isn't this on Steam yet? Why was it refused?' usually end up on Steam eventually. In most cases it's simply impatience.

About the significance of the BMT Micro purchases, that's hard to say. There's no real comparison of how many people bought full price at the other retailers. If it shows anything it's that a fair amount of people were willing to pay full price (I assume) for the game. As for their reasons to use BMT Micro that can be either for supporting the devs fully, for the no-DRM, or both. But there's no way to tell specifically what motivated people to buy there.

Consistency. This has nothing to do with quality checking, it's been proven time and time again that Valve don't quality check - see The Golden Compass, Iron Man, Drug Wars, Eternity's Child and any number of other low quality/broken games that were/are sold on Steam.

My point is that some devs can submit their game to Valve for approval and then never get a response. Others will be told their game is not a suitable match for Steam while the exact same type of game by another dev is suddenly released instead.

And let's not forget that Newell used to claim that he wanted "Every single game, ever, on Steam".

Now, just because a few indies manage to get their games on Steam, you can't really state that Steam is brilliant for indies. It's brilliant for that specific indie and nothing more.

Hell, even some indies devs who sell their games on Steam have stated that Steam isn't that great for them simply because most people only ever buy during sales. Thus, making it hard for them to actually make a decent profit. Likewise for the HIB/similar bundles, indies who have been a part of it have stated that they did not see any positive outcome as a result, citing those who only buy the packs at 1 dollar or less to get Steam keys and so forth.

Pointless about this topic.
Steam is overwhelming digital game distribution market,It's becoming almost-Monopoly like Windows.Even Paradox once planned to distribute patch only via Steam.
People know merit of Steam and how it blazed a path,however,monopoly and almost-monopoly always worsen environment and will last long.

i didn't get my copy from steam but am not sure where i got it... i feel more special being part of a smaller more "elite" group...

Sigh, this is probably one of the most ignorant things anybody has ever said on this topic.

There are a total of 100k sales there, my home town would only have to buy 1 for every 6 residents there. The US would only have to buy 1 copy for every 3000 or so citizens. Globally that's 1 copy per 70 000 people.

In other words, your argument is specious and poorly considered. I personally own a copy, but I sure as hell didn't get it from Steam.

But but but but but but but, DRM-free sells better! Right? Right!?

Well, you have to remember most people still have a hard time believing that Steam *is* DRM.

No, my point stands. I don't know what the hell you tried to calculate here, but it stands that with only DRM-free purchases the dev would be long dead.

If you look at the highly scientific calculation I did above, you will see that it doesn't matter if you only sell your games at 2,5$ and not 10$, if you sell five times that amount. One of the major advantages of DD is that you can have a huge profit margin. Esecially with Steam, which takes a percentage of the sale price, and no "flat amount" (But this is probably true to all DD). Indie devs seem to fail in a similar way as AAA publishers do with piracy. Not every "sale sale" is lost full price sale. And the amount of additional "sale sales" probably makes up for the "lost" full time sales.

And, you get a bigger target group in the end. I am very confident that "sales" are increasing the overall profits, not only revenue. Gabe has said it for their Valve titles (which started the daily deal madness).

When it comes to "who comes to Steam" I can't really say anything, because I don't know how it works. But from Steams perspective they want as many games as possible, so let's hope there is some improvement in the future. They should have clear and visible criteria.

As I said before, Steam isn't that problematic as a monoply for indie devs, because they opened up the "COD stud" or "casual gamer" market in the first place. The original "indie fan base" still has Desura and whatnot. They brought people, like yours truly, to the indie scene in the first place. And for that it doesn't really matter what games there are in the, because for many people the simple fact that there is an indie scene is still news. That actually could make Steamworks something good for gaming, because every COD jock saw the Dear Esther advert ;-).

A "Steam monopoly" can become a real problem for gamers if Steam would start with aggresive region locking and whatnot. But Steam, better than most publishers and DD, know that they compete with piracy at every step. And they took the "add features" way and not the "more restrictive way". In Russia, and for me, that is working. Therefore I don't think we will see any "big asshole moves" by Steam in the future, apart from what they already do. If something like that happens, I will eat my words (and crack my games). Up until then, I will enjoy my games and the knowledge that many indie devs are actually able to live of their work. Something that was unthinkable of not ten years ago.
I think people only have a problem with DRM when it is an inconvenience to their gaming. It doesn't matter if Steam is a DRM or not, in 2012, were people are always online most of the time, Steam doesn't really bother people anymore.

There are still those people who avoid DRM "out of principle". Well, obviously those aren't a big target group. It is always good to remember that the whole "anti-DRM" thing started with highly intrusive disc checks. Starforce and friends. This was some really shitty stuff, which even I still avoid out of principle (and convenience).

But those times are behind us (thank god), yet still people seem to have problems with progess and keep waving that old flag like those southeners their Dixie.

How do sales figures that highlight the dependency of small studios on Steam demonstrate Steam's positive effect on independent titles?

The solution to overcoming the power of publishers couldn't possibly be worse than piling it all at a single company's feet. As far as digital distribution is concerned, this (sadly) is exactly what happened.

Zeboyd Games (Cthulhu Saves the World) said that the numbers were consistent with his sales numbers as well.

Good point: what it actually shows is that the alternative to Steam distribution is no distribution. While that's positive in the sense that "any number greater than zero is positive", it's also disturbing, in exactly the sense you describe (there's a ten-dollar word, "monopsony", for it). If Valve comes to dictate which games receive distribution, then the market becomes not what game developers can produce and not what gamers want to buy, but what Valve wants to distribute.