I don't really think the sales chart there is accurate at all in terms of comparisons to the playtime hours. The top 20 sellers on steam certainly are a huge chunk of the revenue that are being generated on steam at any given time, but what games are in the top 20 changes pretty rapidly.
In the case of The Last Federation, we've grossed somewhere above $375k in two months, and about $340k of that was on steam. Overall we have now passed $2.2m gross on steam for all our games since AI War came out there in 2009. Our all-time gross outside of steam is probably somewhere in the $400k range at best.
So, do we like steam? Absolutely, of course -- our business couldn't really exist without it. I also particularly like how they solve engineering problems in general with their platform. Very clean work, elegantly thought out.
In terms of their curation process, do they have that nailed down yet? No, even they are saying they do not. Does that affect Arcen? No, because we don't have to go through their curation process, and have not since 2009. So I'm not in a good position to comment on it. The front page of steam is something that is getting harder and harder to command for any real length of time, and that's a big bummer for longtime steam devs like us. But that hasn't stopped TLF from being our fastest-selling title ever, even in the new flood of greenlit games and older back catalog stuff from various publishers. So while that new flood does make me nervous, I have yet to see the bite from it personally.
Do I want them to fix how their new releases work? Basically, everything that Total Biscuit and the others were talking about? Yes, absolutely, holy cow yes. I agree with everything he said. That said, I think it's something that Valve is approaching with their usual measured approach and careful thought. I've heard some interesting things through the grapevine that I think will greatly benefit indies and devs in general. Valve aren't oblivious to the issue, they just aren't rushing to immediately slap bandaids on.
Whether or not they should be is kind of a tricky question. Obviously indies and so forth wish they would, but navigating relationships with lots of developers and being fair to everyone is a tricky thing from Valve's position. My view is that right now Steam is going through a bit of a growing pains process, and nobody likes that, but it's not a platform that is just stagnating or which is run by people who don't know what they are doing. I know a few dozen people at Valve at this point, and they are all just the nicest people you could ever meet, and extremely smart, and also always running flat-out busy with something new.
Anyway, I think that by this time next year the situation will be very different. Hopefully in a way that benefits myself and other indies and really everyone, knock on wood. But right now it's kind of a bad time to be a new indie releasing into the wild, for sure. For us as a more established name that's not as much a problem, but even there you never know.
