I'm confused. If the game is DRM-free on Steam as people claim, why would a DRM-free version on another site require more work? If they are both DRM-free then it's just the same game sent to two places, there is no need to maintain two versions.
There's a key point you're missing: steam is currently the only way we have of updating the linux version. Thus it's the only way to update the game, really, without leaving part of the audience without updates.
So we could easily have sold a DRM-free (and steam-free) version of Bionic on our own store, but people buying it from us in that way would not have gotten any updates. Would you be happy buying a game only to find that only the people who have it on steam get updates? I'm guessing that would have fairly catastrophic PR consequences, actually.
The thing that we're planning to change soon is to write our own updater, with support for linux, so that we're not caught in that dilemma. We haven't done this before because frankly we're running as fast as we can
writing games to make ends meet, and the updater will not be a trivial amount of work. But it seems a worthwhile tradeoff at this stage.
The inclusion of different operating systems are going to require much more maintenance than a steam and DRM-free copy
Why do you assume that? We use Unity, so we don't actually have to maintain multiple versions of the game for the different operation systems at all. In fact, if you make a copy of the Bionic directory from steam and put it on a jumpdrive you can:
1) Take that jumpdrive to a different, say windows-based, machine (doesn't have to have steam) and start a game there. No need to install from the jumpdrive, even, though load times would be slower I imagine.
2) Then save the game, take that jumpdrive to a mac machine (doesn't have to have steam), and continue the same save there.
3) Then save the game, take that jumpdrive to a linux machine (doesn't have to have steam), and continue the same save there.
You'd be running 3 different executable files, of course, but Unity's engine provides those, we don't have to do anything. And the core files where the game's assets and code (that we wrote) are all the same. So when we do a new update we only have the one version to touch.
There were some initial "getting this working at all" issues we had to solve when creating the first mac version we ever did (with AI War back in 2010) and I think there were a few gotchas (much less work) with the first linux version we ever did (with Bionic in 2013), but that was basically one-time-cost stuff, not ongoing maintenance costs.
Anyway, we're certainly willing to listen to arguments against particular distribution practices (have to download it through steam, etc), but we've found that the discussion is often unfruitful because the other side is simply unwilling to accept that they may not have all the relevant facts, and getting past the resulting incorrect assumptions proves impossible. In some cases (not in yours) it goes beyond that to an obvious statement that they don't really care about the facts, they just want us to capitulate to their demands that we conform with their ideals. Such conduct does not encourage me to cooperate
If you're willing to actually listen, and consider that you may not be right about every aspect of the issue, then I'm quite confident we can reach mutually acceptable solutions.
All that said, yes, we are moving away from a sole-distributor situation.
