Quoting: Petethegoatit's fairly obvious this is exactly what happened. from liam's article above -

That's simply just speculation on your end.

Quoting: Petethegoatthere's a reason EA and ubisoft and activision all stopped selling games on steam for several years and have been coming back since this change went into effect. valve didn't decide to give successful games a better deal out of the goodness of their hearts.

Yeah, because they didn't like the 30/70 share. But that doesn't mean that Valve offered them special deals to bring them back as you suggested.

They get a better deal - if they earn that.

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Quoting: scaine@kuhpunkt - I have no idea why you're being so argumentative about this - your quote-cutting sounds really aggressive, so apologies if I've pissed you off somehow.

I just care about the facts, that's all. They depict themselves as the poor victims who suddenly can't generate keys anymore... when that's distorting what happened. There was no rug pull. There was no sudden change.

Quoting: scaineBut if you believe that a game only takes 6 months to develop, and that everyone was just instantly cool about this change, you're deceiving yourself. Similarly, 5000 keys, many of which would have gone out to press already, is nowhere near enough to cover the possibility of a top-selling bundle.

I never said that the game only takes 6 months to develop, nor did I suggest anything like that. And I doubt that there were that many keys given to press. How many outlets are even there that would get a key? 100? 200? The game isn't attractive to a lot of people... if it had, it would have sold better. Again - how many keys should they be able to generate? Does Valve owe them infinite keys now? And would those keys ever sell?

Quoting: scaineFinally, sure, the Valve cut change happened seven years ago, but is predated by nearly two decades of an unchanging, non-negotiable 30% cut, a cut that's still valid for the vast, vast majority of developers. It's perfectly normal for people to have latched on to that??

I think people should know better now, yes - and that's still not the argument that was made. Pete claimed that Valve negotiated with publishers like EA or Activision to lure them back... when we have no indication of that ever being a thing.

As if Valve said "Hey EA, if you come back, we start with a 20/80 share, pretty please."

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Quoting: Petethegoat

Quoting: kuhpunktI'm just wondering where Pete is getting the "developers can negotiate the cut" from. I'm not aware that anybody can negotiate that. Everybody has to earn it.

just a turn of phrase, sorry for the confusion.

"negotiation" in the sense that if you're EA or activision and you pull your games from steam, valve is happy to drop their cut to bring you back.

Again, where are you getting this from? What makes you think that EA or Activision are getting a better cut?

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Quoting: scaineHow are they lying?? 3 years is recent in terms of a game's life-span. They had the rug pulled out from under them on this. There was no notice of it happening, just a sudden announcement that they'd changed how they issue keys.

Because it's not a recent change. The change happened in February 2023 and it made the news. Saturnalia didn't even release until November 2023. What rug has been pulled? What sudden change?

Quoting: scainePutting a poorly-selling older game into a bundle is a huge deal for a dev, generating sales that simply wouldn't happen any other way. You still get 5000 keys under the new rules, but that's not feasible for putting the game into a bundle.

They must have been able to generate those 5000 keys when they released the game. How many more keys do they want? The game has 80 reviews. There are some calculations out there, but you have to take those with a grain of salt... but apparently take the number of reviews and multiply them by 30 or up to 50. So the game sold maybe 2400 to 4000 times. Again, what do they want? Should Valve give them 20000 more keys? Just because?

Quoting: scaineNot that well known, no. Most people still tend to quote the "30% of all steam sales go to Valve", I find.

But that's on people not being informed. The change happened in December 2018. That's literally 7 full years ago... so where do people get the idea from that people can even negotiate that?

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Quoting: scaineAs noted in the article itself, it's the devs themselves that bemoan that this change prevents them from putting their older games in a bundle.

Yeah, but why lie about this? The change happened almost 3 years ago. If they can't be straight about this... why should anybody trust them?

If their previous game Saturnalia had sold well, I'm pretty sure that they would be able to generate more keys. The game had a peak of 15 players 1.5 years ago. It's got 80 reviews on Steam. It apparently didn't sell well... so why should they be able to continue generating keys? You can still buy some keys online, so at some point they must have been able to generate keys.

It's not a negotiation, but bigger devs suffer from a smaller cut.

Here's the breakdown I took from a Reddit thread, so I admit I haven't verified this, but I have no reason to doubt it.

Yes... and that's known for years. I'm just wondering where Pete is getting the "developers can negotiate the cut" from. I'm not aware that anybody can negotiate that. Everybody has to earn it.

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Quoting: Petethegoat

Quoting: kuhpunktAnd they have RECENTLY begun refusing keys? That change happened almost 3 years ago. It just comes across as disingenuous.

wanting to put their previous game in a bundle does not seem disingenuous.

I didn't say anything about wanting to put their game in a bundle. I just talked about the change... 3 years ago isn't recent. It's the same with their earliest statements where they feigned ignorance and people only got to hear their side. The banner on their website doesn't help them either - it's just antagonizing Valve - so why would they even consider changing their stance?

Quoting: Petethegoatsome developers can still get steam keys for other stores and bundle purposes, clearly, so when the language was changed doesn't seem super relevant.

It's not "some" - it's everybody who is in good standing, following the guidelines and not abusing the system.

Quoting: Petethegoatit provides SOME value to developers. does it provide enough for the 30% cut valve take? maybe, but i don't think it's at all unreasonable to criticise them.

Of course they can/should be criticized - when there's a good reason to. Just in this case here... what incentive would Valve have to NOT sell the game? Why would they care? It would make them money - so they must have had a pretty good reason to reject the game.

This is what Valve said:

"This happens sometimes if content on the store page causes concern that the game itself might not fall within our guidelines. After our team played through the build and reviewed the content, we gave the developer feedback about why we couldn’t ship the game on Steam, consistent with our onboarding rules and guidelines. A short while later the developer asked us to reconsider the review, and our internal content review team discussed that extensively and communicated to the developer our final decision that we were not going to ship the game on Steam."

Quoting: Petethegoatthey are not good for developers in the same way they are good for consumers - especially smaller developers who do not get to negotiate down the 30% cut.

Which developers get to negoatiate the cut?!

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I don't think it's a problem, but what does it say about the developer? In a week this whole thing is forgotten... then what do they have left?

And their communication wasn't great either. Statement like this...

Steam has recently begun refusing to grant developers keys for their own games. In the absence of clear rules or guidance, Valve led developers for years to believe they could request keys as needed, building communities and businesses outside Steam while still creating value for Steam users. It now withholds keys from indie developers who do not meet undisclosed sales thresholds.

...don't help. Depicting Valve as the bad buys who don't let devs like them abuse the system. And they have RECENTLY begun refusing keys? That change happened almost 3 years ago. It just comes across as disingenuous.

https://newsletter.gamediscover.co/p/valves-new-stance-on-steam-keys-what [External Link]

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Quoting: Liam Dawe

Quoting: kuhpunktThose devs sure love the attention.

What an odd thing to say. Of course they want attention, every developer wants attention. And they're drawing attention to a problem of the biggest PC store there is (and Epic...) refusing their game.

Sure, but I think there is attention and "attention" - and all of this (like the banner on their homepage) just looks like it's shock value for the sake of itself. It's like "Too hot for TV." Because that's all it has going for it. If they hadn't been refused by Valve, I doubt most people would ever care about it. That's something I don't like.

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Those devs sure love the attention.

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I saw one comment... it could be a great way to bring a lot of streaming apps like Netflix to the Steam Machine as well. People might want that.

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