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All of those sites have a huge barrier to entry. If you were an indie game dev and you wanted to start selling your game immediately it is not possible with tho
by leafo 14y ago
All of those sites have a huge barrier to entry. If you were an indie game dev and you wanted to start selling your game immediately it is not possible with those sites. There is an entire market of tiny game developers who never would dream of selling their game on something like steam. This gives them the opportunity to host their game, and set a minimum price of say 0. Now they have the potential to make money off of their side projects. I'd say that's a pretty empowering.
- CrazedGeek 14y agoDesura has nearly zero barrier to entry, provided your game actually works: http://www.moddb.com/tutorials/publishing-on-desura http://www.moddb.com/tutorials/publishing-on-desura
- TylerE 14y agoSmaller sites have a huge barrier to entry for consumers though. For a large percentage of gamers, myself included, if it's not on Steam, it might as well not exist. I'm far more hesitant to download/purchase from other services. The nice thing about steam is that: 1: They're established, I don't have to worry about my CC security 2: I can re-download forever* on any computer. It is impossible to overstate how big of a deal this is. 3: Nothing to remember. No serials/keys to keep track of. No installers to back-up. IT JUST WORKS. 4: Auto-updates
- abcrawf 14y ago1. itch.io uses PayPal. Assuming you trust them, there is nothing to worry about. 2. itch.io provides the same mechanism. You are paying for the game, not the single download. 3. As long as you can re-download the game, then there is no reason to save the installer. Serials/keys are up to the discretion of the game developer and I don't see why giving the game developers control is a bad thing. I think most indie games are against DRM anyway. 4. In order to support auto-updates, the game developer has to invest in the Steam APIs. There is nothing stopping games on itch.io to using out-of-band updates.
- TylerE 14y agoThe developer doesn't need to do anything to enable steam updates. Steam just does a binary diff vs the master copy. For 2 & 3, that's great, but to be honest there is a huge burden of proof - frankly, I don't really expect any random startup that doesn't even have a .com domain to be around in 5 years.
- Justonius 14y agodotcom is so 90s yo.
- hbien 14y agoI think you're right, there is a barrier for most consumers who love Steam. But for another percentage of gamers, like me, there's zero barrier to entry. 1: I like not having to launch Steam to play my games. 2: I know there are good games that exist that aren't on Steam and am more than willing to go through a CC form or PayPal. 3: I'm slowly getting irrated with games with DRM, online-only, DLC. I think itch.io is a win for these niches of indie game developers and consumers who buy indie games.
- Retric 14y agoI am far more likely to buy something on steam. However, you sometimes find motivated customers. I some how ended up watching a really long let's play of UnrealWorld at which point I really wanted to buy the game even though the registration process is a horrible the developer still got my money.
- opzionale 14y ago>off of Another idiot...
- eswangren 14y agoLet me ask you this; what kind if person has enough free time and is a large enough ass to go about calling people idiots for making minor grammatical errors? My guess is... an idiot.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]