Borderlands Exec Doubts The Ethics Of Steam; Killing Floor Exec Says, "Look At My Shiny Car"
As an avid and enthusiastic PC gamer, I appreciate the opportunities as well as the frustrations of distributing new games in the space between MS Hearts and Notepad. Whether it's serial codes being lost by careless retail employees or the hopelessness of tracking down that actual legitimate copy of LOOM, we of the QWERTY persuasion had a pretty rough time of it... until the advent of digital distribution.
Steam had a rocky release in 2003, plagued with server problems and a general reluctance from fans, but it has since emerged from its chrysalis as a gorgeous, shining example of what a game distribution service should be, complete with login-based downloading to any computer, integration into LAN cafés, and, most compulsively: Achievements.
It's been a boon to game developers, too, offering a platform and advertising for games that otherwise would have little hope of making it on their own. The whole indie games section attests to that, as does the wealth of multiplayer titles - having a unqiue login tied to each player's download eliminates the spectre of piracy from games sold by or hosted on Steam's servers.
As you'll see however, all is not well in the House of Valve.
The CEO of Borderlands developers Gearbox Software, Randy Pitchford, makes the point that Valve is doing wrong by both gamers and developers with its hand in both pots: since it sells games via Steam and also develops games to put on that same service, Valve necessarily has a conflict of interest and might give the shaft to any enterprising dev team who has a game whose premise competes with, say, Left 4 Dead.
Amid some details about his upcoming game in an interview with MaximumPC, Randy had this to say:
And I, personally, trust Valve. But I'm just saying, honestly, I think a lot of the industry doesn't. [. . .] It would be much better if Steam was its own business. There's so much conflict of interest there that it's horrid. It's actually really, really dangerous for the rest of the industry to allow Valve to win.I love Valve games, and I do business with the company. But, I'm just saying, Steam isn't the answer.
Love is the answer. Still, according to specifically John Gibson of Tripwire Interactive, Randy should let it be.
As a small independent developer that has released multiple games on Steam, we are exactly the type of studio that Randy believes is being exploited by Valve. Additionally, as president of Tripwire Interactive, I've personally been involved in all of our business deals with Valve and have experienced firsthand how they treat independent developers.So, is Valve exploiting independent developers? In short: absolutely not. Without pulling any punches, I can say with certainty that if it weren't for Steam, there would be no Tripwire Interactive right now.
If that name doesn't sound familiar, here are some things you should know about Tripwire. Having started as a few modders on a forum, their powers combined to form a unique Russian WWII mod for Unreal Tournament by the name of Red Orchestra. In a scenario akin to the underdog story of Counterstrike, this game was played all to hell by gamers worldwide, which prompted the guys behind what would become Tripwire to decide to make their next game overhaul into their first big break, and thus bathe in the golden waters of capitalism.
And yet, using the traditional publishing model proved a bit less golden.
In the early days, when we were shopping our first game Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 around to traditional brick-and-mortar publishers, we were shocked at how terrible their proposals were. [. . .]With deals like those, we were wondering how any third-party developer could be successful in the game industry. Under the terms of that deal, we would have needed to sell hundreds of thousands of units before we would have seen one cent of royalties. Enter Steam.
When we got the contract from Valve, we were amazed at how much better the deal was from what we were getting from the standard publishers. Even our lawyer was surprised at how straightforward the contract was.
Not exactly the story of developer oppression randily pictured by Randy Pitchford!
As further evidence that Tripwire Interactive is doing quite well under the jackboots of a publishing platform like Steam, here's John with the PC analogue to another recent story about the indie title Zeno Clash, which his once-upstart company is now helping publish in brick-and-mortar stores:
The game is genuinely memorable and has the best melee combat mechanics we've ever seen. What makes this deal even more memorable for us, is the fact that the ACE Team's history parallels our own - an ex-mod team that has funded themselves and succeeded in developing and releasing a great first title.Indie begets indie. It's truly a tale of bohemian brotherhood unlike any other.
I like to present all sides of a story, but I can't find much of merit in Randy's diatribe against the concept of Steam. Yes, it's perfectly possible that the Powers That Be within Valve will give better press and marketing and focus to their own survival horror titles, like Left 4 Dead, than they will "similar" titles, like Killing Floor, thus hurting the latter's revenue. But let's not pretend that the devil in disguise is as bad as the devil in our minds - it makes about as much sense to vilify Valve for publishing through Steam as it does Microsoft for publishing their own titles on the XBox. It's true that there will always be disparities in the marketing space (as evidenced by the upcoming Halo Waypoint popping up on gamers' dashboards "this fall"), but the actual service of the XBox platform has opened up many, many avenues of publishing to developers who otherwise would have fewer options.
The greatest weight behind the idea of Steam as a populist endeavor come from John Gibson's final words on the subject:
Ask Garry Newman, creator of Garry's Mod, or Dylan Fitterer, creator of Audiosurf if they feel exploited. Ask the Tripwire Interactive employees if they feel exploited, as they move into their new offices paid for by the money the company has made on Steam. Or me, as I drive away from the company that was built from the royalties we made on Steam, in my sports car paid for by the royalties we make on Steam, to the home that I pay for with the royalties we make on Steam.If that's exploitation, I'll take a little more.
I'm sure you will, John. I'm sure you will.
faePuck
Posted to Miscellany, Video Games on 13 October 2009
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: borderlands, gearbox, pc, steam, tripwire, valve, xbox 360, zeno clash
Valve does have their hands in both pots, but where I see this becoming the biggest advantage for them as a development company is in the fact that they have unprecedented access to the sales, streaming, download, and play data of the games they sell through Steam.
In short, they can tell what works. This means that when they notice a popular trend in games, or they see a game that quantitatively outperforms others in the same category, they can engage in qualitative research to discover what makes that game so highly-demanded. The result? Games made by Valve that edge out the competition. They even gather data on the configurations which run Steam. With this sort of information, they can find out what the performance limits of a game should be in order to make a compelling experience that will reach the highest constituency.
So yes, Steam does give Valve a distinct advantage in the gaming marketplace. It just doesn't give the advantage Randy suggested.
I'm willing to give Valve a pass. Even if they do pass up titles that'd compete (which I doubt), they've earned the right to have a bit of an advantage. They were the only ones thinking digital distribution for a long time. Everyone owes them a big thank you. And notably, instead of being an asshole monolith (EA, I'm looking at you), they're pretty good about helping new devs and trying to push the limits.
This article was so well written I assumed it had to be Tiny's work; until I got to the bottom.
I'm impressed faePuck! You're definitely my favorite of the new batch of writers.
Nicely balanced article! I also agree that Valve has done FAR more good than evil with Steam as there are probably many more indie games that get visibility on Steam than just the Tripwire Games folks.
As noted, if Valve were the only company with this kind of digital marketplace and wouldn't let anyone else play, it would be a different story. There are plenty of options, so Pitchford's objections seem more of the "wish I'd thought of it first" kind.