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(lemmy.nz)
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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2025
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Gaming
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Reminder that steam strong arms indie Devs into doing these big sales in order to give them visibility on the Steam store.
Basically if you don't do sales Steam wont show your game to anyone.
There are plenty of examples to the contrary of this. In particular, I know that factorio has literally never gone on sale on principle, and has only ever gone up in price upon leaving early access. Despite this, it shows up with some regularity in the store.
It's certainly the case that Steam can be a rat race for developers to get attention, but I don't believe your framing is accurate.
I thought about mentioning factorio in the original comment, but yeah as you say there is some exception, factorio. Being wildly popular and the game that more or less birthed an entire genre helps and even if you don't play the same game it's still entirely possible to succeed through word of nouth. But for less popular indie games it's still true.
UUhhhh no? Steam doesn't automatically change games' visibility if it's never on sale; it makes games on sale more visible, which encourages Devs to put their games on sale, meaning people who have never seen your game have seen it and might buy it. So in the end, MORE People have bout the game than would have otherwise, and if set at the right price, the Devs still get their cash and now have a larger market. I'm so glad I took Microeconomics in High School :)
And maybe if you studied beyond highschool level you would be aware this is a well studied thing in economics. If you sell a priority service and there is a limit to the resource in some way you are shutting out the people that don't pay. Like its the same problem as dating apps that sell priority matching, if enough people buy I to it you either have to buy into it as well just to get a fair chance, or except you will never get seem.
Yes the Devs that buy into it get more sales. The entire point is it works for those people, if it didn't they would have no reason to buy into it. But the people who don't buy into it are then inherently disadvantaged.
This post brought to you by a person who studied beyond highschool level and the phrase "buy into it".
That works when we're talking about big businesses and AAA games, but the problem is when we consider indie developers, who struggle to get attention so are pressured into putting their game on sale when they don't want to just get some attention.
Sure if you don't give a shit about other people, and then you can use the same logic to justify sweatshop clothes and any other shitty businesses practice you like.
No, what I said was you can use that same logic to justify sweatshops. That does not mean I think they are equivalent.
The problem is the coercion, steam tells smaller indie Devs that they basically have to agree to massive sales in order to get their game seen.
Again you're only listen to a part of what I'm saying to make it more convenient to argue against.
Pc part picker is not a distributer with a functional monopoly on the pc hardware market, nor are AMD Nvidia and Intel small indie teams. That's the key here.
Steam use their position as THE retailer of PC games as leverage to make small indie Devs put their games on ridiculous sales even when they don't want to, just to get featured, in order to benefit themselves by being the place that has the crazy sales.
If you want a more apt example think of companies that use unpaid or underpaid inters for work in return for "the exposure" it's very similar and widely considered exploitative.
Hey man, if you don't want to engage in good faith, it's better not to engage at all.
You mean the game will only show up in the list of games that are available on sale if the games are actually in the sale? Because that's just literally how that works
Wow, it's like people want the games that are part of the big sale going on! How are you twisting the ability to sort by what's on discount into being evil?
Because the big sale only happens because steam presses Devs into it in order to get promoted. So Devs that don't buy into the sale, get sent to the back of line.
Your entire argument makes no sense
Probably because you're not reading what I'm actually saying.
Then explain better, because at the moment all you are doing is pearl clutching about people wanting a good deal on a product they want, what would your solution be?
I have explained plenty well. You are just refusing to listen because you have already set your opinion in stone and have either ignored or twisted everything I have said to fit that opinion.
If you have any desire to engage in good faith I suggest you go back and re read my comments.
You haven't explained shit, you just keep saying Valve is abusing devs with sales, you never give a solution and your logic is spotty at best. How would you solve this issue?
Do you have a better method?
That would end my gaming hobby or send me back to piracy, and I like giving hard working devs my money
I mean.... yeah?
steam is running a business and game devs are too.
if you develop games because it's a hobby, more power to you, but the platform you're using (steam) requires capital to operate.
sure, Karen.
man I wish. that's a game company that knows how to make money.
they treat their customers like absolute shit, year after year. yet still people keep buying their garbage.
🤔 I wonder why?
The entitlement in these two words astounds me
are you certain it's entitlement?
If you're referring to how consumers were previously described, then I wholly agree. consumers should get what they paid for.
that said, if the price is too high for you don't complain. don't whine about it online. don't buy it.
I don't complain online, I wait for a sale to bring it into my buying range, it's entirely the business owners choice if I buy their product, that said that money represents hours of your life, why spend more than absolutely necessary when buying?
You say "basically" as if you are privy to how the steam store works when at the same time making up how it works
I worked for a game developer for 4 years
I have been in the business 10 years, steam insider program is not how steam store works.. it is mostly manual and if you know someone there, you have a chance. It's some people's work to curate, for good and bad... I prefer it to the inevitable short sighted collapse that a publicly traded company would
I mean it’s that, or pay for marketing via other means. Either way, you’re spending money for exposure.
So who would see their game if Steam didn't allow their game on their platform?
Seems like the devs would make way less money selling 0 copies