A couple weeks ago Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford made waves with some controversial comments about Valve Software's popular Steam service. Pitchford said that Steam is "exploiting" developers and that because Valve is both a game developer and a platform holder, Steam creates "so much conflict of interest...that it's horrid."
Tripwire Interactive was quick to come to Valve's defense, noting that although there is potential for conflict of interest, it simply hasn't been a problem with Steam, and Valve is "absolutely not" exploiting developers. Now the folks at Ars Technica have compiled comments from a few more developers on Steam, all of whom seem to be thrilled with Valve's platform.
"I agree with Pitchford about there being potential for conflict of interest and abuse of power, but I haven't seen even the faintest sign of this power being abused," said Ron Carmel from World of Goo developer 2D Boy. "Quite the contrary, Valve offers the most developer-friendly terms for digital distribution in the industry. Do you know the saying 'there's nothing better than a good king and nothing worse than a bad one'? I think it applies here, and Steam has clearly been a good king so far."
"If this is exploitation, more please," remarked Dylan Fitterer, whose Audiosurf is still one of the top sellers in the indie games section of Steam. "In my experience, Valve has been an amazing business partner."
Telltale CTO Kevin Bruner had even more effusive praise for Valve, saying Steam "may be one the greatest things to happen recently." He added, "We put Steam as one of the A-list distribution channels, up there with XBLA and WiiWare."
The bottom line seems to be that developers are happy with Steam. If any had been exploited as Pitchford had suggested, we'd surely be hearing about it now. It only takes a vocal minority to create a headache, but developers unhappy with Steam either don't exist or are strangely silent on the issue.
Update: The folks at Joystiq have tracked down Randy Pitchford, who defended his original criticism but also elaborated on his stance.
"From an industry perspective, I believe that Steam would be even better off if it were a separate company. Trust issues that result from conflict of interest could be mitigated if Steam were a separate company. Take that only as analysis. It doesn't matter how much I trust Valve or how trustworthy Valve actually is - it's just perception within segments of the publishing and development community that, I guess, no one is really talking about. I'm on record in this article saying how I personally trust Valve. I was attempting to comment on perception from some angles of the industry," he clarified.
Pitchford continued, "I also believe that gamers and customers and anyone making games using 3rd party digital distribution systems would be greatly benefited if Steam had some viable competitors. Competition generally drives higher quality products and services at lower prices. I can't see how anyone could argue against that point. If we love Steam, we should hope that as competition appears that it prompts the Steam folks to go faster and better towards improving the service and the pricing.
"In spite of the implication made in this blurb, I do not want Microsoft to control digital distribution on PC, but believe they (and others) could enter the space if they wanted to and help the competitive landscape and even, perhaps, help to standardize the landscape a bit. I believe that because Valve is a game maker that generally "gets it" I think there's a lot of value to the position they have and I'm really excited about the risk they took and the foresight Valve showed in paving the way there.
"These are not mutually exclusive feelings and they are all honest and forthright."
1 Comments
October 21, 2009
"Competition generally drives higher quality products and services at lower prices"
I wish. Mostly it drives the pricing down and the quality follows with it. Everyone drops prices to compete, generating less revenue to find its way to the developers - meaning smaller development budgets in the future. And smaller development budgets certainly aren't going to raise the quality. And if there is less revenue being generated, getting funding for risky projects will be even harder.