Valve 'Absolutely Not' Exploiting Independent Developers, says Tripwire

Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford recently made waves by saying that Valve running Steam was a conflict of interest and "it’s exploiting a lot of small guys." Today, Tripwire Interactive President John Gibson issued a rebuttal on Gamasutra.

"So, is Valve exploiting independent developers? In short: absolutely not," said Gibson. "Without pulling any punches, I can say with certainty that if it weren't for Steam, there would be no Tripwire Interactive right now."

Gibson goes on to explain that traditional publishers offered deals with low royalties, no IP retention in addition to unwanted administrative fees, which he said was far less generous than Valve's offer that also contained no fine print clauses. He noted that Tripwire was able to recoup the development costs of Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 within the first week of sales and reap the profits from that point on.

"Randy also pointed out the conflict of interest present in Valve being both a game developer and a game distributor," continued Gibson. "I agree -- there could be a potential conflict of interest here. But the reality of dealing with Valve just doesn't bear it out to be a problem. Tripwire Interactive's two titles on Steam, Red Orchestra: Ostfront 41-45 and Killing Floor, are both direct competitors to Valve’s own games Day of Defeat: Source and Left 4 Dead, yet all of these titles have been very successful on Steam. Valve has a very unique take on this matter, and one that I think is smart business. Rather than say, 'I don't want to sell your game, because it's a competitor to our game,' Valve says, 'Our game is good, and so is yours, so let's both make some money together.' The attitude is if the game is good, they'll sell it."

"Three years and two games later, we've built our company in large part on top of selling our games on Steam. We started out with just a couple of people making games in a small room. Now we’ve built our company up to fifteen people, recently nearly doubling our staff and office space, largely thanks to the success our game Killing Floor has had on Steam. I guess all this 'exploitation' has been hard on Tripwire Interactive," he added.

Most companies that have dealt with Valve have nice things to say about them, but that doesn't mean there isn't weight to Pitchford's comments. What happens when the number of distribution portals has been whittled down to a couple; will Valve continue to be benevolent or will conflicts of interest start to affect Steam?