PC games without steam?

Can you publish games on PC without steam?

 

Of course... But the question is, do you have the customer base to do it on ur own site without the need of steam? Id say not if ur asking this though.

 

Absolutely. There are a number of routes available such as The Humble Widget, Digital River, and Send Owl.

 

PC is a pretty open platform. You can always simply throw up an install file on your website and direct people there. We do have several devs with games that don't qualify for steam that follow alternative routes.

 

Yes, you can publish a game without going through Steam. You probably would not want to, though. Steam is a large market.

 

League of Legends are doing okay...

 

As does Blizzard.

It's worth noting that steam and digital distribution is a relatively recent phenomenon. Lots of us still find picking up a game in a box from a brick and mortar store to be more to our liking.

 

One of the more prominent indie examples would be Minecraft, which is still published off of its own website.

If Steam won't have you, or you don't need what it offers, there's nothing stopping you from publishing and distributing your game yourself. It means some extra work for you, but it is entirely possible, even plausible.

 

You hit on something that I think about often. I am not sure if it is due to my age or not but as much as I appreciate the instant part of digital products I definitely prefer a physical product. It's cool to have an actual game box in my hands. And often inside the box along with the game media there was a nice instruction booklet and perhaps even a map and other tidbits for the game. That part seems to be lost these days. It used to be a big part of the game experience.

I've often thought if I ever make a game for sale I'd try to duplicate that experience as much as possible.

 

ijii games! jk.

 

You would think so, yet 3 years later they're still trying to figure out "appear offline"... which steam has accomplished. It's a running joke similar to "Soon(trademarked)" because it did actually say 'soon', and then nothing.

Context ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Interestingly enough, you had to pay to fully integrate with steam in the past because you needed pro for plugins. So you never needed steam, and besides source2, that's true of any engine. It's just easier now because they handle file distribution and marketing (sort of).

 

Yeah the humble bundle, itch.io, greenmangaming, amazon, probably more but steams the biggest audience

 

You can also publish to the Windows Store.

 

off topic a bit, but, https://theindiebox.com/

 

LOL! That's pretty awesome. Thanks! And I was actually thinking of a Deluxe package being basically just like this. A USB with the game on it, some photos of the game design doodles and so forth. Mailed out to people. Obviously higher priced than the digital download.

So much stuff out there how can anyone find it all? Thanks for posting I will probably sign up for this.

 

This is one thing I hate about modern collectors editions. They charge a fortune and still give you a stinking optical disc rather than a more durable media. Infocom called these sorts of extras feelies and even used them as copy protection.

 

A cd/dvd might be better I guess. I just think it's cool to get something physical. Part of why games these days have less perceived value other than the vast amount of them I think is because they are all (Indie at least) just virtual not too far from being seen as vaporware. Something tangible is nice. Not exactly the same but there is a difference between looking at a photo of a car and holding the key in your hand.

Even something like Unity. The huge download seems like yeah we got something. But if a huge package arrived in the mail opened it to find a boxed cd/dvd set with huge printed manual. I don't know it just seems way more valuable. Obviously for their paid versions not the free one. lol

 

This seems like a good idea. It's the Windows equivalent of the Mac App Store, right?

 

You could probably also publish to wii u, if your willing to pony up 1500 for a dev kit.

 

Imagine Infamous on Wiiu

 

Why the heck should you pay to develop games for wii u?
I understand steam's 100$ price tag. they don't want garbage on their platform.

 

Because setting a price point like this creates a barrier to entry limiting the number of titles flooding the market. It all goes back to the Great North American Video Game Crash in the 80s. Nintendo is the company that turned things around. They did this mainly by two things: first they only accepted certain games and those games displayed the Nintendo Seal of Quality. The second is companies had to license the right to develop games for the NES. These two things together created a minimum standard for quality and a barrier to entry to keep the amount of titles to a certain number. Basically these two things were to prevent the two biggest factors that caused the crash: Low quality games and too many games released too quickly.

Probably more than you cared to get but there it is. I am thinking the price in part may be due to that line of thinking still being present at Nintendo. On the other hand, it could be they actually give you some hardware and software they feel is worth $1,500.

 

Its funny everyone is so OBSESSED with steam. PC games were selling like hotcakes with an entire industry around it well before steam came along. Steam is just one of many portals, and there are a TONNE of games being sold on PC from people's websites and other places. Remember there are more than a billion PC's out there, not to mention also adding in all the mac and linux users. What, selling directly on PC is `old school` now? Have you any idea how many people actually still buy pc games, especially the huge volume of casual game players?

 

Discoverability. Steam brings a lot of eyes with it. If you don't have a built in fan base and don't do marketing well, then Steam has the potential to get your game in front of a lot of customers.

 

In addition to the discoverability aspect of Steam, there is also the trust aspect. A lot of end users trust Steam more than some unknown website. This is especially true now with the addition of refunds at Steam.

 

From what I can tell, http://itch.io/ is a good option if you just want to throw a game up without needing a full site in place. Haven't heard any horror stories at least.

 

Pretty much everything needs you to pay to develop on it. Or be a successful developer already for console. steam greenlight gets the worst of it because their only gate is $100 and community votes.

Jim Sterling has an itch.io series now

 

I almost wasn´t sure if this was sarcasm or not...

 

Steam's Greenlight is flooded with crappy games. Since adding a $100 license fee, they did nothing.

 

Itch also lets devs take payments directly. No chance of the site going bust and creditors getting dev revenue.

 

Although I agree with the general sentiment, this isn't entirely true. Apparently before the fee there were people putting up games they didn't create that they just happened to want to see on Steam. Like Minecraft or whatever. At least it stopped that.

 

I remember that. Half Life 3 jokes were around every corner on a Greenlight page

 

Steam is still the biggest market with over 125 million active steam accounts.
http://kotaku.com/there-are-over-125-million-steam-accounts-1687820875

But even with that without the pr your going to sell not that many, probably the numbers will start falling as the number of game starts to increase to mobile figures. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...S_last_year_and_other_digital_sales_facts.php

 

Before doing that you should mention that the 2015 European VAT law is applicable if you take payments directly. That's why Itch.io implemented in January the recommended option to let the website collect the money first and then the dev asks for the money to Itch so legally you are in a B2B transaction and not a B2C (unless you want to comply with heavy rules).
To bring back the official documentation:
http://ec.europa.eu/taxation_customs/taxation/vat/how_vat_works/telecom/index_en.htm

Damn, that reminds me I have to fill in my quarterly VAT report

 

Exactly how do you think billions of dollars were made selling pc games before steam?

 

I think it's fairly obvious we are talking in the context of indies/hobbyists and not EA/Activision/etc. hence the 'build in fan base and don't do marketing well' part of my statement.

 

Steam basically creates a middle class for quality game developers. If you make a good game, do some decent marketing, you can earn decent money just by using steam. In the past before steam, a person with a similar game would get almost no sales.

There are always going to be lottery ticket winners like Minecraft, but steam just raises the floor significantly for serious developers who don´t win the lottery.

 

And how many of those billions went to indies? because that's the context here.

 

That's a fantastic way to put it.

 

Call me old fashioned but if a game has steams name on it I dont buy it. They may have a huge client base, but they are as disliked like Radioshack due to their bad reputation and look what happened to Radioshack? Steam is so hated that steam has gone a step further and sell full box games without the box mentioning their name at all then the person opens the game and finds
the dvd to not be a game at all but a steam installer. My bank fully refunded me for 5 games when they saw this. If people go out of their way to buy a box game, unless its a mmorpg, we want the game full and no third party log in.

 

Steam isn't "as disliked as Radioshack" at all. If anything, Steam's reputation is overall positive.

 

As most others already mentioned - yes.

The thing I find much more interesting/sad is that we apparently have now passed the point where Steam isn't thought of as the default plattform. When I started PC gaming CD-ROM was rather new. There still were a few games on floppy discs. Basically this could still be done today. And I think there might even still be a few games on the shelves in retail stores which do not need any DRM system. But it shows the shift in thinking. It's interesting to hear.

I also fear the day when the first batch of Operating Systems on desktop plattforms tries to close down so far that you cannot publish an application just like that any more. When this happens and people don't react to it we as customers are in deep S***, IMO.

</2cents>

 

Don't forget that GoG is also a pretty popular distribution platform.

 

Also they don't seem to accept 90+% of what devs would want to release on steam, because they actively curate and don't want their plattform flooded with crap.

 

Thats a good thing. If you're serious about making good games that is

 

We'll always have Linux though.

 

I think some games definitely benefit from their own site. Still very prevalent in MMORPG space, look at something like Runescape. They can monetize without that 30% cut, just have to be willing to build up the popularity which can take years/decades.